Summary
A prodigal architect’s heir, Roy Wilson, hurtles through speakeasy neon and back-room poker toward the abyss: he owes a fortune to Graham Madison, a city-builder who drafts corruption as deftly as blueprints. Roy’s father—an upright rival bidder for a transcontinental rail artery—unsuspectingly keeps the family drafting table lit late, while Roy’s sister Jessie, all lace and restless intellect, is betrothed to Carew, the Wilson firm’s star engineer. Madison, sniffing blood, dangles his mistress Cleo—a jazz-age Circe in pearls—before the indebted boy; desire mutates into shackles. Cornered, Roy is ordered to filch his father’s sealed bid. That same velvet dusk, Carew’s marriage plea is spurned on age grounds; the plans vanish; Carew is fingered and sacked. Flush with loot, Roy spirits jewels for Cleo, only to crack the family safe; the patriarch stumbles upon Madison’s incriminating envelope dropped by Carew, collapses, heart shattered. A butler’s glance chains Carew to the corpse. Roy returns, confession a sob, toppling the house of marked cards. Dawn sees Madison cuffed, the lovers unchained, and a city exhaling soot-choked redemption.
Synopsis
Roy Wilson, an ungovernable youth of fast habits, owes considerable gambling-debt money to Graham Madison, an architect of doubtful morals. Roy's father is a competing architect and his sister Jessie is the sweetheart of Carew, Wilson's chief consulting engineer. In addition to his gambling debts, Roy forms an attachment for Madison's mistress Cleo, which involves him more deeply with Madison. Both Wilson and Madison prepare to submit bids for an important railway contract, and Madison, after getting Roy well in his power, compels him on pain of exposure to steal his father's bid. That night Carew asks for Jessie's hand and is refused by Wilson on the grounds of Jessie's extreme youth. When the loss of the plans is discovered Wilson promptly accuses Carew and discharges him. Meanwhile, Roy travels at a fast pace with Cleo, of whom Madison, having gained his end, has tired. When the fastidious lady fancies an expensive necklace Roy, after trying unsuccessfully to borrow the money to purchase the necklace, rifles the wall safe in his father's library. Unluckily, Carew calls at this moment for a clandestine meeting with Jessie to show her a letter he had just received from Madison in which the letter offers him a position. In leaving the house Carew fails to take with him the envelope bearing Madison's name, and this is left on a table where Wilson finds it on his way upstairs to the library. The shock of the robbery kills the frail, old man, who falls to the floor with the envelope clutched tightly in his hand. This, coupled with the word of the butler who had seen Carew leaving the house, weaves a strong chain of circumstantial guilt. Immediately after the theft Roy hurries to Cleo's apartments and offers her the spoils of his shame. She divines the truth and indignantly sends him home. He arrives in the parlor a moment after Carew, who has been quickly apprehended and brought back. The knowledge of his father's death proves too much and Roy breaks down, confessing the whole story. The following day the law lays a heavy hand on Madison, and Carew and Jessie look hopefully forward to a better day.
