A dancing girl succeeds in getting Napoleon, in 1808, to pardon her lover, a German artist who has drawn an unflattering caricature of the French emperor during his Erfurt conference with the Czar and several local princes.
A retired Scotland Yard detective, Patrick Fitzpatrick (Tom Walls) comes back to take one final case, tracking down a missing vase which has been stolen by a gang of thieves specialising in taking art treasures.
A newly hired police chief vows to clean up a notoriously corrupt police department. When he is murdered, investigators find that there is no shortage of suspects, most of them being fellow cops.
Frankie Reynolds (Frankie Darro' ), youngest member of a family of jockeys, borrows $4.85 (yes, four dollars and eighty-five cents) from his sister Phyllis (Gladys Blake), who is not a jockey, to buy a crippled colt from the stables owned by Clay Harrison (Kane Richmond).
Although Larry "Buster" Crabbe earns top billing, the hero of Drift Fence is former Western star Tom Keene as Jim Travis, who, at a rodeo, meets city dweller Jim Traft, who has come west to erect a fence that will prevent Clay Jackson from continuing his cattle rustling business.