The Devil's Riddle

The alert atmosphere of a large-city newspaper office and its giant presses combines with the back-stage atmosphere of the theatre, set against the sinister shadow of a bootleg gang and the glitter of a big musical comedy "first night" in a whirlwind of dramatic action. A hot-shot newspaper reporter and a Broadway show-girl provide the romance.

Wealthy Anne Wilmot vacationing along with her aunt Katherine at her fiancé Leon Morse's (Hull) Arizona mountain lodge discovers his plot to destroy a nearby hydroelectric engineering project in order to obtain the land for his railway. She thwarts the sabotage but find herself in a life and death struggle.

Visiting his vast properties incognito, Hugh Nichols (Tom Mix) discovers that his land agent (Cyril Chadwick) is forcing Peggy Swain (Clara Bow) and her dad (Frank Beal) off their neighboring ranch. When decent-minded Nichols demands that the agent cease harassing the farmers, the nasty villain blows up the nearby dam, flooding the valley.

Billy Haven, a young rancher, accidentally discovers that clay found on his ranch will, when mixed with water, become the most beautifying mud-pack cosmetic that any young girl, or old woman, could desire. Then the land-grabbers, clay-speculators, cosmetic companies and a show girl or two show up to get a piece of the action.

Penniless inventor Jack Saunders, in search of a girl he loves, assumes the guilt for a murder in return for $20,000 and promise of a pardon at the end of a year. When the agreement is not fulfilled, he breaks jail and appears, demanding justice, before the governor, whose daughter, Margaret, committed the crime in self-defense. Saunders prevents her forced marriage to politician Burke, and Margaret, recognizing her lost love, clears his name and is herself exonerated.

The robberies on Jasper Carrol's stages have been so frequent that the stage line plans to hold a stagecoach race with the winner getting the new contract. Tom foils Cal Barker's attempt to kill him and gets a confession from him that Kurt Morley is behind the robberies. But first Tom must win the race for Carrol although Morley's stages have him greatly outnumbered.

A US marshal goes undercover to bust up a bunch of rustlers.

Lt. Milt Mulford graduates from West Point and is assigned to a cavalry outpost in the West, near an Apache reservation. One day the Apaches, tired of being cheated by a crooked Indian agent, break the reservation and Mulford is sent after them with a patrol. Unfortunately, he cracks under the pressure of his first firefight, and is thrown out of the army. His fiancé, disgusted, ends their engagement. He sets out to prove that he is not a coward and regain his fiancé's love.

Richard Armstrong, inventor of a carburetor that will make his car a sure winner in a road race, works on a skyscraper for Richard Steele and falls in love with his daughter, Doris. Though Steele prefers Trask, an underworld king, he agrees to discuss marriage if Armstrong wins the prize money.

A U.S. soldier goes after bandits in California, although it is still owned by Mexico.

A gang of crooks led by Holden steals a government code, and Cyril Gordon, a Secret Service agent who bears a strong resemblance to the gang leader, is assigned to recover the stolen documents.

After losing his factory job, virtuoso violinist Tommy Breen is inspired by June Norton, who lives in the same boardinghouse to write his song, "When You Smile with Your Eyes in Mine." Song publisher Simon Berg signs Tommy and the song becomes an enormous success. Success goes to Tommy’s head, he forgets June, surrounds himself with Broadway lowlife, spends extravagantly, and becomes infatuated with Mona Merwin, a musical comedy performer. He hits a rough patch, and June asks Berg to help her save Tommy from himself, so he decreases Tommy's royalty checks. Tommy's Broadway friends desert him when the checks stop coming. Now that Tommy has seen the error of his ways Berg sends him to a country cottage he purchased in Flatbush, where Tommy finds June waiting to marry him.

Cowboy Ace Cooper, to avoid arrest, becomes a fireman, falls in love with the chief's daughter, Sally Drennan, and wins her in spite of the efforts of a crooked politician to separate them.

Hal Doyle, son of the prison warden, falls in love with a portrait of Mollie Dare, who runs a reformatory for ex-convicts where they may work for honest wages. To win the girl he poses as the notorious Tucson Joe and goes to the reformatory where his reputation causes the other men to fear him. The real Tucson Joe arrives but does not reveal his identity.

"Happy" MacDonald and his unfaithful wife own a Prohibition era night club. On this eventful night, he is threatened by bootleggers, and the club's star dancer falls in love with a young socialite who drinks to forget a personal tragedy, among other incidents.

A man is framed for the murder of his uncle, a bank president, and sentenced to hang. His sister and a mail clerk who's helping her discover information that may clear him, but they have to get to the governor in time to present their new evidence and get a stay of execution.