Summary
A Manhattan dusk glints off the chrome grille of Ogden Fenn’s rented Packard as he glides toward the Plaza, unaware that the city’s electric arteries are about to short-circuit his composure. Across the lobby, Diana Manners—her silhouette a Modigliani come alive—hovers between duty and daydream while husband Frank sketches skyscrapers three thousand miles west. One shared cab through Central Park’s fogged sodium light and the marriage’s brittle lacquer cracks; Fenn’s murmured flattery lands like warm rain on parched silk. Days blur into rooftop waltzes, speakeasy whispers, dawn confessions on the 5 a.m. ferry, each rendezvous tightening the screw of guilt until Frank’s telegram—"Returning tomorrow"—arrives like a guillotine. While Diana rehearses alibis in her mirror, Frank’s San Francisco tower collapses into blueprints of suspicion. Back east, Mrs. Hastings—herself shackled to a loveless covenant—pleads with Frank to swallow the betrayal, brandishing the specter of a child’s stained innocence. The quartet’s vectors collide at Fenn’s pine-scented cabin above the Hudson, where moonlight drips like mercury on the cedar planks. A jealous husband, a betrayed wife, a protective rival, and a guilt-struck lover: four marionettes whose strings twist into a hangman’s knot the instant Hastings’ Duesenberg bursts through the clearing, grille snarling like a mythic boar. One car, one cliff, one final lunge at redemption—then silence, broken only by the river’s slow applause and Mrs. Hastings’ grim promise to knit what remains of two marriages into something resembling whole cloth.
Synopsis
While visiting New York, Ogden Fenn finds himself charmed with Diana Manners, wife of Frank Manners, an architect who is away on business in San Francisco, and they become involved. The husband returns unexpectedly and learns that his wife loves Fenn. When Diana and Fenn go to the latter's cabin near New York, Mrs. Hastings, who though married loves Frank, persuades him not to interfere because of the effects on his child. Mr. Hastings, learning of his wife's own infidelity, motors to the cabin, forces Fenn into his car, and drives the vehicle over a steep embankment. Mrs. Hastings then brings Manners and Diana back together.
