From 1924.
I didn’t llike this one. It was funny, in a way, a true comedy of errors, but I didn’t like this Gordon, and I absolutely didn’t like that he ended up a couple with his very young cousin.
Diana lives in Australia, prety comfortable with the money that an old aunt left her. She has exchanged a few letters with her English cousin, Gordon Selsbury, but they’ve never met. Suddenly she decides she wants a change, and she’ll go meet him. He has no idea and is quite shocked when she appears at his door. He doesn’t want her there because he’s an unmarried man and it’s just not done, very inappropriate, what with her being alone without a chaperon… he insists, she does too, saying that only the police will be able to get her out of that house, and that would be a scandal because she would resist… and so he wants to go out himself but she says she’ll tell the press that he disappeared… he insists and finally bursts that she must go away, so she starts phoning the press saying that she’s got nowhere else to go and her only chance now is the river… so he really has no choice but to let her stay…
Gordon is a man who feels superior, he talks philosophy with his friend Heloise and he thinks that their relationship is superior.
She wants to go to Ostenda together, and she succeeds in convincing him. He feels embarrassed though, that he has to tell his brother everything to have ‘an accomplice’. He also feels rather indignant that his brother thinks that he and Heloise are a couple, or something, as if he was too superior to have such a thing as romantic love or sexual interest.
He tells Diana that he’s going to Scotland, and asks his servant Trent to go to Scotland in his place and send a telegram to Diana from every station.
When they see each other at the stataion, though, Heloise starts her mother scene: she says that her husband is back, that he’s crazy jealous, and so he should go to Ostenda alone and she’ll reach him as soon as possible. His suggestion to expain everything to the man, that their friendship is entirely platonic and intellectual, is received with scorn, and Heloise dismisses the idea saying nobody would believe it.
A private investigator, Superbus, tells Diana and Bobby Selsbury about Dan, a man who can transform into anyone he wants, to rob them. He says that Dan has an accomplice, a woman, and Bobby strongly suspects Heloise and he hurries to the station to warn Gordon, but doesn’t find him.
Gordon is too scared of this situation and of her husband, so he decides to come back home. He’s too embarrassed to let anyone know though, so he sneaks in and finds Heloise doing the same. She says she followed him and he believes it, has no suspicions at all.
Diana finds them together so of course she thinks they’re Dan and his accomplice. Of course because Gordon is supposed to be on a train to Scotland, not sneaking around with a woman. She never entertains the possibility that Gordon could have lied to her, she thinks too highly of him… :-/
Gordon refuses to tell her the truth and so he sort of admits to being Dan.
She does not call the police, instead she has hi work in the house.
Then Dempsi comes back. A young man that proposed to her in Australia, talked a lot about love and then, since she refused, he went and got lost in the wild, or something, and she thought him dead. Now he’s back, is inside the house, and talks of Love and Marriage. She calls Gordon ‘uncle Isaac’ and Heloise ‘aunt Lizzie’ and she wants them to act their part so she won’t be alone with Dempsi. She also calls Superbus to keep an eye on uncle Isaac who is a bit touched in the head.
Bobby finally comes back, and at first believes Gordon’s story, but then Gordon refuses to tell Diana the truth and only wants his money to go away, so Bobby thinks he’s Dan too now.
One night Gordon manages to escape: Superbus is sleeping, and there is a thief in the house. Gordon knows the man and lets him open the safe, gives him a bit of money and keeps the rest for himself. He lets the man escape and then does the same himself.
Dempsi shoots Superbus’ little toe, and when the police arrive they recognize Dan in Dempsi, and arrests him. Heloise runs away.
Then Father Dempsi arrives, and Diana goes to him the money that she owes him, and that she was about to give to the other guy, the fake-Dempsi.
Gordon arrives, he says he took a plane, and she jumps into his arms and kisses him.
Just like that.
There’s no talking about the truth: now that she knows that the guy was not really Dempsi, she must know that he was Dan, for sure, and therefore that Gordon was really him since he could not be Dan as well.
He’s also around 50 years of age, while she’s just 18…
I do not approve of this book.
ITA il trasformista
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