The story
“John Deering is a poor inventor living modestly with his wife and only daughter. He has approached Mr. Cobleigh, a capitalist, with a proposition to share the profits of a new invention with him, providing that he (Cobleigh) furnish the capital to swing it. Cobleigh comes to see the model of Deering’s invention and is greatly impressed with it. Cobleigh offers Deering a small amount of money for the invention, but Deering refuses to accept it. Then Cobleigh, having failed to get his invention by fair means, determines to secure it by foul. He drugs Deering, and the result of the poison is to make the inventor temporarily insane. While in this condition, Cobleigh has Deering transferred to an insane asylum. Then he forges the inventor’s name to the bill of sale and thinks that his crime will never be discovered.
“Deering’s daughter, Grace, failing to induce her sweetheart, Tom Reynolds, to aid in rescuing Deering, breaks into the asylum and takes her father out singlehandedly. She conveys him to a camp in the woods where her tender care restores him to health. Then she takes him home again and he demands his rights from Cobleigh. The latter denies that he owes Deering a cent, and the inventor goes to law. Tom, who acts as his counsel, shows by enlarged stereopticon views of the two signatures that Cobleigh had traced the one from the other. Cobleigh, overcome by the revelation of his crime, is arrested, and the Deering family and the faithful Tom are happy.”
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 17 September 1910
