Barry Sullivan is the chief teller at a bank branch. Checking his figures at the end of the day, he comes up $50,000 short. He rechecks, and goes home to wife Dorothy Malone and his dog, and tells her what happened. She knows he should have reported the shortage before he went home. He tells his boss the first thing Monday, and the bonding company is told. They send Charles McGraw to investigate, and plays tough, finally dragging Sullivan and Miss Malone to the police station. The cops believe Sullivan, who remembers that the auditors had come by in the morning, and had done something odd, asking to recheck the big bills. They send Sullivan home, and try to figure out who the auditor was. Not McGraw. He believes Sullivan did it, and starts hounding him. Sullivan loses his bond and goes through a series of small jobs, each of which McGraw gets him fired from. When Sullivan gets a job at Richard Reeves' can company, he tells McGraw that as long as Sullivan keeps his nose clean, he'll keep his job until he goes to jail.
McGraw is brilliant as the brutal investigator, convinced he is Inspector Javert and suggesting the cops third-degree Sullivan. Miss Malone is the dutiful wife, a couple of years before she would win an Oscar.Don Beddoe, one of those familiar faces from hundreds of movies, is fine as the actual thief, and peroxided Mary Beth Hughes is fine as the viperish dame who has Beddo on the hook.
It's a fine shaky A production from Allied Artists that makes the most of its cast and script, an exercise in the tawdry underworld that Sullivan and perky Dorothy Malone fall into when suspicion falls on them.
