Now that they have inherited a huge sum of money Moïse Lévy and his brother Salomon are the prosperous owners of a a department store, the Galeries Lévy & Cie. Life is sweet but unexpectedly sours the day a fake Lévy cousin gets into their lives, claiming that the business is his, not theirs.
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.
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 group of drinking, smoking and card-playing society women are getting obesely flabby. They go to a gym where various methods are used to reduce their fat.
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.
When World War I comes to an end, three pilots find themselves on hard times. They wind up in Hollywood, where they work as stunt fliers for a sadistic director.