Richard Walters is condemned to death for a murder he claims not to have committed. He arrives on death row just before a brutal inmate leads the other convicts in a violent uprising.
Stephan Gregorovitch, the unwilling king of a bankrupt Ruritanian country, along with his hucksterish chancellor and musically-inclined bodyguard, travel incognito to London for some fun.
Thelma and Zazu are on a leisurely excursion in a borrowed car. Thelma lets Zazu drive. When she brakes to avoid a bull pulled along by three rustics, her foot gets stuck and the car crashes through a barn.
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.
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.