On a foggy night in 1850, Mary Rutledge (Miriam Hopkins), accompanied by retired Colonel Marcus Aurelius Cobb (Frank Craven), arrives in San Francisco Bay aboard the ''Flying Cloud (Clipper)''. A wikt:gold digger, she has come to wed the wealthy owner of a gold mine who lost his mine when the roulette wheel landed on red 13 times at the Bella Donna . The men at the wharf reluctantly inform her that her fiancé is dead, murdered most likely by Louis Chamalis (Edward G. Robinson), the powerful owner of the Bella Donna restaurant and gambling house. Mary is upset, but quickly pulls herself together and asks the way to the Bella Donna.