The story
“Angered by the way Florence Hargreave has slipped through their fingers just when they believed they were about to wrest from her the secret of her father’s millions, Countess Olga, Braine and their band of conspirators form another plan to entrap her. Braine dictates the following newspaper personal which is inserted in a local paper: ‘Dear Florence—The hiding place is discovered. Remove to more secure hiding place at once.—S.H.’
“A conspirator (Albert C. Froome) is sent disguised as an organ grinder to spy upon the occupants of the Hargreave mansion so that in the event the treasure is removed after the personal is read it can be traced to its new hiding place. The conspirator is accompanied by a girl dancer. Jones, Hargreave’s butler, sees the organ grinder approach the limousine of the Countess Olga when the latter motors out of the Hargreave grounds. Returning to the curtains, through which he can peep out upon Margaret [sic; Florence was intended] and Miss Farlow, the butler overhears them reading the personal. Jones at once realizes that the advertisement is meant to frighten Florence, and determines to mislead the supposed organ grinder.
“He watches the conspirator creep close to the mansion and climb a tree, from which he drops to the roof of the porch. Jones then goes upstairs into Florence’s room and, after assuring himself the organ grinder is on watch, slides up a picture of Sidney [sic] Hargreave and two other panels in the wall. This action reveals a brass-bound box with the name Stanley Hargreave upon it. The Italian hurries to Braine and tells him that he has discovered the hiding place of the treasure and that the butler is about to secrete it elsewhere.
“Braine and the organ grinder follow Jones to a boat landing where they learn that he has engaged ‘Little Marie,’ one of the fastest power boats on the seaboard. The conspirators also engage a speedy motor boat and set off in pursuit. After cruising about the Sound, the conspirators finally spy a launch miles off on the farther shore. Jones is digging furiously, apparently trying to bury his box before discovery, but when his boatman tells him that a launch is heading full speed toward the cove in which they have taken refuge he rushes back to the ‘Little Marie.’ The speedy launch is driven quickly out of the cove into the open Sound.
“Then starts a desperate race between Braine and his fellow conspirator on the one hand and Jones on the other. The long black craft hired by Braine has a greater supply of gasoline, however, and at last draws near Jones’ boat. Jones, seemingly making a last desperate fight for possession of the Hargreave treasure, draws a revolver and shoots a hole in the feed pipe of Braine’s launch. He raises the box high in the air and casts it into the sea. Jones then quickly makes his escape and Braine’s craft drifts helplessly about. The conspirators can see the treasure box resting at the bottom of the sea, but while they are peering over the edge of their launch, gasoline, seeping through the bullet hole in the feed pipe, is ignited by the sparking motor and in a few minutes the launch is aflame from stem to stern. Driven from their boat the conspirators plunge one by one, their clothes aflame, into the sea. They have taken only a few strokes from the launch when the gasoline tank explodes and sends the launch to the bottom.
“In this by-adventure Jones is merely amusing himself at the expense of the conspirators. Confident of his ability to mislead the members of the Black Hundred unassisted, he does not call Norton to his aid, and back at the Hargreave mansion the young reporter’s love affair with Florence advances by leaps and bounds, always restrained, however, by the chaperonage of Susan Farlow, Florence’s instructress and mentor.
“In the fifth episode of The Mystery President Hite has again striven for realism. The motor boat used by the conspirators was purchased at a price running up into four figures, and thrifty Long Islanders who saw the boat burning up in the waters of the Sound shook their heads at such apparent waste of money. The owner of the craft who built the motor boat with the intention of entering it in the international motor boat races waxed indignant when he saw the boat blown up to provide the spectacle, which constitutes the ‘punch’ in the fifth episode of The Million Dollar Mystery. ‘If I had known that my boat was to be used like that,’ he said, ‘I never should have sold it.’ Director Howell Hansel consoled the irate motor boat enthusiast by pointing out that millions of people in the next few weeks will be entertained by the thrilling finish to the motor boat race.
“Sub rosa, Frank Farrington and Albert Froome are glad that the burning and destruction of the boat was staged only once—and that before the camera. Mr. Farrington’s trousers were burning before he leaped from the boat, and Mr. Froome, while swimming away from the burning craft, was struck by a blazing piece of the boat’s hull, when the gasoline tank exploded. Each episode of The Million Dollar Mystery has been designed to contain at least one spectacular feature in addition to the stirring series of adventures incidental to the plot.”
Summary from Reel Life · 18 July 1914
