Passport to Suez

Passport to Suez (1943; also known as A Night of Adventure and The Clock Strikes Twelve) is the 20th film featuring the Lone Wolf character. It was the eleventh of fifteen in the Columbia Pictures series, and the last to star Warren William as the lead character, a jewel thief turned private detective. The Lone Wolf battles Nazi spies in Egypt in World War II. Plot Michael Lanyard, the Lone Wolf, agrees to go to Alexandria to help the Allied cause during World War II. There, he and his valet, Llewellyn Jamison, are met by his old friend, nightclub owner Johnny Booth. Fritz comes to drive him, supposedly to see Sir Robert Wembley, head of the British secret service in the region. However, he is actually taken to meet Karl, the leader of a Nazi spy ring. Karl threatens to kill Jamison (whom he has kidnapped) unless Lanyard does some as yet unspecified work for him. When Lanyard reluctantly agrees, the two men are released. After they leave, Karl reveals to Fritz that he expects the Lone Wolf to try to trap him, but that is all part of his plan. When Lanyard meets with Wembley, the spymaster makes clear that he does not want an amateur's help, but reluctantly agrees to let the Lone Wolf play along in order to gather more information. Complicating matters further, Lanyard and Jamison encounter the latter's son Donald, a British naval officer, and his fiancée, reporter Valerie King in Booth's nightclub. Lanyard soon suspects that she is not all she appears to be. In Booth's private office, he also meets freelance spies or informers (more or less on friendly terms with Booth), who call themselves "Rembrandt" and "Cezanne". Cézanne shows him that the lace King was knitting contains a secret message. When the two spies leave, Rembrandt shoots Cézanne; he dies in front of the nightclub, at King's feet.