Boston Blackie (Chester Morris) sponsors the parole of a group of hardened convicts so they can take up wartime-employment in a tool manufacturing plant owned by his millionaire friend Arthur Menleder. Complications arise when a gangster, "Nails" Blanton (Douglas Fowley), frames one of the paroled convicts, Dooley Watson (Erik Rolf), for a murder. Blackie, a reformed jewel thief, has to employ some of his amateur magician tricks and he and his very small sidekick, The Runt (George E. Stone), also do a cross-dressing bit , which is not a pretty sight, in order to prove the innocence of Wilson. .