Sisters Helen and Ruth Fiske work in a department store and live in an East Side tenement. While Ruth is satisfied with her "regular fellow," a mechanic, Helen yearns for fine clothes, wealth, and attention.
John Keefe, a gambler, shoots and kills Robert Barrington in an argument over a card game. Keefe steals Barrington's papers and forges a bill of sale to himself for Barrington's stable of race horses back east.
Out of the blue, war is declared, making two otherwise friendly neighbouring nations deadly enemies. Amid the inferno, finding themselves on different sides of the conflict, Elsa and Alexis are forced to call off their engagement.
Richard Duvall is a young American detective in the employ of the French Secret Police. While in Paris he meets Grace Ellicot, also an American, with whom he falls in love.
Movie mogul Thomas H. Ince may well have been the director of The Despoiler as indicated by the credits; but since Ince was known far and wide as a glory-hogger, it's also possible that one of his talented lieutenants wielded the megaphone.
Bill Pike, recently married, hits his home town about seven in the evening, and immediately is seized by a bunch of his old cronies who drag him into a hotel to have a game of poker.