- Curtis Jaffray's mother, an Italian peasant, must steal to support herself, but genetic tendencies as well as economic necessity contribute to her penchant for robbery, as it is inherited by her son. After John, his British nobleman father, catches him stealing, Curtis runs away, but rather than try to change his nature, he decides to put his mother's legacy to good use. As a result, after he has risen to a prominent position in the United States, he starts stealing from those who belong to his own wealthy social set and then distributing the money among the poor. Even though they can afford it, however, this sort of forced philanthropy terrifies Curtis' friends, and so they enlist the aid of the police, who finally manage to corner the criminal and kill him.—Pamela Short
- Sir Curtis Jaffray (as he becomes known in later life) is the offspring of a mesalliance which results in his being brought up in such bitter poverty that his mother, before his birth, is driven to thievery to obtain food. This incident stamps a fatal prenatal influence upon the child. At the age of twelve, Curtis, whose predatory instincts have already manifested themselves in numerous small ways, stows away upon a ship bound for America, rather than accept the home and upbringing his grandfather, Sir Hugh Jaffray, offers him. On the same vessel is John Hanby, another stowaway, who is destined to be a sinister influence in Jaffray's life. He becomes Jaffray's social secretary several years later when, on the death of his grandfather, Jaffray inherits the title and estates. The fashionable stratum of society in which Jaffray now moves is startled by a series of daring thefts. The situation is complicated by the suspicion of Countess Rossi, a leader of the social world, that Jaffray is "The Social Highwayman." The Countess is the woman who, years before, ruined Hanby's life and made of him an outcast. Driven half insane by the recollectio4n of his wrongs, Hanby in a frenzy, kills the Countess, but not before she has set the police on Jaffray's track. By a daring ruse Jaffray escapes the authorities. In the meantime the demented Hanby kills himself, declaring that he committed the mystifying thefts. Jaffray, his nobler instincts now aroused, confesses everything to the girl he loves and sets about rebuilding his life, to be worthy of him.—Moving Picture World synopsis
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