The Governor's Boss

Summary

In a marble Albany corridor, idealism collides with brass-knuckled pragmatism when the newly-sworn Governor—an upright reformer whose conscience still smells of printer’s ink—refuses to hand the state’s purse-strings to Boss Tally’s greasy protégé. The refusal detonates a chain-reaction: an engaged son yanked from a governor’s daughter like a pawn swept off a chessboard; forged ledgers, midnight whispers, and a rigged impeachment trial that moves faster than a Tammany streetcar. The lone candle in the blackout is Ruth, the governor’s quick-witted daughter, who, with a shy stenographer and a brief-case dictagraph, tries to capture conspiracy on celluloid. She races dawn-flushed roads, fends off Tally’s throttle-handed thugs, and bursts into a silent chamber already echoing with the gavel’s death-knell—proof clutched in her gloved hand, justice a heartbeat too late.

Synopsis

An honest man, elected Governor of New York, refuses to appoint a man chosen by Boss Tally, the party leader, to an important position having jurisdiction over a large amount of state funds, even though Tally threatens to have the governor removed from office. In revenge, Tally persuades his son Archie to break his engagement to the governor's daughter Ruth. After Tally and his political lieutenants work out a plan to frame the governor so that he will be impeached, a clerk in Tally's office, who is Ruth's friend, informs her of the plot. Ruth and her friend get a dictagraph record and motion pictures from a hidden camera of the boss and his aides conspiring. When Tally has the trial rushed, the governor's lawyer requests a postponement until Ruth arrives with her evidence, but this is denied. Detained by Tally's thugs, Ruth races in an auto to the courtroom, but she arrives too late to stop the governor from being impeached on the first ballot.