Summary
A tempest—both meteorological and moral—hurls Laura Sutphen, porcelain-heiress of poise, against the wrought-iron gates of a shuttered manor where lightning forks like gossip. Her engagement to Donald Loring, once a covenant etched in crystal, shatters on the rocks of his bourbon-scented nights; she flees the city only to stall beneath bruised skies. Enter Baron Von Kolnitz, velvet-gloved predator with a monocle that glints like a scalpel: he offers shelter, yet his library is lined with dossiers labeled in invisible ink. Next morning the telephone hisses—a cobra with newsprint fangs—promising to auction Laura’s virtue in 48-point Bodoni unless she choreographs a masquerade ball where every guest arrives wearing someone else’s skin. Best-friend Sue Schuyler, professional heartbreaker, is lured as both bait and buffer; Donald, stripped of lover-status, reappears in livery, lens poised to snap the scandal he pretends to abet. Midnight chiming, curtains billowing, the trio converge in a boudoir rigged with magnesium flash: Von Kolnitz poised to claim a dowry of silence, Sue half-undressed in candle-shiver, Laura cornered between honor and headline. In the strobe of revelation Donald’s badge gleams colder than his betrayed gaze; the baron’s blackmail album becomes evidence, the gossip sheet’s presses grind to a halt, and Laura’s torn allegiance knits itself into a wedding veil once more—yet the storm inside her now knows the taste of complicity.
Synopsis
Laura Sutphen breaks off her engagement with Donald Loring because he drinks excessively and she refuses to see him socially. When her automobile breaks down in front of a friend's empty estate during a storm, Laura is forced to spend the night with Von Kolnitz, a rich foreigner also stranded by the weather. After ignoring Donald's advice to get out, Laura receives a threatening phone call from the editor of the Tattle Tale . To keep her name out of the gossip newspaper, Laura agrees to invite Sue Schuyler, her best friend and an incurable flirt, and Von Kolnitz to a party and to allow Donald to attend as an employee of the Tattle Tale . At the party, Sue and Von Kolnitz arrange a compromising midnight rendezvous at which Donald appears with a camera. After a series of misunderstandings with Laura, Donald reveals himself to be a secret service agent and exposes Von Kolnitz as a social blackmailer. Her faith restored, Laura is reconciled with Donald.
