Karl "Curly" Casterline, a wrongfully discharged New York City policeman, finds work on the Midwestern farm of Adolf Bauerle to help the war effort. Curly is attracted to his boss's niece, Mina, but also realizes that Adolf and his cohort, Kurz, plan to blow up a troop train. Curly kills the two saboteurs and saves the train, but he is jailed by the abusive Sheriff Herman Lindig. Although Mina praises Curly for saving the soldiers' lives, he is sentenced to death and is denied a pardon from the governor. After the case attracts national attention, the governor explains that he prolonged Curly's incarceration to draw attention to the danger of German propaganda.
Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand Duval. When Armand's father begs her not to ruin his hopes of a career and position by marrying Armand, she acquiesces and leaves her lover. However, when poverty and terminal illness overwhelm her, Camille discovers that Armand has not lost his love for her.
Desperate to change her vixenish image, Theda Bara was called upon to play a sweet young thing (she was nearly 30) who sacrifices herself for the happiness of her sister (Claire Whitney).
Vere Herbert lives with her wicked mother, Lady Dolly (Marie Curtis), who is living in sin with Lord Jura (Glen White). Although Vere is in love with an opera singer, Lucien Correze (Harry Hilliard), Lady Dolly convinces her that marrying the dissolute Prince Zouroff (Walter Law) will save her father's honor. But the Prince makes her miserable and insists on having his mistress, Jeanne deSonnaz (Caille Torrez), live with them.
Theda Bara's vamping is at its most evil here. She plays the Russian Princess Petrovitch, who loves only her pearls. Her husband, the Prince (E.F. Roseman), sells state secrets to a spy to pay her exorbitant bills, and her response is to report him to the secret police. Then she runs off to Monte Carlo with her lover, Count Zerstoff (Emil deVarney), but she poisons him after he racks up a load of gambling losses.
This film is a very loose film adaptation of the 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo and presumed lost: The wealthy girl Esmeralda is kidnapped by gypsies at birth and becomes, as one might assume, the darling of Paris. She is loved by the bell ringer and former hunchback Quasimodo, Frollo, the wicked surgeon who cares him, and an equally wicked Captain Phoebus.
Deserted by her husband, John Madison, because he incorrectly accuses her of having an affair, Mary Madison goes to her aunt's house to have her baby, and then loses her memory in a train wreck. John, however, hears that she has died, so he takes possession of their infant daughter.
20 two reels episodic dramatic serial now lost. (1) Liquor and the Law (1915); (2) The Tenement House Evil (1915); (3) The Traction Grab (1915); (4) The Power of the People (1916); (5) Grinding Life Down (1916); (6) The Railroad Monopoly (1916); (7) America Saved from War (1916); (8) Old King Coal (1916); (9) The Insurance Swindlers (1916); (10) The Harbor Transportation Trust (1916); (11) The Illegal Bucket Shops (1916); (12) The Milk Battle (1916); (13) The Powder Trust and the War (1916); (14) The Iron Ring (1916); (15) The Patent Medicine Danger (1916); (16) The Pirates of Finance (1916); (17) Queen of the Prophets (1916); (18) The Hidden City of Crime (1916); (19) The Photo Badger Game (1916); and (20) The Final Conquest (1916).
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. The stable includes the prize filly, Wildfire. Meanwhile, Barrington's daughters, Henrietta and Myrtle, are becoming worried about their father's long absence in the West. John Garrison, the sheriff of the town in which Barrington was killed, goes East to investigate. He suspects Keefe (now called John Duffy) and begins to build a case, causing Henrietta to become suspicious. Keefe, realizing that the game is almost up, tries to get Wildfire's jockey to throw the big race, but Henrietta saves the day and Wildfire wins.