Summary
A flashbulb detonates in a dim café, crystallizing Ann Hunniwell’s fall from grace; five frost-bitten years later, the negative still smolders beneath respectability’s ash. Now Mrs. Regan—porcelain poise stretched over a hairline fracture of dread—she glides through mahogany parlors while step-daughter Helen hurtles toward the same abyss via Frank Devereaux, a libertine whose conquests include Colonel Gaunt’s wife. The film choreographs a danse macabre of mirrored guilt: past and present collide in Frank’s lamplit boudoir where Ann’s protective fury, her husband’s righteous bullet, and a Do-Not-Disturb placard conspire to rewrite justice. In the final iris, the law itself exhales mercy, recognizing that some doors are better left locked to the mob.
Synopsis
Ann Hunniwell, innocently accompanying Frank Devereaux, her employer's son, to a questionable New York cafe, is arrested in a raid and is photographed by a newspaperman, although Devereaux manages to obtain the negative. Five years later she is the wife of "Lafe" Regan, a man of high character and social standing. Her stepdaughter, Helen, becomes involved with Devereaux, who has also had an affair with the wife of Colonel Gaunt. When the colonel threatens to shoot Devereaux, Regan stalls him, while Ann follows Helen to Frank's apartment; after an oral conflict, Regan shoots Devereaux and leaves a "Not To Be Disturbed" sign on the door. Ann tries to take the blame and shield her family, but the district attorney, having posed as the photographer years before, believes Ann is equally guiltless now and frees her and her husband, stating that no jury would convict Regan on his plea of "Self-Defense."
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