Brandsby Mordant, a Scotland Yard detective with a brilliant future, in trying to extricate his nephew, Charles Eaton, from a band of crooks, of which he is a member, is caught in a net of circumstantial evidence during a robbery, and with other members of "The Four" is sent to Dartmoor prison. The nephew escapes. "The Four" are double-crossed by Phiney Glenn, Jeff Armstrong and Adolph Gassner, who have acted as a "fence" and now desire respectability. "The Four," in prison, never once forget their desire for revenge, and when opportunity for escape comes Mordant goes to America and begins his campaign of revenge, which includes mental tortures for Glenn, now Glenister, and Armstrong, now Strong, and death for Gassner. His crowning stroke comes when he steals Dorothy, Glenister's daughter, and tells her of her father's feet of clay, laying bare the crime and treachery on which his respectability is founded.