Under the White Robe

In the feverish swirl of a 1920s masquerade, the fugitive known only as Nervy Ned bursts onto a glittering ballroom, his ragged coat a stark counterpoint to the silk and satin of the elite. Mistaking his disheveled appearance for a deliberately avant‑garde costume, the assembled aristocracy hails him as a visionary tramp, an embodiment of bohemian rebellion. The revelry shatters when police sirens pierce the hall, and Ned, seized by desperation, darts through a side door into a waiting automobile. The vehicle, however, belongs not to a police cruiser but to a youthful bride‑to‑be, a girl whose heart beats for a secret lover and whose plan is to abscond under the veil of night. Their destination is a crumbling manor, its windows gaping like hollow eyes, a setting ripe for the supernatural theatrics the girl’s rival conjures. The rival, a scheming suitor, ensnares the minister, rigs the corridors with phantasmal contraptions, and frightens the trio—Ned, the girl, and a stoic black chauffeur—into a night of trembling hysteria. As the lights sputter out, the rival’s machinations culminate in a macabre substitution: Ned, bewildered and bewildering, is thrust into the groom’s role at the altar. The ceremony collapses into chaos, the lights return, and the bride‑to‑be, disillusioned, dissolves the marriage. In the denouement, she reunites with her true love, sealing a union that the night’s farcical interludes could never have foreseen.