The Devil at His Elbow

Summary

John Ashton, a brilliant mechanical engineer, finds himself teetering on the precipice of professional immortality as he nears the completion of revolutionary submarine blueprints for the government. However, the relentless pressure of a six-day deadline drives him into a deleterious reliance on whiskey to sustain his creative faculties. Despite the earnest remonstrances of his associate Robert Gray and the social expectations of his fiancée, Grace Sealey, Ashton’s psyche begins to fracture. During a fitful sleep, he experiences a vivid, cautionary phantasmagoria where his inebriation leads to a public fall from grace, the dissolution of his engagement, and a harrowing abduction onto a freighter. In this maritime nightmare, he is 'shanghaied' into a world of oceanic solitude and further intoxication, eventually finding a strange redemption through Meg, a woman of the streets. This dream-within-a-film serves as a psychological laboratory, illustrating a tragic timeline where his addiction leads to a catastrophic engineering failure that costs lives. Upon waking, the visceral horror of this imagined future forces Ashton to confront the 'devil' at his elbow, choosing a path of sobriety and professional integrity over the siren song of the bottle.

Synopsis

John Ashton, a young mechanical engineer, is completing the plans of a new submarine. The government is interested in his work, and he has promised to have it done by the tenth of the month, which gives him only six days in which to complete it. More and more he has been resorting to whiskey to keep his brain active. Robert Gray remonstrates with him, but to no avail. His fiancée, Grace Sealey, telephones him and urges him to attend a dinner party on the ninth. He accepts, though against his will. He falls asleep and dreams that he prepares to attend the dinner; he is still intoxicated when he arrives. Grace's father at once breaks off the engagement, and he leaves the house in disgrace. He goes home and finishes his plans on the morning of the tenth, and then, still wearing his evening clothes, wanders out into unknown streets. He goes into a saloon on the waterfront and drinks until he is insensible. There he is noticed by the captain and mate of a freighter, and shanghaied on board the vessel. When he comes to his senses he is far out at sea, and is told that the cruise will occupy six months, but that he may have all he wants to drink. At the end of the cruise Ashton and the captain, coming ashore, take a farewell drink together. Meg, a human derelict, attracts the captain's attention, and he attempts to force his attentions upon her. Ashton comes to her assistance, angering the captain, who gets two stevedores to attack him. Meg takes him to her own meager quarters and takes care of him. Gradually she induces him to stop drinking. Passing the building where he formerly had his office, he sees Franklin Darrow, a government engineer, and Gray, and hears them speak of Grace's wedding. She is to marry Wilfred Carleton, a broker, thinking Ashton dead. The news sends Ashton back to drinking heavily once more. But Meg learns of his real identity and helps him to win back his self-respect. They are married and Ashton's ambition returns. He resumes his work and seeks out his former friends. But Meg is unused to the new life. Her husband's work takes him more and more away from her, and she decides to take radical measures. Since he fell in love with her when under the influence of drink, she induces him to drink again, preferring his society in idleness and sordid surroundings to his neglect in luxury. The new plans for the government's submarine are made while he is intoxicated. They are wrong, and the crew of the first boat launched is drowned. Meg confesses what she has done, and takes the blame on herself. He flies at her throat, and waking up, knocks over the things on his desk. His original plans are as yet unfinished. He puts from him "the devil at his elbow," whiskey, and he and his fiancée have an early marriage, with the promise of a life full of achievement and ambition that is not clouded by an enemy which steals away the brains.