Strangers on a Train

A young artist is almost driven to murder as a result of the pressures of living in a Glasgow slum.

Naive young Wendy (Gloria Jean) lives with her kind Uncle Bill (John Qualen), who has sheltered her from life by instilling a belief in fairy-tales and make-believe. Uncle Bill, a pawnshop owner, buys a violin from shady character Peg-Leg ('Sheldon Leonard' )qv)). When Johnny (Keefe Brasselle, a neighborhood boy and friend of Wendy, connects the violin with the theft of a Stradivarius from a murdered composer, he is kidnapped by a group of thugs. Peg-Leg is killed by the boss of the crime-ring, a face-disguised mystery man known as Raincoat. He tortures Johnny to make him reveal his knowledge of the gang's activities. Meanwhile, Gloria his discovered the identity of 'Raincoat' and seeks the help of Mike (Bill Goodwin), the policeman on the beat.

Assistant District Attorney P. Cadwallader Jones (James Ellison) and his sweetheart Terry Parker (Virginia Gilmore), a newspaper reporter, are about to be married when news comes that newspaper publisher Elliott Carter (Bradley Page) has been murdered. The marriage is postponed, and Jones is assigned to the case by his superior, District Attorney Winton (Paul Harvey) and obtains a conviction in court against Andrew Belmont (John Eldredge). Terry, however, discovers further evidence and Jones agrees to re-open the case.

Faced with blackmail, a town's prosecutor intentionally throws the case of a big-time mobster.

School teacher Janet Brooks innocently involves herself in a scandal while spending the week-end alone in the mountain cabin of her fiancée, Dr. Walter Phillips. She gives first aid to a wounded racketeer, Joe Bruno, who is running out on his mob with eighty thousand dollars in cash. Unknown to Janet, Bruno hides the money in the cabin. She goes on an errand and two mobsters, Ed Somers and "Stubby" Moore), make a call on Bruno and then depart after delivering a couple of soon-to-be-fatal gunshot wounds. Bruno manages to get to the highway and hitches a ride from a passing motorist who drives him to the Coniston hospital. In front of a number of doctors as witnesses, Bruno draws up a will leaving the eighty-thousand bucks to Janet, but dies before he can reveal where the money is located. The story hits the local headlines the next day and Janet's denials of any previous acquaintance with Bruno or knowledge of the money are disbelieved. Janet, her mother, Celia, and her brother, Fred, are ostracized by the town. Only Walter, who is having trouble of his own trying to raise money to complete a polio wing for the hospital, stands by Janet. Janet publicly announces that if the money ever comes into her possession, she will turn it over to the hospital fund. Somers and Moore intensify their search. But Fred, under pressure from Pete Weiss, local racketeer to whom he owes a large gambling debt, finally succeeds in finding the money, but his conscience forces him to hide it again rather than turning it over to Weiss.

Joyce Harper is an ex-Army nurse who enters police work with the L.A. Police Department. When her friend Ruby gets involved with petty crook Max Taylor, she refuses to listen to Joyce's warnings and eventually marries the hoodlum. Joyce gets through the detailed training required to become an L.A. policewoman, and she and her newly-assigned detective partner Harvey Gates clean up a Skid-Row bar-girl scheme. Then she and Gates are told to get the goods on a narcotics gang run by Richard Cott, and Ruby and Max Taylor reappear.