A young girl, who is about to receive a large inheritance, is abducted to an isolated sanitarium where a crazed doctor is performing strange experiments.
Tex Robbins, a Texas Ranger, posing as "Wolf" Cassidy, a notorious Chicago gangster, works his way into the rustling gang and hideout of "Three-Star" Henley, but his plans go wrong and he has to fight his way to victory.
A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed.
Among the travelers of varied backgrounds that meet and interact on one night at Union Depot, a metropolitan train station, are Chick and his friend Scrap Iron, both newly released from prison after serving time for vagrancy.
Consul General Winterfeld is not thrilled that his son Jørgen will marry showgirl Aurora. He promises Jørgen a million if he can spend a month in the company of Aurora without there being a fight.