Tex, a famous detective, recounts the story of how he went into the crime business: While visiting his old friend, Jack Nelson, a dispute breaks out between Nelson and his butler. Later that night, Nelson is murdered, and the next morning the murder weapon, a knife, is discovered next to the body. Edna, the victim's wife, seizes the knife, and Tex, fearing that she is about to kill herself, throws the weapon out the window. Interpreting Tex's actions as incriminating, the police arrest him, and he is sentenced to prison. Two years later, a fire breaks out at the penitentiary, and Tex's bravery in saving the warden's wife and child wins him a pardon. Determining to solve Nelson's murder, Tex searches for the butler but discovers him to be innocent. Summoned to Edna's deathbed, Tex hears her confess to the crime, thus causing him to devote his life to solving crimes and saving innocents from being convicted on circumstantial evidence.

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.

Shakespeare's tragedy of two young people who fall desperately in love despite the ancient feud between their two families.

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.

The insurance companies, organized in one mighty trust, have been using the policy holders' money to speculate with. Tom Larnigan has announced that he will investigate and proceed against the trust.

Stone assures Weisner, head of the Coal Trust, that Larnigan will never start for Pennsylvania. Weisner is skeptical and informs Stone that if he does go he may be killed, as a strike is in progress. Weisner, a little later in Maxwell's home repeats the statement of it being an easy matter to kill Tom should be come to the coal country. Dorothy Maxwell and Kitty Rockford overhear the conversation. They decide to go to the coal country and lend their aid to Tom.

The plan is this: a foreign man of war is interned in the harbor. By blowing up this boat, Carney figures that strained relation existing between this country and warring nations will snap and the United States will be drawn into the conflict. This would mean untold orders and profit for the Steel Trust. Stone and Carney plan to carry out the plot with aid of an eccentric inventor named Bill Bean.

Tom Larnigan, encouraged by his victory over the Textile Trust, turns his attention to the Railroad Monopoly. Tom receives warning from the Graft Trust to cease his activities or suffer the fate of his father and brother.

The experience of Bruce on the grain steamer has been a great shock to Dorothy. She thinks Stone responsible and breaks her engagement, despite the pleadings of her father. Tom Larnigan is working for the Textile Trust in Lyndham. The low wages have caused a strike. Tom does what he can for the workers.

Graft is a 1915 silent drama

Steve, a young college chap who has been unfortunate in his business career, after a life of dissipation, concludes that life is not worth living and contemplates suicide.

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.

A story of treachery and intrigue, with the outcome of the story contingent upon a packet of "secret papers."

All her life the old teacher had been smoothing over the rough places, but when the great need came in her own life all forgot her except one; that was the little girl whom she had last befriended. What mattered then the dastardly plot of the scheming brokers?

A French artist in love with his model, but is abandoned by her because he is addicted to absinthe. He dreams about how his life is going downhill as he continues to drink.