Sid Hunt and Jude Lowery are Carolina sweethearts but hired-hand Rufe Pryer also has his eyes on her. Rufe lies to Andy, Jude's brother, and a family-feud is started when Andy goes gunning after Sid. But Sid quiets the drunken Andy, and is taking him home when a shot is fired from ambush and Sid's horse comes home riderless. But he shows up unhurt, and the jealous-maddened Rufe sends him on a ruse to the big dam. Rufe sets off a dynamite explosion to catch Sid in the swirling waters but Jude is the one who is caught.
A crook and his gang plan to con a young woman out of a cache of stolen loot they, and the police, believe she's hiding. The situation changes, however, when he falls in love with her and he sets out to save her from being imprisoned for a crime she didn't commit.
Captain Timothy 'Two Gun' Nolan is appointed head of the New York detective force, and as his first act, rounds up every criminal in town. Gang boss 'Dapper' Frank Trent stands bail for all of them as independent minor gang-leader. Setting out to get Trent, Nolan moves in on his hideout, assisted by his friend 'Shakespeare.' Trent kills Shakespeare, but makes Nolan believe it is his shot that has done so. Nolan resigns his commission and becomes a drunk. Found unconscious by Trent, he is offered as the pièce de résistance at a gangland banquet which 'The Magpie' attends. A lost film.
A lieutenant saves an heiress from a wicked squire and is framed for murder.
To help secret serviceman Bill Parsons in pursuit of the thieving Benson gang wealthy criminologist Henry Avery sends his assistant Blinky to cover the waterfront while he attends a reception at the home of Mrs. Cornelius Westervelt. At the soiree he meets gang member Alice Carter while also discover the gang’s cache hidden there. Captured Parsons is saved by Blinky, and the pair foil the gang’s attempt to rob Mrs. Westervelt and her guests.
Captain Angus Swope (Noab Beery), known as The Black Yankee, skipper of the Golden Bough, treats his crew shamefully and he treats women no better, as evidenced by his handling of a woman he has abducted, together with her baby daughter, Mary (Sally Blaine), from seaman Newman (Willard Robertson). When the woman dies as a result of his cruelty, he brings up Mary as his own daughter.
After his wife has run off with another man, New Yorker Bide Bennington decides to stay in Europe. After hearing of his wife's death years later, he returns home but finds it lonely there and heads West. While he is gone his house is robbed, and the leader of the crooks, Richard Glendo, leaves Bennington's coat and identification on an East River pier. The newspapers pick up on this and announce Bennington's "suicide." Since he is now officially deceased, Bennington decides to start life all over again -- but first he must foil a scheme by a gang of con artists, who have forced pretty Constance Brent to pose as Bennington's widow so that they can lay claim to his estate.
Arrested for speeding by highway patrolman Bill Rolph (Robert Paige), J.W. Brady (Robert Middlemass), the president of an oil refinery, offers him the assignment to find the culprits who have wrecked his gas stations, hi-jacked his trucks and attempted to blow up his plant.
A reporter and a detective team up to solve the murder of a nightclub singer who had been involved in a divorce scandal.
Babs Van Buren saves her lover from the electric chair and at the same time extricates her older sister, Connie from a trying situation.
When her father goes broke in the stock market, Jane Lee is forced to leave her prestigious boarding school. Glad-handing John Brock, an old friend of Jane's father, arranges for the girl to be hired as his stenographer. But Brock's lecherous ulterior motives become obvious when he locks Jane in the office and tries to rape her. When she manages to escape his advances, Brock vengefully frames the girl on a robbery charge.
In Africa a typist is framed for killing a diamond smuggler who betrayed her father.
The defense attorney who was unable to obtain the acquittal of an innocent young man concocts a complicated and diabolical scheme to get revenge on the prosecutor.
Priscilla Worth, an innocent country girl, goes to the city to visit her aunt, who has sent for her, thinking that her childlike simplicity will afford a welcome relief to Vincent Morgan, a wealthy bachelor and man-about-town. The plan works, but soon after Vincent and Priscilla's marriage, Vincent, besieged by his friends to return to his gay life and suspicious of his wife's relationship with Durant--an artist who has painted her portrait--yields to temptation.
When Mary and Fannie Graham, daughters of a good mother but a father with criminal instincts, are left motherless, Mary flees from her unhappy surroundings while Fannie, inheriting her father's disposition, remains and is raised as a thief.
At the death of Count de Beaulieu, his daughter Jeanne learns that her father had been the arch-criminal known as The Phantom. The only other person who knew her father's identity was his lieutenant, Franz Leroux, who now demands that Jeanne marry him in return for his silence.
From a Montana mining camp, a young man progresses to the society heights of New York, making his mark publicly as a dancer, but secretly as a gentleman burglar.
Jim Crosby, the product of a broken home, becomes a gangster and goes to prison. Meanwhile, Ann Payton, an heiress, converts a saloon into a mission. She is engaged to her father's secretary, Temple Vaughn, a gambler. Jim is released from prison and seeks shelter at the mission. Temple becomes indebted to gambler Phil Johnson and is forced to arrange a crooked poker game involving some of his wealthy friends. Jim overhears the plot and, realizing that Temple is Ann's fiancé, robs the poker game and puts a check Temple forged into Temple's own pocket.
Nancy Glenn is a pupil in Pop Hogland's school for crooks. When, attired as a boy named "Spider", Nancy fails at her lessons as a pickpocket, Pop decides to pair her with Pliny Drew, a graduate thief and swindler.
Employed as secretary to Howard Abele, Marjorie Abbott attracts the attention of Sydney, her employer's son, who falls desperately in love with her. Mr. Abele is strenuously opposed to their marriage and he quarrels with his son. Marjorie has a half-brother, Dave, who is of an inventive turn of mind.