Summary
A foundling girl named Mary Duffy—face like a porcelain cameo, nerves like barbed wire—arrives at the O’Brien manse, hired to rock a toddler whose name, Red, feels prophetic for the blood that will soon be spilled. Tim and his wife, two flint-hearted grifters, vanish under cover of night, leaving Mary and the boy to fend for themselves in a mansion that exhales mildew and guilt. Tim’s retinas, scorched by some ancestral curse, register shapes only after dusk; daylight is a white-hot blindness that drives him toward shadows and crime. His spouse—petticoat rustle, scent of violet water—tries to outrun both matrimony and the law, but an automobile, that newfangled angel of death, pulverizes her into urban legend. Mary, clutching Red like a life raft, drifts into the orbit of the Hortons, philanthropists whose drawing-room civility is as brittle as bone china. Beneath their parquet floor and philanthropic smiles lurks Robert, the surgeon’s heir, siphoning war-relief dollars to feed roulette wheels and chorus girls. Mary, eyes wide as headlamps, witnesses the embezzlement and, with the moral absolutism of the orphaned, slips a note to the night-blind Tim, now hiding in the city’s sewer-lit underbelly. Tim, half bandit, half fallen angel, agrees to crack the gambler’s ironclad safe—an act equal parts larceny and penance. Caught in the act by a guard whose flashlight carves the dark into cathedral shards, he escapes by feel and instinct, the way bats navigate catacombs. In a final tableau lit only by guttering streetlamps, Tim, Mary, and Red reunite on a wharf where fog swallows yesterday’s sins and tomorrow’s hunger; the foundling family stands arm-in-arm, an unspoken covenant sealing them tighter than any legal bond.
Synopsis
Mr. and Mrs. Tim O'Brien hire orphan Mary Duffy to care for their son Red, then desert the two of them while eluding the police. Mrs. O'Brien abandons Tim, who can see only at night, and she is killed by an automobile. After finding a home with the Hortons, Mary discovers that Dr. Horton's son Robert is taking European Relief funds from Horton's safe to use for gambling, and she informs Tim of the theft. Tim agrees to recover the money from the gambler's safe, is nearly caught, and is reunited with Mary and Red.
