Bill's girlfriend Lore is an art student in Berlin. Since her professor doesn't think much of painting women, she exchanges a genuine Raphael painting in a gallery for a copy made by her. In a spectacular theft, the copy is stolen. Detective Keller suspects Bill and Lore. But Bill, who is a talented quick-change artist, eludes arrest in ever new masks.

The guests at Count Otto von Trepow's East Prussian estate Gross-Ehrenfeld are Lord and Lady Ruthven, Mr Hendriks with his wife and foster-daughter Mariska, a gypsy they adopted years ago, Kundry, the fiancée of Otto's son Bernhard, and Count Stanislaus Larinski, who claims to be a Polish revolutionary wanted by the Russian government. A boating trip is organized but ends when the motor breaks down. While waiting for it to be repaired, the guests go to an inn run by Andreas and his daughter Käthe. Hendriks goes for a walk, sees the boat come back and that a man with a bent back leaves it. He notices that Kundry is afraid of Bernhard.

As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers.

Harry Yquem buys his beloved wife some jewelry in a place where underworld middlemen trade in fake and stolen goods. By chance, he spots a man with whom his wife had an affair in the past.

A man's devotion for a woman brings about his ruin.