After his cohorts, Sam and Fred, steal furs from the Flawless Furs warehouse, Steve Michel, a vicious, crippled killer known as The Claw, uses his prosthetic hook to murder the watchman. At the crime scene, police detective Dick Tracy interviews fur company owner Humphries, Peter Premium, the head of the insurance company that insured the furs, and Cudd, the insurance company's investigator. Premium and Cudd are anxious to catch the thieves quickly as Humphries' policy states that if the stolen goods are not found within twenty-four hours, the insurance company must pay a penalty. While examining the watchman's body at the morgue, Tracy and his bumbling assistant, Pat Patton, find a scribbled note and, with the help of the forensics laboratory, decipher it. The note indicates that the robbers are three men driving a truck with the name "Daisy" on it. Before Tracy can track the truck, however, the robbers change its facade at their junkyard hideout. The robbers then go to the Blinking Skull bar to telephone their boss and are overheard making plans to unload the furs that night by Sightless, a beggar who poses as a blind man. While eavesdropping, Sightless, a police informant, makes enough noise to attract the robbers' attention and barely escapes from The Claw. Sightless rushes to Dick Tracy's house with his tip, but Vitamin Flintheart, Tracy's pretentious but goodhearted friend, answers the door. Assuming that the terrified beggar is a raving pest, Vitamin sends him on his way after listening to his message about the robbers' rendezvous with a fence. Later, Vitamin passes on Sightless' tip, and Tracy and Pat apprehend the would-be fence, Longshot Lillie. While Tracy and Pat are questioning Lillie, who is unable to identify the robbers, The Claw kills Sightless in his apartment. The Claw then starts to make a telephone call in Sightless' building, but is scared off when Pat and Tracy arrive. Although Pat is unable to catch the fleeing Claw, he does shoot and wound him. Tracy notices that The Claw left scratch marks on the telephone dial indicating the first part of the number he was calling, and assigns Pat the task of discovering the missing digits. Tracy then visits Premium and Cudd and accuses them of stealing the furs. After the insurance men deny Tracy's charges, an exhausted Pat bursts in and announces that the phone number belongs to Humphries. From his home, meanwhile, Humphries, who hopes to sell the insurance company his own furs at a cut rate and collect the penalty money, contacts the robbers at the Blinking Skull, and they then call Premium and tell him to bring $50,000 to the bar. There Fred and Sam try to double-cross the wounded Claw, but he attacks and kills them. Their murder is witnessed by Vitamin, who, out of guilt over Sightless, is posing as a blind beggar. From his hiding place, Vitamin then overhears The Claw telephoning Humphries and telling him the location of the furs. After Humphries, who is being held at gunpoint by Pat and Cudd, alerts The Claw to his situation, Vitamin inadvertently attracts the killer's attention. Vitamin is saved by the arrival of Tracy, who then pursues The Claw to the junkyard. There Tracy corners The Claw next to a high-voltage generator, and the killer accidentally touches a charged wire with his hook and electrocutes himself. At home, Tracy is about to embrace his patient sweetheart, Tess Trueheart, when he is called to duty once more.