Anchor plot: New York City in the 1920s is where gambler "Honey Talk" Nelson crosses paths with bookie "Jumbo" Schneider.  Nelson has two choices, cement shoes or "fixing" a horse race in Maryland.  Naturally, Nelson heads to Maryland with his cousin Virgil Yokum tagging along.
Once in Maryland, Nelson falls for the owner of the horse that has been chosen for the "fix".  Virgil has also fallen in love, with the horse's veterinarian.
Nelson decides that love should prevail and refuses to go along with the plan.  Meanwhile, an English jockey, who is to ride the horse, is prevented from performing his job by Schneider's mobsters and Yokum winds up riding the horse to victory.

Plot A: In London Jenny, an aspiring ballet dancer, meets an aide to the Duke of Wuerttemberg who is in Britain for a marriage alliance and financial treaty to supply troops to Britain for the war against Napoleon. After being discovered by an Italian impresario she goes to Venice to be trained as a great dancer. The visiting Duke of Wuerttemberg becomes fascinated with her and engages her to perform at the state operate house in his capital of Stuttgart, hoping also to make her his mistress.
The British authorities encourage Jenny to go to Stuttgart and try to live extravagantly at the Duke's expense in the hope that a shortage of funds with compel him to renew his treaty against Napoleon. However at the border she once again meets the handsome aide she had first encountered in London, who has been ordered to escort her, and who is hurt by the fact that she now appears to be the Duke's lover. Unable to reveal the true purpose of her mission to him, she outrages him and the inhabitants of the Duchy by the exorbitant demands she makes of their ruler.
Having finally persuaded the Duke to sign the treaty with Britain, her plans to escape from the Duchy are wrecked when Napoleon invades and captures Stuttgart. Forced to appear in a command performance for the Emperor, she is eventually able to cross the border in the company of the Duke's aide.

Plot B: Forced to leave France, Dédée and her bullying pimp Marco have reached Antwerp, where she is one of the girls in René's bar and Marco is the doorman, doing drug deals on the side. Taking a stroll by the docks in the early evening, Dédée meets Francesco, sympathetic Italian captain of a cargo ship, who knows René. When he comes later to the bar, he discusses some secret deal with René and then takes Dédée to a hotel for the night.
The two have fallen for each other and he would like to take her away with him, but this would need the agreement of René and of Marco. René is happy to do a favour to Francesco, happy to free Dédée from the obnoxious Marco, who he throws out into the street, and says he is happy to drive Dédée to Francesco's ship once he has closed the bar for the night.
While Francesco is waiting on the jetty for Dédée to appear, Marco shoots him dead, drops his gun, and disappears. When René and Dédée arrive to find the body, they comb the nightspots of the city in search of Marco, eventually catching him at the railway station. At gunpoint they take him to a lonely spot where René, after knocking him out, runs the car over him.