Otto Lang

Jim Bradley has always played second fiddle in his family -- while his older brother, Herbert, goes off to college, Jim becomes a garage mechanic. When Herbert returns home, it's easy for him to steal Jim's girl, Polly Crawford. But trouble comes to the Bradley's town when Cragg murders his daughter and breaks into the family's home. Herbert goes for help, leaving Jim with an empty gun to protect their mother and Polly.

Sandy Doyle, gambler and political chief of a small border town, seeks to gain control of the Bar-X Ranch, owned by Rufe Rickson, to further some undercover activities of his own. He counts on Rickson's inability to stay away from gambling as the means to his ultimate success. Government investigator Oliver Shea and his assistant, Dan Haggerty, start a fight in Doyle's place when they see Rickson being cheated and are invited to the Bar-X where Oliver and Helen Rickson, Rufe's daughter, discover interest in each other and Dan finds himself pursued by Bell, the ranch cook. Sheriff Larson brings the prize money for the $5,000 race of the Rodeo Association, and that night it is stolen.

In this adventure, trouble ensues when two American French Legionnaires fall for the same girl and begin fighting over her when one of them announces that he plans to marry her. The argument is quite heated and in the ensuing scuffle one of them is shot and wounded.

Prohibited from seeing her actor sweetheart Herman Brandt by her tyrannical parents, sweet young Vienesse lass Mariette defies authority by regularly visiting Brandt's downstairs apartment. The lovers' signal is a song called "The Firebird," which Brandt sings whenever he wants Mariette to visit him. When the actor is murdered, poor Mariette and her parents are prime suspects. But the truth is a bit more complicated than that, involving as it does a haughty aristocrat, a powerful diplomat and a most unusual "candid camera" device.