Nick Condon. (James Cagney) is a journalist for the Tokyo Chronicle. He prints a story disclosing Japan’s plan to conquer the world. The newspaper is seized by Japanese officers. Condon gets the Tanaka Plan, a paper in which all the plans are described. The Japanese spies who follow him think that Ollie and Edith Miller (Wallace Ford and Rosemary DeCamp) are the ones who discovered the plan because they suddenly have a lot of money and are coming back to the USA. When Condon goes to the ship to bid them farewell, he finds Edith dead. He can only see a woman’s hand with a ring with a huge ruby. Back home, he finds Ollie, in terrible condition. He gets from Ollie the Tanaka plan. Premier Giichi Tanaka (John Emery (actor)) wants his plans to remain secret, and sends Col. Hideki Tojo (Robert Armstrong (actor)) Capt. Oshima (John Halloran) and Hijikata (Leonard Strong (actor)) to follow him everywhere. Condon hides the document with the Tanaka plan behind the Emperor Picture. Condon meets Iris Hilliard (Sylvia Sidney), half American and half Chinese. At first, he suspects her of being the lady in the ship, then he doesn’t. They fall in love. She seems to be betraying him, especially when Condon sees the ring with the ruby in her hand. At the end, it turns out she’s been sent by a politician who wants peace and was present when the Tanaka plan was devised. Condon leaves his job after ten days. When he’s about to leave Japan, he meets the politician and Iris in the harbor. The politician signs the document to prove it’s real. They are discovered by the Japanese army. Iris runs away with the document in a cargo ship which will take her out of Japan. To distract the Japanese officers, Condon fights his greatest enemy and tries to reach the American Embassy. He’s shot at by spies dressed in street clothes, but he’s not killed. The consular adviser goes out of the Embassy and takes Condon inside still alive, and the Japanese officers can’t prevent it, because they couldn’t find the Tanaka document when registering Condon.
