Summary
John Hadley, a dockyard everyman with calloused palms and a rent bill he cannot meet, interposes his body between Doris Jackson and the boss’s leering heir; the moral reflex costs him his livelihood and, by the magnate’s whispered malice, every other job in the port. What follows is a vertiginous descent: eviction notices flutter like dying moths, the baby’s cry thins to a rasp, and the river at twilight becomes a black-buttered mirror promising annulment. He leaps—not into death but into a skiff crewed by river rats who mistake his silhouette for a revenue spy. Dragged aboard J. Harvey Hall’s velvet-lined yacht, Hadley is offered a choice: sign the devil’s ledger or be towed beyond the shipping lanes and marooned within sight of the Santos Islands where Mayan holdouts still knot garlands for their sun-god. Jewels are wired round his wrists like frozen fireflies; the altar stone waits. One moonless surge of adrenaline, a sprint through torchlight, and he is rescued by a British survey team. The gems—heathen collateral—finance a transatlantic hunt for the wife and infant he left behind. The wife is discovered in a charity ward, ribs counting themselves; the child has vanished, scooped up by Hall and reared as protegée. Eighteen circuitous years: Janet, now a slip of a woman with Ohm’s Law in her veins, invents a harmonic safe-drill that hums tumblers into alignment. Hall, his paternal mask slipping, deploys her genius against a jeweler’s vault; the alarm wire trembles; bullets trade places with hearts. Hall dies spitting brine and regret; Janet flees into fog. A newspaper advert, a detective’s hunch, and the domestic tableau converge: the governess bent over the nursery safe is the same sprite who once teethed on hardship. The door yawns open; out mews a kitten—nothing plundered, everything restored.
Synopsis
It is an unfortunate day for John Hadley when he protects Doris Jackson from the unwelcome advances of the boss's son, for it results in his discharge. It is doubly unfortunate as Hadley is a married man with an infant daughter, Janet. Not satisfied with discharging Hadley, the vengeful boss succeeds in preventing him from securing other employment. Matters go from bad to worse until at last starvation stares the little family in the face. Driven at last to desperation, Hadley finds himself at the docks where the waters of the swiftly flowing river seems to suggest a way out of his difficulties. Plunging blindly off the end of the pier, he lands in a rowboat which at that moment comes from under the pier. In it are three river pirates who think that Hadley is spying on them. They capture him and take him to a nearby yacht which is owned by J. Harvey Hall, the leader of a band of crooks, who demands that Hadley join them. Upon his refusal, Hadley is set adrift near the South African coast to prevent him from "peaching." He is captured by a band of Mayas on the Santos Islands and is doomed to die. They bedeck him with precious jewels and prepare to offer him up as a living sacrifice to their gods. Watching his chance he makes a break and succeeds in escaping. He attracts the attention of an exploring party and returns to civilization. He realizes a large sum by selling the jewels and institutes a search for his wife and child. By chance he locates his wife in a hospital where she has been taken when found exhausted in the street. His daughter, however, cannot be found, she having been adopted by Hall, who finds her on his doorstep. Eighteen years elapse. Janet has become an inventive genius and perfects a safe opening device. One night, Hall, who has concealed his real identity from her, persuades Janet to try to open a jeweler's safe, pretending that it belongs to a friend. She succeeds in opening it, but the police have been tipped off and raid the office where Hall and his pals are gathered. Hall is killed, but Janet escapes. Grief-stricken by the revelation of Hall's true character, she returns home where she learns that he is not her father. Detective Baggett arrives too late to intercept her. He searches the house and finds a record of Janet's adoption by Hall. Hadley advertises for news of his long-lost daughter. The detective, reading the advertisement, thinks he has a clew in the papers which he found and starts a search for Janet. Baggett picks up her trail, which leads to Hadley's home. Meeting Hadley and his wife outside, they enter and see Janet, who, by a strange coincidence, has taken a position as governess to the Hadley's adopted daughter, in front of the safe endeavoring to open it. As the doors of the safe swing open they rush forward only to see Janet reach in and take out a small kitten which had been locked in by Hadley's adopted daughter. Recognizing the detective, Janet attempts to escape but is held by him. Great is the surprise when he produces the secret papers and proves to the Hadleys that their governess was in reality their long lost daughter.
Review Excerpt
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A river that swallows men and spits out parables is the true auteur of The Pawn of Fortune.
Franklin Barrett’s 1921 one-reel marvel—long misfiled under “sociological tracts” in damp archives—owes less to Griffith’s Victorian morality than to the fever-dream logistics of a sailor’s yarn. The film’s prologue is a monochrome lithograph of labour: gantry cranes bow like giraffes, steam-whistles flatten the air, and every rivet seems personally invested in John Hadley’s downfall. Clarence Merrick ..."
