Willie Dante owns a bar and gambling house called Dante's Inferno. One night, the wife of an acquaintance tells Willie that her husband has threatened her. Willie comforts her and sends her home, but she turns up dead the next day.
A well known actor encounters a woman attempting suicide by jumping off a bridge. He persuades her to let him put her up at a hotel for the night, but he accidentally provided fake stage money for her room.
A notorious criminal returns to his home town after 15 years away, and a young man wants to join him in notoriety and, probably, death at the hands of police.
A doctor caring for natives on a tropical island is dismissed by the bully owner of the island who discovered a discrepancy in his medical past. Suddenly, the owner is struck with acute appendicitis and the just-fired doctor is called to perform emergency surgery.
A reformed pickpocket in Paris obtains the purse of an attractive woman. He reads a letter telling about her dying son, and he decides to grant the boy's wish to meet his father.
A young man follows a quick trajectory from beginning boxer to the middleweight championship match. The night before the championship fight, he learns that the match is fixed, with him as the chosen winner.
William encounters an old acquaintance, John Dwerrihouse, on a train with 75,000 pounds. Only later did William learn that Dwerrihouse had disappeared four months earlier after embezzling 75,000 pounds from the train company.
A woman with a reputation of being hard of hearing secretly gets a hearing aid, and starts overhearing people making fun of her. Everyone knows her husband is having an affair, but she also discovers that he is trying to kill her.
Theater-goers are surprised to see actor Victor Sherman at the play, considering what happened a year earlier. As the play proceeds, the man in the box imagines himself playing each of the characters in the drama being performed onstage.
Mitch Carver befriends and eventually adopts an orphan boy. Mitch's wife is pregnant with their first child, and she treats the boy as a threat to the natural family that she wants to have.
A bank employee mails a letter to his boss confessing to stealing $7000 and includes the stocks he bought with the money. As he puts a gun to his head, he sees in the paper that the stocks' worth have gone through the roof. Now he wants to live and goes on a frantic chase to get the letter back from the post office before it gets delivered.
Burt Stroude is about to be chosen as the party's senatorial candidate. At the same time, he hears from the married woman he'd had an affair with in his youth. She's dying and wants him at her bedside, but going to her would destroy his political career and possibly his marriage.
