Pepe Le Moko leads a gang of jewel thieves in the Casbah of Algiers, where he has exiled himself to escape imprisonment in his native France.

Marty is a shipping clerk in the garment district and a wise guy trying to cut corners and get by on angles, and not very good at it. He meets Helen and decides to change his ways, but lack of patience in slow-progress jobs leads him to become involved with a neighborhood gang.