Dorothy Shearer

A choirmaster addicted to opium and obsessed with a beautiful young woman will stop at nothing to possess her.

"Chick" Thompson is a puppet-master in a traveling carnival whose wife dies in childbirth and leaves him with an infant son he names "Poochy." His father-in-law and the baby's grandfather sues him for custody of the baby and Chick takes his son and hides out for a couple of years. He joins his former assistants, Daisy and "Fingers", in a circus act only to find that the persistent grandfather is still on his trail.

Two bumbling detectives help a stage actress who has been receiving threatening letters.

A powerful publisher John Mitchell whose pursuit of sensational headlines at the expense of all else takes a personal toll when his daughter Joan is implicated in a murder.