Plot

Eileen Brophy is a victim of the dance craze and Chitsworth, a gambler, seeing her at Surry's, fosters an acquaintance in order to make her his innocent tool. Tommy Grant, of The Chronicle, is busy on a story that the gambling houses are open again, but seeks to learn whether it is with the knowledge of the police before publishing his facts. His visit to Chitsworth's alarms that gambler and he determines to sell out to Hawley, a Chicago plunger seeking to start operations in New York. As a guarantee of his intimacy with the police Chitsworth says, "Why even the commissioner's daughter is a good friend of mine: I'll introduce you to her here to-morrow." With Rita Morell, an adventuress, posing as his sister, Chitsworth finds it an easy matter to induce the innocent Eileen to go to his house "for a rare-bit" after the dance at Surry's. Grant follows the party, but is barred from entering by the guardian at Chitsworth's door. Running around to the rear of the house he climbs a drainpipe until he is high enough to see through the windows of Chitsworth's establishment. He is horrified to see Eileen, who has learned the character of the place, engaged in a struggle with Rita Morell, who is seeking to prevent her outcry and escape. A chafing dish is overturned in the struggle and the room is speedily a whirl of flames. Eileen falls unconscious and Grant sees that in the rush of the gamblers to escape she has been left to the mercy of the flames. He takes a chance and starts to climb hand over hand on the telephone wires stretched between the two buildings. Midway, his weight causes the wires to snap and he is catapulted into the flaming room. He succeeds in escaping to the roof with Eileen and there finds a rope by which he lets her down to the ground. Flames from the windows part the rope, however, and when he seeks to effect his own escape there is no alternative but a leap to the fire net.—Moving Picture World synopsis