College student "Freckles" Winslow come home to Indiana to help a friend, Danny Doyle, who runs his uncle's hotel and took a mortgage on it in order to invest in a 'gold-finding-machine,' with his friend Jeff, the hotel porter. On the bus-trip home, "Freckles" meets a Chicago gangster, "Muggsy Dolan", posing as Jack Leach, on the lam from a bank-robbery, who decides a quiet Indian town would be the best place to hole up. "Freckles" also finds that his father has financial problems but, because of a long-standing feud between him and the town banker, Hiram Potter, is too proud and stubborn to ask Potter for help. "Freckles" decides that a major highway built through Fairfield would solve everybody's problems. Jack Leach, boarding at the hotel and casing the local bank, tells "Freckles" he has a friend that is a big financier, Nate Quigley, and just the man to put the deal over.