Helene has agreed to marry a man that she isn't in love with. On the day of her wedding her cousin arrives just in time to rescue her and they run away together. They stay with her aged grandmother who assumes the young man (whom she doesn't know) to be the new husband and has prepared a bridal bed for them.
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.
Scheduled for demolition, Hotel Continental has seen 50 years of romance, intrigue, and tragedy. The last night attracts many nostalgic patrons, including a gangster planning to grab the loot that he hid there many years ago.
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.
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.
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.