In San Francisco, well-known sportsman Kay Hoog announces to a club that he has found a message in a bottle with a map drawn by a Harvard professor who has gone missing. The map tells of a lost Incan civilization that possesses an immense treasure. Hoog immediately plans an expedition to find it. But Lio Sha, the head of a criminal organization known as the Spiders, is determined to get the treasure for herself and plans a rival expedition.
When a couple of scammers hold young Alice Faulkner against her will to discover the whereabouts of letters whose dissemination could cause a scandal affecting the royal family, Sherlock Holmes decides to take over the case. (Considered lost, a copy was found in 2014, in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française.)
Coke Ennyday, the scientific detective, divides his time into periods of "Sleep", "Eat", "Dope" and "Drinks". In fact, he overcomes every situation with drugs: consuming cocaine to increase his energy or injecting it in his opponents to incapacitate them. To help the police, he tracks down a contraband of opium (which he eagerly tastes) transported within "leaping fishes", saving a "fish-blower" girl from blackmail along the way.
At 10 years old, Owen becomes a ragged orphan when his mother dies. Abusive next-door neighbors the Conways take him in, and by 17, Owen has learned that might is right. At 25, he's a career gangster: loitering, gambling and drinking in dens of iniquity. Marie Deering arrives in Owen's area, eager to empower the impoverished, gang-affiliated youth through education. Owen slowly but surely leaves his old life behind, choosing the narrow path- all the while falling in love with Marie. Skinny, who's taken over Owen's role in the gang, reappears to him, spelling trouble.
The mysterious air pirate Filibus steals from the rich and then retreats to the safety of her airship, which is manned by a staff of mask-wearing lackeys who instantly obey her every command. When an esteemed detective sets out to investigate the thefts, Filibus attempts to frame him as the burglar, while also slipping between male and female disguises to romance the detective's sister.
A woman, with the aid of her police officer sweetheart, endeavors to uncover the prostitution ring that has kidnapped her sister, and the philanthropist who secretly runs it.
The women's suffrage movement inspired this silent film classic that includes appearances by equal rights crusaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Harriet Stanton Blatch. As politicos work to deny women the right to vote, a young lawyer tells his activist girlfriend of the corruption within the government that actively seeks to ensure that her voice is never heard.
After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.