The film stars Wayne Morris, Yvonne Furneaux, Patrick Allen, June Ashley, Carl Jaffe and Peter Sinclair.

[2][3][4] Only the fact that the male romantic lead's profession is not that of a private eye precludes this picture from being categorised as a traditional noir film.

Its fast pace, high body-count, and thriller-genre subject matter, (even the traditional romance sub-plot), are all elements of what's now thought of as a film noir, Crime drama.

Tex is hired to transport a passenger named Kerrick from Dover in Kent to a French trawler in the middle of the English Channel.

But Kerrick deceives him into bringing back to England a packet of stolen jewellery, which he obtains from the French boat but pretends he had forgotten to mail before departing from Dover.

When Tex goes to the address on the packet, he there finds Hugo Platt, the consignee, motionless, wide-eyed but seemingly dead, sitting bolt up-right at his desk; he falls forward just as the police arrive, and Tex escapes through the window; but Otto Dagoff, the dead man's partner, follows him back to the boatyard.

Dagoff accuses Tex of the murder, and blackmails him into sailing the next night to meet a ship in mid-Channel, the SS Cypriota, deliver the jewels to its captain, and bring back $20,000 in American currency.

Platt comes to Port Solaire and shoots at Tex through the glass of the same dockside telephone kiosk, but he survives, and embarks on the 'Blue Orchid' for England.