A Question of Right

Summary

Louise Gray, luminous with civic idealism, weds Mayor Hogan—an edifice of starch and campaign confetti—only to discover the man is a fresco of rot beneath the gilt. Rebuffing Detective Vance’s steady ardor, she plunges into a marital labyrinth where her own brother, Jim Gray, a moth-eaten predator, extorts Hogan over an earlier liaison. The serrated truth emerges when Vance shepherds her to a clandestine rooftop exchange: Hogan pockets a purse fat with bribery, the city’s future folded inside each banknote. Rage baptizes Louise; she strides into the torch-lit rally at their townhouse and, mid-oration, unsheathes her testimony, shredding Hogan’s halo before his throng. Applause curdles into gasps, the couple’s domestic stage now a crime scene once Hogan’s corpse sprawls across the Persian rug. Vance, once spurned, now brandishes handcuffs of suspicion, pressing Louise through a merciless interrogation until her voice fractures into a false confession. In the same breath, Jim is flushed from a mahogany closet, trembling, blood on his cuffs, and recants the deed—Hogan died for refusing hush money. Louise is absolved, Vance’s devotion reignited, yet the aftertaste of civic betrayal lingers like coal smoke in winter lungs.

Synopsis

Louise Gray marries Mayor Hogan on the belief that he is a clean, upright man. In doing so she rejects the suit of Vance, a city detective, who has been a persistent suitor for her hand. Louise does not know that Hogan is a scheming, crooked politician. She is also unaware of the fact that her own brother. Jim Gray, a degenerate, is blackmailing Hogan because of his relations with another woman. Soon after Louise's marriage to Hogan she learns of his true character. Through the efforts of Detective Vance she sees Hogan accept a big bribe. She determines to expose his real character to his political followers, in spite of the fact that it will mean an end to her happiness. The night Hogan accepts the bribe he is notified by an enthusiastic crowd that calls at his home of his re-nomination for mayor. Louise interrupts Hogan in the midst of his speech of acceptance and denounces him as a crook. Hogan exhibits terrible anger towards Louise later, and threatens her so much that she decides to leave him. As she prepares to leave the house she finds his murdered body in the library. Vance, her former detective lover, calls to cover the case, and in spite of Louise's protestations, believes her guilty of the crime and proceeds to put her through a nerve-wracking "third degree." Louise, her nerves wrecked by the ordeal, finally admits that she has killed Hogan, and faints. At the same moment Gray, Louise's brother, the blackmailer, is discovered in a closet where he had been trapped in trying to escape from the house. He confesses that he has killed Hogan for the latter's refusal to give him blackmail money. Louise is exonerated and Vance remains steadfast in his desire to marry her.