Secrets of Scotland Yard

When the Germans lost the First World War, it was blamed on Room 40 of the Old Admiralty Building, their code and cypher room. Then began a sinister plan to plant a spy in that room, which has come to fruition with the outbreak of the Second World War. The crew has worked hard, and Edgar Barrier has cracked the current German code. But when the crew comes in they find him dead and the blackboard he had the solution on erased. With the realization there is a spy there, the officer in charge, the always welcome C. Aubrey Smith plants Barrier's brother, also played by Barrier, to take his brother's place. Only Smith and Barrier's son/nephew, Bobby Cooper know of the substitution. But others soon become suspicious, and Smith's murder leaves his assistant, Lionel Atwill in charge. Can they break the new code, or will more deaths follow?

George Blair's second movie in the director's chair -- with R. G. Springstein his AD -- is a pretty good mystery. With a tinge of old-fashioned spy melodrama True enough, Great Britain's code-cracking had already sshifted to Bletchley Park, but that wasn't general knowlege. It's one of the taut little thrillers that Republic turned out when they weren't shootin westerns. With Stephanie Bachelor, Henry Stephenson, John Abbott, Walter Kingsford, and Martin Kosleck.