When John Mannering undertook to help Della Gill, whose brother had become involved with a vicious killer, he sensed that behind her story of thieves falling out there was a more deadly and powerful force. Mannering was caught between crooks who had killed once and would kill again, and the police who mistrusted his motives in taking the law into his own hands. Time and pressure and danger were all parts of the double frame in which he was trapped.