Orphan, Audrey Bedford takes the blame for her half- sister's gem theft and later exposes her employer as her crooked husband.
Dick Shannon
Henry Torrington
Peter Tonger
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 murderer is driven slowly insane by a sequence of coincidences and suggestive events which will not allow him to escape his own sense of guilt for his crime.
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.
A blackmailed ex-thief is executed for a murder he didn't commit.
Brothers James and Allen Mornington are both addicted to cocaine and both believe that their addiction is caused by a hereditary failing. James rises to the position of judge, but when Allen is brought into his court on drug charges, James resigns. The two brothers, along with James's daughter, Hilda, then retire to the country to fight their desire for drugs.
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.
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.
Bob Marston, a San Francisco socialite turned amateur detective is assigned to apprehend a gang of bootleggers.
John Hampstead gives up his career as an actor and his actress sweetheart, Marian Dounay, to become a minister in a western town. Marian appears, and failing to win him back she tries to ruin his reputation. Hampstead is accused of stealing some jewelry though actually he is protecting the scapegrace brother of his current sweetheart, Bessie.
Holmes and Watson match wits with an opera star intent on blackmailing a king.
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.
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.
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.
Wade Hildreth is sent to New York from London to receive a diamond necklace for Lady Gwendolyn from the jeweler Arabin. A gang of crooks led by Pete Fielding, known as "The Shadow," plans to keep Hildreth from going to Arabin's until they have robbed the store. Actress Morn Light, whom the Shadow loves, agrees to entice Hildreth to her apartment to be imprisoned. When she warns Hildreth because she wants to avenge her father's death, which was caused by the Shadow, the Shadow overhears and captures them both.
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.
Old Silas Blackburn, a wealthy recluse, lives alone with his butler and his ward Katherine. One night, Katherine discovers Silas murdered in the room where three generations of Blackburns have mysteriously died. Silas' grandson Robert, whom Katherine loves, comes to visit the next day, suffering from amnesia.
A reporter and a detective team up to solve the murder of a nightclub singer who had been involved in a divorce scandal.