Dan Mason, a twelve-year-old newsboy, is an expert at figuring all the angles; so, when Kink, veteran bartender at Billy's Steak House, catches him winning a big jackpot in the battered old slot machines that belong to seedy Tim Channing, he not only defies them to do anything about it but shows Tim how he can corner the slot-machine racket and, at the same time, put his big-racketeer competitors Tony Finetti and Angelo Di Bruno out of the running. Thusly begins a partnership between the larcenous---but big-hearted---Tim and the precocious newsboy that lasts and prospers while he is growing up. Reaching college age Dan studies law, showing a greater aptitude for finding loopholes in the law than an inclination to uphold it, despite the advice of his law-school Dean and the wholesome companionship of his roommate Roy Fellows, whose father is a retired judge.