The story
“If the first two reels of the Thanhouser 46-reel serial, The Million Dollar Mystery, are a promise of what is in store for photoplay fans, then, indeed, the motion picture world is about to be startled as it never before has been. The Mystery is inaugurated in a manner calculated to keep photoplay lovers on the edge of the seat. In fact, it will be remarkable if, in their excitement, many spectators do not more than once slip entirely from their cushioned chairs when they see this serial projected.
“The story is told in episodes, each episode taking up two reels of film. The first episode of The Mystery contains a dozen thrills. One of them was not in the scenario. In the balloon scene, Albert [sic; should be Alfred] Norton, who plays Stanley Hargreave, the millionaire, is rescued before the camera from almost certain death when the balloon in which he is leaving the roof of a mansion breaks unexpectedly from its moorings and plunges away with Norton clinging desperately to the sides of the basket. Norton’s struggles to get into the car were not planned in advance by Director Howell Hansel, and when theatregoers the country over clap approvingly as A. Leo Stevens, the aeronaut, drags Mr. Norton into the basket, they may be assured that they are applauding a real rescue and Mr. Norton’s own desperate fight to save his own life.
“As a matter of fact if the full story of the photographing of The Million Dollar Mystery ever is told, it will make an adventure serial almost equal in interest to the scenario which Lloyd F. Lonergan has written and which Harold MacGrath, the famous novelist, has fictionized.
“The first reel of Episode One shows Stanley Hargreave, father of Florence Gray, stealing up from his carriage to the entrance of the Susan Farlow Select School for Girls. In his arms he cradles his baby daughter. While his coachman waits at the carriage entrance to the school grounds, Hargreave makes his way across the lawn and terraces to the veranda of the institution.
“Tenderly he wraps up the child and puts it down in a spot sheltered from the wind. Cautiously he crouches up to a window of the office, where the matron of the school sits attending to her correspondence. A sharp rap brings Susan Farlow to the window. Hargreave hurriedly steals back to his carriage and drives off. Puzzled by the mysterious tap on the pane, Miss Farlow opens the window and peers into the darkness. Her curiosity aroused, she then swings open the massive main entrance doors. Before her on the threshold lies a baby, wrapped in garments of expensive texture. Pinned to the child’s silken outer wraps is an envelope and inside the latter a note and a gold bracelet. ‘The name of this child is Florence Gray,’ the note reads. ‘Take care of her and educate her. I shall provide liberally for her. The other half of the enclosed bracelet will identify me when I send for her.’
“Seventeen years pass. Florence Gray now is a young woman and one of the most popular girls in the Farlow school. Throughout her girlhood she has never wanted for anything, and from time to time liberal remittances and presents reach her from her parent.
“Miss Gray is shown surrounded by her friends. The girls of the boarding school evidently are right up to the minute, for the film shows them tangoing and doing the maxixe while Matron Farlow stands by to censor any steps which do not meet with her approval. The scene quickly changes to Florence’s room in the dormitory of the school. The girls are having one of those midnight parties so dear to the heart of every venturesome boarding school miss. The chafing dish with the alcohol flame beneath is busily sputtering away when the girls, in imagination, hear footsteps in the hall. The lights are dimmed, and all sit about eating their fudge in hushed whispers. The scene changes to the home of Stanley Hargreave, father of Florence Gray.
“Hargreave, when a young man, had joined the Black Hundred. This was an organization of Russian millionaires. Circumstances made him an exile from Russia. Branded as a traitor by his fellows, the young millionaire knew that a price had been set upon his head. The passing of the years had changed his appearance, however, and now, nearly twenty-five years after his departure from Europe, he hopes that the beard and the mustache he has grown, together with the changes which time has marked upon his features, have altered him beyond recognition.
“Feeling assured that he will not be remembered if he returns to his old haunts, Hargreave determines to claim his daughter, dispose of his estate and servants, liquidate his holdings, and return to Russia. He sends a note to the Farlow school demanding the return of Florence Gray, settles his daughter’s bills, and then, to celebrate his departure, enters one of the most fashionable of New York’s restaurants.
“He is recognized, as he enters, by James Norton, a reporter, who recalls to the millionaire that he interviewed him when the panic was on. Hargreave invites the reporter to dinner and introduces him to Countess Olga Petroff and her companion, Braine. Hargreave, as he sits down to dinner with the reporter at an adjacent table, little realizes that his nearby acquaintances, Braine and Countess Olga, are watching him closely and that they recognize him as the man for whom they have been commissioned to seek the world over.
“So sure are they of their identification that both hurriedly leave the restaurant for the local headquarters of the Russian secret society. There, in a few words, they inform resident members of the Black Hundred that they have recognized in Hargreave a former member of their band and that the opportunity to wreak the vengeance of the Black Hundred is at hand.
“A picture of Hargreave, taken in his youth when he was a faithful member of the society, has come into possession of the New York chapter. This picture, now carefully preserved by Countess Petroff, is handed around among the band for identification. The conspirators, their faces covered with black masks, are sitting about a long table in a secret room when the Countess and Braine tap on the door and are admitted. Two members of the organization are delegated to spy upon Hargreave while the rest mature their plans for his downfall.
“From the moment he leaves the Fifth Avenue restaurant Stanley Hargreave is a marked man. One or another of the Black Hundred shadows him constantly. They watch him as he withdraws his wealth from the safe deposit vaults of a Wall Street bank; they learn through the unsuspicious servants of his preparations for a hurried departure, and they view from a distance in puzzled astonishment his secret interview with Stevens on a Long Island aviation field.
“The first intimation that Hargreave receives that his identity has been discovered is a note slipped under his door by Braine. The note warns Hargreave that the members of the Black Hundred are aware that he has withdrawn his wealth from the bank and that he plans flight. They tell him not to try to escape.
“As Hargreave, with trembling fingers, reads the note, he staggers back against the mantle in his library and there flashes before his mind’s eye the picture of his introduction into the Black Hundred years before. He sees himself again a young man, clad in Russian garb, pledging himself, while he clasps hands with the aged president of the secret order, to devote his life and wealth to the promotion of the aims of the society. He sees frowning down from the walls the imperial eagles of Russia. The shield of the order and of the Czar, with the Little Father’s coat of arms emblazoned upon them, again seem to threaten him who would prove a traitor to the cause.
“The note from the enemy causes Hargreave to make a quick change in his plans. Hastily shaving his beard and mustache he dons a rough suit and, upon ascertaining that his home is surrounded, goes to the roof of the mansion and sets off a rocket to call Stevens to his aid. The rocket is seen by the conspirators as it roars up from the roof into the darkness. They determine to break into the isolated home of the renegade member of their band. They attack the massive entrance doors of the mansion with iron bars, dealing blow after blow that echoes through the mansion.
“In the distance Braine, the leader of the band, sees a balloon creeping across the sky toward the House of Mystery. Realizing that Hargreave intends to escape in the car of the balloon the band redoubles its attack on the door of the mansion. There follow the most exciting incidents of the first episode.
“As the balloon sweeps across the roof of the House of Mystery, Hargreave clutches at the basket. He manages to obtain a hold just as the big bag, struck by a sudden gust of wind, leaps like an animate being into the air and is carried away over the tree tops. In his struggles to get into the basket of the balloon, Hargreave is assisted by the pilot. The millionaire finally crawls up over the edge of the wickerwork car and falls exhausted on the floor.
“While the balloon drifts out over the ocean, back in the House of Mystery Hargreave’s butler does his best to cope with the members of the Black Hundred who finally manage to break into the mansion. The conspirators, upon smashing in the great front door, at once run to the roof of the house just as the balloon skims away across the tree tops. Braine shoots at the big bag in an effort to puncture it. Shot after shot goes wild but finally one takes effect and the balloon is seen rapidly sinking toward the sea.
“Braine runs below to tell his fellow conspirators of his successful shot. He finds that they have bound Jones, the butler, and are giving him the third degree, in an effort to make him reveal where Hargreave has hidden his wealth. But someone has already removed all the money from the safe built into the wall of Hargreave’s library, and Jones is able only to point to the empty compartments. Far out at sea a collapsed balloon bag drifts about on the wave tops, kept afloat by the wickerwork car and the few remaining feet of gas within the bag. (To be continued)”
Summary from Reel Life · 27 June 1914
