Summary
A magnate’s glittering world fractures when one midnight call—Stratton’s oily purr claiming he’s stolen Edith—snaps the leash on Robert Wayne’s composure. Deserting the boardroom crucible, Wayne races into the Hudson fog; a single muzzle-flash later, Stratton’s blood soaks his tuxedo and the tabloids roar for a scapegoat. Steel bars replace silk curtains, yet the war raging across the Atlantic offers the tycoon a devil’s bargain: don khaki, trade convict stripes for battlefield mud, and perhaps scrub the scarlet letter from his name. Somewhere between a Normandy foxhole and a field-dressing tent, Mary Fenton’s violin-voice threads through the cordite, promising that even a man shackled by scandal might yet be unshackled by grace. Armistice fireworks illuminate a Long Island ballroom where Edith, glass in trembling hand, finally exorcises the lie that sent her brother to hell; the orchestra swells, confetti drifts like shrapnel-snow, and Wayne—face gaunt, medal glinting—must decide whether absolution from others can ever equal the absolution he owes himself.
Synopsis
Robert Wayne is a prominent businessman, whose sister Edith is married to his friend Herbert Osborne. Osborne's business under attack by a rival, Howard Stratton. Osborne gives his stock proxy to Wayne and tells him to vote the shares a certain way at the upcoming stockholders meeting. Stratton takes Osborne's wife for a drive, and then calls Wayne to say the two have eloped. To protect his sister from scandal, Wayne goes to rescue his sister and misses the stockholders meeting. In a struggle, Stratton is accidentally shot with his own gun and Wayne is convicted of the shooting. Wayne is paroled on the condition that he fight for his country. Before going to France, he meets Mary Fenton and falls in love. During the war, Wayne rescues a comrade and wins a commendation. But he is wounded and sent home. At the ball held at Mary's home celebrating the end of the war, Edith tells the truth about the shooting that sent her brother to prison.
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