Victor Ryder's wife, Susan, joins the Shepherds Of Life, a weird religious sect. Susan, aided and abetted by her mother, locks her infidel husband out of the house. After weeks of mounting emotional hostility, Victor Ryder reaches breaking point. He shoots his mother-in-law, and, taking his wife hostage, barricades himself in the Shepherds Of Life 'temple'. The leader of the sect, Gardiner Adams, tries to persuade the distraught Ryder to give himself up, but he too is taken hostage. Ryder's immediate superior, Bernard Sheils, who has full knowledge of his employee's difficulties, cannot lure him out. Joanna Wilson, a sect member who knows another side to the sanctimonious Adams, tries but also fails.