- [first lines]
- [a montage of various locations in Chicago can be seen. As this happens, a voice can be heard speaking]
- David Healey: Chicago, Hog Butcher for the World. Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat. Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler. Stormy, husky, brawling, City of Big Shoulders. Those are the proud words of Carl Sandburg. It's how we like to think of our city. Underneath the carpet of our complacency and inertia, was the dirt which had caked up again since Al Capone, Mr. Big, was put out of circulation. We'd fooled ourselves into believing that the air was fresh and pure again, but all that had happened under Mr. Big was small potatoes compared to the syndicate which had taken over the mantle of crime and corruption on a nationwide scale.
- [as the voice continues talking, the camera eventually fades to a newspaper office]
- David Healey: As I learned when Nelson Kern paid me a visit. This time, they were hiding behind a phony veneer of legitimate enterprises. And it wasn't long after Mr. Kern left my office when it all started again.
- [last lines]
- David Healey: [narrating] The information contained on the microfilm was turned over to the various law enforcement agencies, who moved in with a vengeance. Everyone incriminated was picked up, tried, and convicted, and the syndicate was cracked wide open. For how long it will remain so is a matter of constant civic vigilance in our city, as well as yours.
- [upon seeing the cadaver of Kern, David Healey can be seen observing the seen before him. As this goes on, he can be heard narrating]
- David Healey: [narrating] That's when I knew for certain that Kern hadn't lied to me. They were back in business, bigger and dirtier than ever. A malignancy that would have to be cut out at the core.
- [as a shot of Chicago at night can be seen, a voice can be heard narrating. This is David Healey]
- David Healey: By nightfall, it was all over town. The radio and the newspapers were full of it. Nelson Kern, respected head of the highly successful accounting and business management firm, Kern Associates, by his own admission to David Healey, editor of the Chicago Telegraph, branded himself a close working associate of Arnold Valent, alleged head of Chicago's vast crime cartel.
- [a newspaper with a headline regarding Kern's murder can be seen]
- [a cadaver of a woman can be seen on a bed. As this is happening, David Healey can be heard narrating]
- David Healey: [narrating] Later that night, Mrs. Kern committed suicide. She left a note for her daughter, Joyce Kern, living in France the last four years, engaged to some guy in the State Department.
- [as Healey continues speaking, a few policemen and reporters can be seen observing Mrs. Kern's cadaver]
- David Healey: [narrating] You know, usual thing. Crowds, newspapers hounding her. Couldn't face the scandal, the disgrace.
- [David Healey can be heard narrating as the camera shows a printer printing some information regarding Joyce Kern]
- David Healey: [narrating] By the next morning, the news services were giving us the story on Joyce Kern. She had disappeared from Paris, was rumored to be on her way to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Her fiance's family issued a formal statement for the press. If there had ever been an engagement, it was all off now.
- [David Healey can be shown crumpling a paper into a ball]
- David Healey: That was it. Dirty.