After surviving a murder attempt, an auto magnate goes into hiding so his wife can pay for the crime.

In a racially mixed American town, a five-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But is he guilty?

In flashback from a 'Rebecca'-style beginning: Ellen Foster, visiting her aunt on the California coast, meets neighbor Jeff Cohalan and his ultramodern clifftop house. Ellen is strongly attracted to Jeff, who's being plagued by unexplainable accidents, major and minor. Bad luck, persecution...or paranoia? Warned that Jeff could be dangerous, Ellen fears that he's in danger, as the menacing atmosphere darkens.

When jobless genius Beauregard Bottomley interviews with Burnbridge Waters for a position at Waters' soap company, the owner rudely turns Bottomley down. As revenge, Bottomley enters a TV quiz show that Waters' company sponsors, with the goal of winning until he bankrupts the businessman. When Bottomley keeps acing the questions, becoming a media sensation, Waters desperately calls on vixen Flame O'Neal to uncover Bottomley's area of weakness.