A Gentleman of Leisure
Summary
New York’s velvet-roped aristocracy, dappled in electric chandeliers and bootleg champagne, watches idly as blue-blooded gadabout Robert “Bobby” Willoughby—equal parts Astor heir and flâneur—wagers that he, a man whose soft palms have never known callus, can orchestrate a burglary and vanish before the bulls of the NYPD ever sniff his monogrammed handkerchief. Hours later, fate’s ironist par excellence deposits a living toolkit at his feet: ‘Spike’ McGuire, a whiskered cracksman whose fingers read locks like Braille. Instead of surrendering the crook to the precinct, Bobby press-gangs him into tutorial service, a Pygmalion-in-reverse. The chosen target? The limestone mansion of Deputy Police Commissioner Davenport, the very citadel whose second-story window frames the bedroom of Bobby’s incandescent beloved, Barbara. Once inside, Spike’s larcenous id overrules the scheme; a diamond-drenched necklace glints like Medusa’s gaze, and the heist metastasizes into farce. Commissioner Davenport, no paragon himself, pockets campaign cash from underground kingpins, so when the necklace vanishes he must juggle civic virtue, black-market paymasters, and the scandal of his daughter’s suitor flitting across his rooftop. Chandeliers swing, revolvers bark, and silk gowns billow through secret panels as Bobby ricochets between drawing-room repartee and gutter peril, scrambling to unpick a knot of his own exquisite tying. Love, larceny, and lucre finally converge on a moonlit pier where confession, bribery, and a single heroic punchline rewrite tomorrow’s society pages into a matrimonial announcement.
Synopsis
A young New York society man makes a bet that he can rob a house and get away without being caught by the police. Shortly after making this wager, he overpowers a professional burglar in his own house, and instead of giving the man up, decides to use him in winning the bet. However, the house that he attempts to rob is the home of the Deputy Police Commissioner, with whose daughter he is in love. The succeeding complications, which arise out of this altogether original situation, are due to the Commissioner's willingness to accept graft and the professional burglar's inability to restrain himself when tempted to steal a valuable necklace. The final result is a happy conclusion to the very troubled love-story.
