Summary
In a Gilded-Age manor whose corridors exhale chloroform and rusted money, Mary Manchester—a milliner’s assistant with the same Cupid-bow mouth as the deranged matriarch Adelaide Rutherford—is snatched from foggy dusk, gagged with her own scarf, and bolted inside a bedroom where the wallpaper repeats Adelaide’s fractured monogram like a taunt. Three vulpine trustees—husband Rutherford, financier Jasper Haig, sawbones Babcock—hover over sixty million dwindling heartbeats; should Adelaide die before the New-Year chimes, every share funnels to her estranged brother Stanford Gorgas, a man who thinks justice is spelled in bullets. Their gambit: shave Mary’s hairline, bleach her will, teach her the madwoman’s tremor, parade her before lawyers so the real corpse can be smuggled out at dawn. But Gorgas, lured by a forged telegram, smells theater in the too-steady timbre of “Adelaide’s” voice; behind japanned screens he watches candlelight throw two silhouettes—one feral, one merely terrified. While Mary claws air in a locked solarium, Gorgas exhumes bank ledgers, bribes butlers, and finally spirits her through a priest-hole just as Haig unleashes wolfhounds bred on red meat. Recaptured at the wharf, Mary is trussed beneath a lighthouse lens; its revolutions stripe her face like bar-code, counting down seconds until Haig’s revolver can delete the last witness. In the fog-bell finale, twitching curtains seduce the gunman: he fires, discovers he has ventilated his own patron; Rutherford’s arterial spray arcs over bearer bonds, ink runs crimson, and the sixty million—now orphaned—waits for whatever conscience survives the smoke.
Synopsis
Unknown to her, Mary Manchester is a double for the ailing Mrs. Adelaide Rutherford, a wealthy woman who has been driven insane by her husband's cruelty. Rutherford is in league with Jasper Haig and Dr. Babcock. Together these men hold in trust sixty million dollars which upon Adelaide's death will revert to her brother Stanford Gorgas. Fearful of Adelaide's imminent death, the conspirators plan to substitute Mary in her place, thus preventing Gorgas from inheriting the money. After imprisoning Mary in Adelaide's house, their plan backfires when Gorgas meets her and, suspecting something is wrong, learns of Mary's plight. After Gorgas helps Mary escape, she is recaptured by Haig, who decides he must now eliminate Gorgas. Assuming that a fluttering behind the curtain is his adversary, Haig takes aim and shoots, only to kill Rutherford instead, thus freeing Mary to spend her future with Gorgas.
