Voices

A lambent nocturne of gaslit Manhattan, Voices drapes its naïve provincial heroine, Mary Vance, in velvet shadows that throb with ragtime and predatory whispers. Arriving to refine her conservatory ardor, she is lured by a counterfeit classmate into a clandestine demi-monde where debutante laughter curdles into the commerce of flesh. The metropolis becomes a carnivorous cathedral: cabarets flicker like sulfurous votives, alleyways exhale chloroform, and every gilded door promises a chrysalis—or a coffin. While Mary vanishes inside this labyrinth, her brother John, oceans away, is jolted by a phantasmal séance: the spectral silhouette of their deceased mother hovering above a moon-drenched piano, murmuring of shackled wrists. Thus commences a fevered pilgrimage northward, where John’s desperation mutates into reckless vengeance; he abducts Marion, the coquettish yet unspoiled daughter of Justin Lord, the debauched sybarite he blames for his sister’s erasure. Yet the city, capricious dramaturge, flips the script: Mary re-emerges, tremulous but unbroken, claiming she fled not captivity but guilt, convinced a clumsy misstep during Lord’s libidinous gambit ended in self-slaughter. The phantom death proves illusory, the white-slave nightmare collapses into a comedy of errors, and the erstwhile predator—chastened by the mirror of his own progeny’s jeopardy—offers contrition. In the afterglow, affection transposes: John’s fury melts into tenderness for Marion, Mary reclaims her betrothed Tom, and Manhattan’s roar subsides to a tentative hymn of reconciliation.