Lost and Won
Summary
From the soot-slicked gutters of Park Row, where headlines are hawked for pennies and dreams cost even less, Cinders—a wisp of ink-smudged newsprint in human form—clutches dog-eared volumes of Dickens between sales, her imagination ignited by the promise of a faceless benefactor she christens Daddy Long-Legs. Into this gaslit fairy tale strides the immaculate Walter Crane, a plutocrat bored with yacht races and charity cotillions, who wagers a king’s ransom that he can sculpt a diamond from alleyway dust. The stakes: fifty thousand dollars and the presumption that a woman’s worth is a commodity to be retooled like a Model-T. Off she is shipped to marble corridors of finishing school, corseted into silk, taught to curtsy in French and to silence her Bowery accent, while back home Bill Holt—the reporter with ink in his veins and a heart too honest for his own good—chronicles the city’s sins and silently keeps a candle burning for the girl who once traded him a sandwich for a sonnet. A year later Cinders returns, now glimmering like a newly minted coin, yet beneath the lacquer of refinement still beats the heart of the kid who outran coppers on bare feet. Enter Kirkland Gaige, vice-president of First Empire Trust and collector of beautiful objects, ready to claim the wager’s spoils; beside him slinks Cleo Duvene, panther in pearls, blackmail stashed in her silk purse like a calling card. When Gaige raids the vault to gift Cleo a diamond riviere, the crime is pinned on Crane, now reduced from swaggering gambler to fall guy in a tuxedo. Cinders, betrayed but unbroken, weaponizes the humblest of arsenals—chewing gum on a parasol tip—to fish evidence from beneath a chaise longue, a scene that plays like a Chaplin ballet scored by Poe. Bound to a chair in Cleo’s boudoir, she drags the telephone to the floor with her teeth, dialing the exchange that threads her voice to Holt, who bursts in with cops and flashbulbs just as Gaige attempts a midnight escape. Handcuffs replace bracelets; innocence is restored; and Crane, chastened, confesses that some bets are worth losing if the payoff is a woman who rescued herself.
Synopsis
Cinders, a news girl, with a love for books, idealizes as her hero a "Daddy Long-legs," who will someday make her a great lady. Bill Holt, a reporter, is one of her best friends. Walter Crane and Kirkland Gaige observe Cinder's independence as she turns over to a policeman a man who has been annoying her. Later Crane wagers $50,000 that within a year he can transform and improve the girl that one of the men will want to marry her. Crane places her in the care of his aunt, who sends her to a boarding school. At the end of a year she returns home and at once becomes a favorite. Cleo Duvene, an adventuress, demands of Gaige a necklace which he is unable to purchase. Crane meets with reverses and Gaige, anxious to win Cinders, reveals the bet, suggesting she marry him in order that Crane may realize the $100,000 stake. She refuses and goes to her friend. Holt, securing a position as reporter on the paper. Crane accepts the position of assistant cashier in the bank of which Gaige is vice president. In order to buy the necklace for Cleo Gaige takes a bag of currency and Crane, accused of the theft, is placed in jail. Cinders goes to Gaige and by placing chewing gum on the end of her umbrella, picks up the pieces of a receipted bill for the necklace. She gets into the apartment of Miss Duvene, and is demanding that she tell all she knows of Gaige just as he comes in. They bind Cinders but she manages to get the telephone receiver down, calls Holt, who hears the conversation of the three, and with Crane and a policeman apprehend the guilty man just as he is about to escape. Crane frees the brave little girl and takes her to his arms with the statement that it pays to lose some bets.
