Summary
A luminous Jane Whiting—jurist, suffragette, and reluctant bride of a tepid senator—steps into the moral dusk of 1917 when Washington’s corridors whisper of Teutonic gold funneled through a velvet-gloved charity front. Beneath patriotic bunting, Frederick Kube’s spider-web syndicate launders imperial coin, its silk threads tightening around Lola Schram, a reluctant Mata Hari whose heart already beats for Frank Wheeler, the senator’s wayward son. When Lola’s midnight confession to Frank detonates Kube’s paranoia, her body becomes the evidence that shackles Frank for murder, forcing Jane to trade legal briefs for cloak-and-dagger stratagems. With the Ware siblings—Jimmy’s streetwise swagger and Tilly’s camera-eye memory—she unspools a paper trail that snakes from munition docks to draft-board basements, baiting Kube into a courtroom trap where love, loyalty, and the Republic itself stand jury. The gavel falls; the spy ring unravels; yet the scars on the national soul bleed sepia long after the verdict.
Synopsis
During World War I, Jane Whiting, a bright young lawyer who is engaged to Senator Wheeler, is assigned by the district attorney to expose a gang of spies who are collecting money for the German government through the operation of a fraudulent charity organization. Wheeler's son Frank has fallen in love with Lola Schram, whose pro-German mother is forcing the girl to work for Frederick Kube, the head of the spy ring, but when Kube learns of the romance, he orders Mrs. Schram to break it off. When Lola finally confesses her activities to Frank, Kube kills her and then frames Frank for the murder. Meanwhile, Jane, through the help of Jimmy and Tilly Ware, has discovered Kube's headquarters and modus operandi . By means of a carefully set trap, she finally succeeds in clearing Frank's name and bringing Kube and his gang to justice.
