Stan and Ollie try to deliver the deed to a valuable gold mine to the daughter of a dead prospector. Unfortunately, the daughter's evil guardian is determined to have the gold mine for himself and his saloon-singer wife.
Jim Hanvey is a genial but top-notch detective who has retired to his country home. An insurance company hires him to find a missing emerald so they won't have to pay out the $100,000 for which the jewel is insured. It doesn't take him long to find the emerald, but he discovers that finding it was the easy part; the difficult part is getting it back to its rightful owner, and he winds up involved in a murder in which an innocent man is framed.
When he swaps horses with the Tombstone Kid — a wrongly accused man on the run from the law — singing cowboy Tex Randall gets arrested by the local sheriff in a case of mistaken identity.
William Reardon, a steel magnate, dies and leaves a strange will. When his spineless and dandified heir and son returns home from living in Paris, he finds "Tons' Walker, a strong and burly steel worker running the company, per his late-father's will request. He also finds that his father's will specifies the Junior will change his name to Bill Hall and work in the family steel mill for a year under the fake name. Walker's job is to make a man out of the son. The son is not overjoyed by this prospect. Neither is Walker.
Dick Tracy's foe for this serial is the crime boss and Masked Mystery Villain The Spider/The Lame One and his Spider Ring. In the process of various crimes, including using his Flying wing and sound weapon to destroy the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and stealing an experimental "Speed Plane", the Spider captures Dick Tracy's brother, Gordon. The Spider's minion, Dr. Moloch, performs a brain operation on Gordon Tracy to turn him evil, making him secretly part of the Spider Ring and so turning brother against brother.
As the sheriff of a small western town, Autry sings his way into a relationship with Eleanor, a singer from a Chicago nightclub who earlier witnessed a murder.
Marion Hastings returns to her father Dan's cattle property in western Queensland after being away in Europe for fifteen years. She is treated with hostility by her father's foreman, Dick Drake, and her father's neighbour, Don Lawton.
College student Jimmy Shaw inherits a racehorse, named Lightning Lad, and sells stock to fellow students in order to obtain funds for racing the horse. Lightning Lad wins very race he is entered in. Marion Braddock, a spoiled rich girl who owns a racing stable offers to buy Lightning Lad, but Jimmy refuses to sell. The day of the big handicap-race arrives and Jimmy and his fellow stockholders are on their way to the track. But a group of gamblers, betting on Lightning Lad to lose, have some skullduggery plans to ensure Lightning Lad does not win the race.
Larry Evans, champion race car driver, is envied by his chief rival, Eddie DeSylva, who has more ambitions than merely winning the races; he has designs on the motor patent held by Corbett (Tom Moore), Larry's employer. Eddie also has a yen for Corbett's daughter, Norma, who prefers Larry. Eddie intentionally causes a race wreck that injures Larry and sends him to the hospital.
The Commandant is making life rough for the colonials in Spanish California. While trying to help, Zorro is charged with the murder of the new Governor, but in the end he triumphs over the evil Commandant.
Aircraft are being shot down by a large black plane with a big "X" painted on the wing. The chief suspects are invited for the weekend to an old dark mansion.
In his film debut Ritter is sent to investigate miners being killed and their mines confiscated. The culprit is Evans and after Tex joins the gang, he is sent to kill two more miners. When Estaban is killed, Tex is put on trial for all three murders.
At the Texas Centennial in Dallas Autry confuses two girls by being himself and his own stunt double. When cowboy star Tom Ford disappears, Wilson gets his double Gene Autry to impersonate him. But Ford owes gangster Rico $10,000 and Rico arrives to collect. He fails to get the money but learns that Autry is an impersonator and now blackmails Wilson and his movie studio. Original version runs 71 minutes, edited version runs 59 minutes.
When Brent Halston returns he finds his father in an insane asylum and Wilton about to foreclose on their ranch and bring sheep onto the cattle range. When Wilton kills a rancher, Brent is blamed and jailed. Escaping jail he gets Ware to confess that he payed to have Halston committed. He then gets unexpected help from Ethel Gordon when Wilton tries to foreclose.