Bookkeeper Nick Cherney is sent to jail for Embezzlement from Johnny Torno's trucking company. In a California prison, he sees a newsreel showing Johnny welcoming home his brother Jess, a heroic Catholic chaplain just returned from a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. Just before his release four years later (and to give himself a clever alibi), Nick hires Rocky, an inmate who has just finished his sentence, to murder Jess.