Allan O'Connor is sent by the immigration office in New York to investigate the smuggling of Chinese aliens into Los Angeles. At the same time, Bobbie Reynolds, a reporter, investigates Globe Productions in Hollywood, an independent film company that suspiciously avoids publicity. When Bobbie and her clumsy assistant, "Bulb" Callahan, meet Globe's elusive president, Monty Brace, at the airport, Bobbie befriends Allan, who poses as an aspiring actor. Meanwhile, Stuart, a border patrol officer, is badly beaten while trailing a stolen ambulance by a man who has a fetish for rolling pieces of paper. During a screen test at Globe, Allan gets Globe director Al Perrelli's fingerprints on his cigarette case and catches Perrelli nervously rolling a piece of paper. The next day, Bobbie and Allan meet Brace and Perrelli at a municipal pier, from where they carry twenty Hollywood extras dressed as Chinese to an island for filming. There, Allan takes a picture of Brace with an unidentified man. Allan then learns from an ex-convict-turned-actor that Globe has been sending their extras home early by a different route. Perrelli's fingerprints show that he is Jose Salazar, an escaped criminal from Buenos Aires. Allan and Bulb are then hired as extras for a day's shooting, and that evening, Allan waits on the island to join the cargo of real Chinese men, but is discovered and knocked out. Meanwhile, Bobbie and Bulb are caught trying to take a picture and are bound and gagged and driven to an old ranch house, where Burke Darrell, a well-known financier, is hiding. When Allan revives, he notifies the police, who stop the truckload of Chinese and identify the man in Allan's picture as Darrell. After a chase in which the smugglers switch cars and Allan follows a trail of Bobbie's discarded shoes, Allan stops Perrelli, and Bobbie reveals herself as an officer of the Department of Justice.