Summary
High-society chandeliers drip like stalactites over a Manhattan ballroom where three tuxedoed sages spar over bloodline determinism; from their verbal duel emerges a vertiginous tale of two foundlings hurled down diametric trajectories. One infant, swaddled in ermine and opera tickets, blossoms into Evelyn, the porcelain toast of Park Avenue; her mirror-image sibling, palmed to a pair of Fagin-lite dips and dodgers, mutates into ‘The Angel,’ a lithe phantom whose fingertips waltz through pockets with Chopin-like precision. On a fog-corseted night along the Hudson, The Angel’s wrist is manacled by Johnson—confidence man by vocation, clandestine Treasury bloodhound by calling—who drags her across a noir-tinged map to humid Havana, where sugar-baron chandeliers echo the very ones in New York. There she collides with Robert Ellington, a dissipated belletrist whose engagement to Evelyn has already fractured under the weight of gossip columns and parental interference. Johnson, scenting a fortune, orders The Angel to fleece the writer of twenty-five grand; instead, her heart pirouettes, and she unburdens her sins to the bemused scribbler. Enter Evelyn—train steaming, pearls rattling—prompting The Angel to fake a torrid clinch with Johnson, a sacrificial tango meant to exile Ellington back toward decorum. Yet Johnson, moved by the pickpocket’s metamorphosis, rips off his own mask: he is Uncle Sam’s hound, not a grifter. Ellington’s moral compass whirls, he sprints back through narrow callejones, and the two outcasts wed amid the scent of frangipani and contraband rum. Back in the gilded salon, the storyteller—now revealed as the very ‘Johnson’ of his chronicle—lets his gaze settle on Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, whose marital serenity answers the skeptic’s question before a syllable can be uttered.
Synopsis
At a reception for Mr. and Mrs. Vance Leighton, three men are discussing the effects of heredity in shaping the careers of children. To prove his contention that the theory of heredity is often demonstrated to be false, John Strong, a secret service agent, tells a true story: Two orphan sisters are adopted, one by society leaders, the other by a couple of crooks. The latter, known as "The Angel," becomes an expert pickpocket, while the other, Evelyn, becomes a reigning belle. The Angel is caught in the act by Johnson, a confidence man. Together with her adopted parents, they go to Havana, where she meets and falls in love with author Robert Ellington, Evelyn's estranged fiancé. Johnson compels her to help him swindle Ellington out of $25,000. Instead, she confesses to Ellington, and when her sister arrives she stages a love scene with Johnson to break off their relationship. Johnson, realizing that The Angel is in love, reveals to Ellington that he is a Secret Service agent. Ellington goes back to her, and they are married. To answer a skeptical listener's question whether society accepted the couple, Strong knowingly glances at the Leightons and reveals himself as the "Johnson" of the story.
