Seeking work, an amateur scenario writer climbs over the wall of the Thomas H. Ince studio in Culver City, promptly falls asleep and dreams that New York banker Richard Deering is spending the holidays at his lodge in the Adirondacks with his daughter Evelyn and old friend Donald Greene. Deering refuses Greene's request for Evelyn's hand in marriage, and the rejected suitor leaves for New York. That night, Deering is shot while asleep in bed, and the eminent New York detective Horace Lee is called in to solve the case. Lee discovers that Deering had been shot by a gun that had been ingeniously arranged between the logs of the building so that the freezing temperature would release the trigger. When Deering regains consciousness, he provides the motive for the shooting by telling of Greene's inherited insanity, which was triggered by his disappointment at losing Evelyn. The scenario writer awakens to find the studio closed. He is chased off the Ince lot by the night watchman and loses parts of his precious manuscript as he runs down the road.