Mrs. Penfield, better known as Penzie, is one of the inhabitants of a tenement neighborhood known as "the Custard Cup" because of its oval shape. Penzie is a widow who lost both her husband and son in the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919. She has found fulfillment by taking in three orphans. One of the Custard Cup's other residents is a counterfeiter, and when the police are too hot on his trail, he leaves a package with Penzie and sets a boat aflame when he tries to destroy some phony bills. When the gang is rounded up, Penzie -- who has been looking for one of her adopted children -- is found at the hideout and arrested.

Refusing to marry her stepmother's choice, Gail Prim leaves her life of luxury, after cutting her hair, dressing in her butler's clothes and stealing money and jewels from her father's safe. Spending the night in a barn, she introduces herself to the thieves already there as the Oskaloosa Kid, a wanted criminal, and barely escapes their struggle to get her loot. Meanwhile, the real Oskaloosa Kid kills Reginald Paynter and throws Nettie Penning, whom Reginald was trying to seduce, onto the highway.

The son of an American mine owner, traveling under the name of Charles Conant, tries to enter England in 1916 after masquerading as a muleteer, but the captain of his ship, suspicious when he sees Charles look through a spyglass, plans to take him back to the United States. Charles escapes and visits his relative, Lady Dartridge, where he falls in love with her daughter, Lady Joan Templar, who is loved by her cousin, the chief constable, George Templar. Templar, suspicious of Charles' manner and unexplainable meetings and activities, wants to arrest him as a spy.