A lady (Geraldine Fitzgerald) approaches two strangers (Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet) separately, and asks them to try a ritual where if 3 strangers ask a favor of an idol of Kwan Yin (goddess of fortune and destiny) at the start of Chinese New Year, she will grant it. In this case, it's a sweepstakes ticket related to a highly-touted horse that will run in a big race later that year. Fitzgerald hopes the money would show her husband she can stand on her own, which will convince him to return from Canada. Greenstreet thinks the money would help him get a spot in an exclusive club for lawyers. Lorre just wants to buy his favorite pub.
They take part, agreeing to split the winnings if their ticket is chosen and the horse wins, but it will be some time until any of that happens. So in the meanwhile, the movie moves between what each of the three get up to in the interim. Fitzgerald's husband returns, but only to request a divorce, as he met someone else in Canada. What seemed like a sort of flight of fancy takes an uglier glint as you see how fixated she is on her goals. Fitzgerald gives her an increasing hint of mania as she tries to make what she wants a reality.
Greenstreet returns to his practice, especially handling the funds of a wealthy widow, who communes with her husband's spirit. He plays it as a skeptic with high regard for himself, and little for anyone else beyond their opinion of him. Lorre gets mixed up in a warehouse robbery that ends in the murder of a police officer and has to go into hiding with one of the other culprits while the ringleader is on trial. He's very relaxed, in a pickled haze that enables him to remain unconcerned, and in a bit of surprise, clear-headed in bad situations.
The movie is similarly structured to On Our Merry Way, although the three stories are slightly more interconnected. Only slightly, as Fitzgerald, Lorre and Greenstreet don't overlap or interact outside the beginning and end of the film. But there is the connection of the legend and the sweepstakes ticket, and how the characters try to get their desires even before they know if the ticket will work out. The movie had a chance to at least tie the thread of Fitzgerald's husband more neatly into the conclusion, and passed it up. Missed opportunity.
As it is, two of the characters are undone by their particular obsessions, and their inability to cope with the reality they won't get what they want. Meanwhile the third shows more fortitude and integrity than anyone would suspect, and is, in a way, rewarded for it.
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