The Firm of Girdlestone (1915)

John Girdlestone, the head of the firm of Girdlestone, is a puritanical old merchant, with religion ever on his lips, but who has neither morality nor even ordinary decency where his business is concerned. When his life-long friend, John Harston, is deadly sick, Girdlestone obeys the summons to his bedside. He sees in his friend's daughter, Kate, whom the dying man commits to his guardianship, only a source of revenue for the firm of Girdlestone. He plans to marry her to his son, Ezra, a disagreeable youth. Ezra has been carrying on an intrigue with Rebecca, one of the maids in the house. Kate fears her guardian's son, and is overjoyed when some distant relations, the Dimsdales, insist on her visiting them. Young Tom Dimsdale and she are soon the best of friends, but the romance is cut short by Girdlestone, who takes his ward home. Ezra meets a club friend of Tom's, the impecunious Major "Toby" Clutterbuck, who has no objections to winning Ezra's money, but who becomes indignant when the young man, trading on the Major's empty pockets, suggests a cheating partnership. Unfortunately for Ezra he puts his proposition in writing, and the Major subsequently blackmails old Girdlestone to the tune of a thousand pounds. The Major is later accepted by Mrs. Scully, a moneyed widow. Tom Dimsdale joins Girdlestone as a partner, by investing 7,000 pounds. Only old Girdlestone and Ezra know how serious their financial position is. The old man is determined that his ward's money shall save the firm. He is horrified when Tom announces his engagement to Kate, and forbids all communication between the two until his ward is of age, merely allowing Tom to write one farewell letter, which he undertakes to deliver. It never reaches the girl, who cannot understand Tom's silence, though her guardian provides an explanation when he tells Ezra, in her hearing, that young Dimsdale is going to marry one of his mother's poor relations. The ruse is not successful, for when Ezra proposes to Kate, she refuses him. His passion for the business has become a devouring mania. Girdlestone, studying his dead friend's will, observes that if Kate dies before she comes of age, her money goes to her guardian. So old Girdlestone plans Kate's death. He takes her to his lonely country house, Hampton Priory, and first tries to frighten her into her grave by impersonating the monk who is supposed to haunt the place. Then he decides on actual murder, and summons Ezra to the Priory. But Kate, though a prisoner, has managed to convey a message to a lady driving past. It is the Major's fiancée, Mrs. Scully, and she writes to her dear Toby about old Girdlestone's treatment of his ward. Soon the Major and Tom Dimsdale are speeding to the Priory. They would have been too late had not the jealousy of the maid, Rebecca, proved her own undoing and Kate's salvation. The note which Ezra writes to decoy Kate into the grounds that night is read by the maid, and interpreted as a lover's assignation. She steals Kate's hat and cloak and keeps the appointment herself, and it is she who receives the murderous blow and it is her body which the two ruffians carry to the railway line. They are just placing it on the rails when Kate confronts them, and in terror at the apparition father and son rush blindly away. Tom and his party just reach the spot in time for Tom to catch the fainting girl in his arms. The two murderers in their headlong flight miss their footing and are dashed to death down a steep quarry. With the marriage of Tom and Kate, an era of happiness and prosperity opens both for the young lovers and the old firm, of which Tom is now the sole surviving partner.