Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.
Moscow, 1902. The famous director Konstantin Stanislavsky, in search of inspiration for staging a new play, decides to get acquainted with the life of the city "bottom". He turns to Vladimir Gilyarovsky, a recognized expert on the Moscow slums, for help. Together they go to the legendary bandit Khitrovka and find themselves embroiled in the investigation of the murder of a mysterious local resident - an Indian Sikh with a dark past.