Stuart Webbs

Installment in the popular Stuart Webbs detective series.

Stuart Webbs investigates a coin counterfeiting gang.

In this tangled case, Webbs is called in to solve a string of alleged suicides. The case is very opaque - nothing is what it seems at first glance. Are the suicides really dead? Webbs initially suspects an Indian servant of a nobleman, but thanks to Stuart's investigation, he is proven innocent. The other exotic characters appearing in the story all seem quite opaque and devious, as if they were in league with evil per se. Finally, in a dark vault, there is a showdown: the seemingly petrified dead, lined up like in a wax museum, suddenly awaken to new life in front of their alleged murderer!

Silent film.

Directed by Lupu Pick, who died far too young, it was billed as a melodrama about a ring of counterfeiters on its first screening in New York City. Pick plays with the already well-established conventions of the detective genre for maximum effect and humor.