When an accident involving a folding machine at an old laundry happens, detective John Hunton investigates. While he tries to solve the mystery, Bill Gartley, the owner, wants to find new victims for his machine.

A lion-tamer's partly innate and partly acquired attitude to other living beings - that they shall submit without question to his will - is applied with unseeing kindness to an orphan girl whom the lion tamer adopts.