Gertie Waxted (Myrna Loy) knows how a notorious gangster Jim Crelliman runs his rackets, because she's long been under the hoodlum's thumb. No more. She's secretly helping lawyer Jackson Durant (Warner Baxter) in a snoop job aimed at pinning a murder on the thug. Her life will be in peril when that secret gets out. And there's something else that won't stay hush-hush: Gertie and Jackson are falling in love. "This girl's going to be a big star!" director W.S. Van Dyke declared about Loy, who heretofore had often been cast in minor, exotic roles. The filmmaker was instrumental in making his prediction come true, casting Loy with William Powell the next year in her starmaking The Thin Man.