In London, England, Linda Terry, an American heiress, runs away with freelance newsreel photographer Dick Stallings when her guardian, Phineas Merrill, attempts to place her in an insane asylum for refusing to marry his nephew.
Mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder has rented a country house called "The Oaks", which not long ago was the scene of some murders committed by a strange and violent criminal known as "The Bat". Meanwhile, the house's owner, bank president John Fleming, has recently embezzled one million dollars in securities and has hidden the proceeds in the house, but is killed before he can retrieve it.