Whit Whitney reluctantly accepts a job offer from John J. Clayton, a wealthy wool-broker, to investigate Clayton's son Bob, who runs the Los Angeles office of the family business. Whit's assignment is to find out why Bob has been making unauthorized payments with company funds and, if possible, why he abandoned his wife and young child. Whit soon discovers that Bob is involved in a high-stakes poker game with a bunch of card sharps and has taken up with a "killer-diller" of a redhead named Gwen, the sister of one of the poker-players. Whit is about to blow the lid on the whole setup when Bob drops over dead during one of the games, poisoned by strychnine-laced aspirin tablets... and the $25,000 in cash that Bob had brought with him has vanished.
