Dan Mason, a twelve-year-old newsboy, is an expert at figuring all the angles; so, when Kink, veteran bartender at Billy's Steak House, catches him winning a big jackpot in the battered old slot machines that belong to seedy Tim Channing, he not only defies them to do anything about it but shows Tim how he can corner the slot-machine racket and, at the same time, put his big-racketeer competitors Tony Finetti and Angelo Di Bruno out of the running. Thusly begins a partnership between the larcenous---but big-hearted---Tim and the precocious newsboy that lasts and prospers while he is growing up. Reaching college age Dan studies law, showing a greater aptitude for finding loopholes in the law than an inclination to uphold it, despite the advice of his law-school Dean and the wholesome companionship of his roommate Roy Fellows, whose father is a retired judge. But Dan meets Roy's sister Fern and his family, and the sincerity and friendliness of Roy's parents and the open adoration of Fern make him begin to work on the right side of the law instead of against it. So, after graduating from law school, Dan agrees to go to work for his old friend Tim...but only if it is honest work. Tim promises him it will be, but then Finetti and Di Bruno show up from the old days and Tim is put into a compromising position..and things aren't going just exactly as Dan planned and Tim promised.