No Hands on the Clock (1941)

Detective Chester Morris has been sent to find missing Jean Parker. He finds her and marries her. While they are in the bank cashing a check for their honeymoon, the bank is robbed. Shortly after the check into their room in Reno, his boss, George Watts traces them down. He tells Parker he will buy her a mink coat if he finds the son of James Kirkwood. Two men had shown up asking for him shortly after he disappeared, and Kirkwood's widowed friend, Rose Hobart, thinks they were from the FBI. Morris goes to the hotel where they were last seen.

Though Morris tells Parker she can go along on the investigation, Watts locks her in the bathroom after he leaves. At a bar he runs into Astrid Allwyn while he is looking for the piano player, George Lewis, who might tell him something about a redhead the son was seen with. Allwyn offers to drive him, but he leaves her in the car. Parker gets out and is soon on his tail, learning about the other women as she goes.Morris finds the redhead, who is, of course, dead. At the scene of the crime, Kirkwood's ward, Billie Seward, shows up and leaves with Morris. They stop on the highway to talk out the plot, when a policemen arrives who is helping Parker find Morris. Unfortunately, Morris and Seward pretend to neck in order to hide from the police. When Morris gets back to the motel room, Parker learns that he has been accused of murder. While Parker is questioning Morris about the various women while he is preparing to take a shower, the police come in, and they both get soaking wet.

Morris goes to see a private eye who had been working on the case. His office is located overlooking Darwyn's Mortuary. When he gets back to the room, the chief of police is there, but he doesn't arrest him. Morris and Parker go to the bar, and he calls Allwyn and makes a date, but Watts shows up and tells them that Kirkwood want to talk to him. On the way there the bank robbers follow them and take several shots at them. The chase veers onto a dirt road, leading to a shootout on a boulder-strewn hillside. The robbers finally leave, but not before Morris finds evidence to identify the gang. At Kirkwood's house, he has a ransom note. When Morris gets back to the motel room, the FBI agents are there. They accuse him of being a bank robber, but Watts vouches for him.

The plot zooms along too fast on this one, really too fast to relate all of them here, but the bottom line is that you will have to watch it yourself to see how it ends.






Parker