Frank Perfit is writing instructions for his heir when the sound of flute playing disturbs him. An a rage he takes his gun and stalks outside.... and someone pushes part of the roof on his head. Soon, his heir, Arthur Pusey and his pal show up for the reading of his will, as does sinister Oriental Gibb McLaughlin, who enquires if a certain gem has been left him. Nope. There's no money, just the incomplete instructions. An oily man breaks in, finds a stack of bonds, and is assassinated by Perfit's giggling Oriental servant, Kiyoshi Takase. Meanwhile, McLaughlin is hypnotizing Mabel Poulton to go fetch... and the movie goes into a long flashback to explain what the dickens is going on.
It's Walter Forde's first directing job in which he doesn't star, and while it is still a silent, it has all the earmarks of the comedy-thrllers he would direct in the coming decade. It's certainly old-fashioned in its tropes, with sinister. Fu-Manchu-like Chinese, stolen gems, sliding doors and such, but the surprises keep coming and you can't tell who's on whose side until well past the hour mark. There are a couple of unanswered questions, like who Miss Poulton is, but the movie zooms along with a briskly moving camera for a decent late-silent melodrama derived from a stage show.
It's Walter Forde's first directing job in which he doesn't star, and while it is still a silent, it has all the earmarks of the comedy-thrllers he would direct in the coming decade. It's certainly old-fashioned in its tropes, with sinister. Fu-Manchu-like Chinese, stolen gems, sliding doors and such, but the surprises keep coming and you can't tell who's on whose side until well past the hour mark. There are a couple of unanswered questions, like who Miss Poulton is, but the movie zooms along with a briskly moving camera for a decent late-silent melodrama derived from a stage show.
