The story
“Winston Homes is decoyed to the home of Gerald Lafitte, his unsuccessful rival in love, by a promise that the latter will put him in touch with a proposition which will mean big money. Lafitte, meanwhile, robs his own safe, and sends for a detective. When Holmes arrives, he finds that the ‘proposition’ is: ‘Give up Hilda Brown, or go to jail.’ For a despairing moment, the young man sinks his face in his hands. He is roused by a cry of horror. In the doorway stands the detective and Lafitte’s valet. On the couch, his head cloven in twain, lies his enemy, a sabre, crimson with blood, at his side. A few minutes before Holmes had been absent-mindedly admiring the strange weapon as it hung on the wall above the couch. He is arrested for the murder.
“Rhoades, the detective, is not convinced even by apparently inclusive evidence. He finds in Lafitte’s study the money and jewels cleverly removed by the dead man from his own safe, also a photograph of a beautiful girl with a theatrical signature across the corner. The detective visits a theatrical agency, where he learns that the original of the picture had been Lafitte’s sweetheart. Rhoades studies the mechanism by which the sabre had been so attached to the wall that it could be swung out over the head of an unconscious victim and dropped with fatal effect. A photograph of the missing actor forms another link. Rhoades proves to the detective force that Lafitte’s valet is none other than the father of the deserted actress, whose death he at last has avenged in the murder of her betrayer. Winston Holmes is acquitted, and he and Hilda marry.”
Summary from Reel Life · 27 November 1915
