As he can no longer sculpt, Jarrod has hired assistants, the deaf-mute Igor and talented sculptor Leon Averill, to help him recreate his wax figures, and using a new procedure he has devised, build another museum.
Meanwhile, Sidney Wallace, a wealthy financier, is contacted by a wheelchair bound Jarrod, who has survived the fire, but claims that he suffered permanent loss of his hands and legs. Tom Brennan mentions that Cathy's body, as well as several others, have disappeared from the morgue. The next day, when the Andrewses and Sue visit the police, Lt. Sue is chased out the window and through the streets by a man in black, until she takes refuge with friends of her family, Mrs. At a boardinghouse, a giddy, promiscuous blonde, Cathy Gray, who was dating Burke, is found dead in her room by her friend and fellow boarder, Sue Allen. Later, Burke receives all of the insurance money, as Jarrod is believed to be dead, but Burke is then killed and left dangling in an elevator shaft. Jarrod, horrified to see his exquisite wax figures of famous historical people, which he considers "friends," melt away, fights Burke and tries to put out the flames, until gas fumes unite with the fire and the building explodes.
For the insurance money, Burke sets fire to the museum.
Henry Jarrod's, insistence that the museum avoid lucrative sensationalism. In the 1890s, in New York City, Matthew Burke, part-owner of a wax museum, needs money and is impatient over his partner's, the refined and eccentric wax sculptor, Prof.