- This twenty-three episode serial told the story of a secret society called The Black Hundred and its attempts to gain control of a lost million dollars.
- Episode 1: "The Airship in the Night" The first reel of episode one shows Stanley Hargreaves, father of Florence Gray, stealing up from his carriage to the entrance of the Susan Farlow Select School for Girls. In his arms he cradles his baby daughter. While his coachman awaits at the carriage entrance to the school grounds, Hargreaves makes his way across the lawn and terraces to the veranda of the institution. Tenderly he wraps up the child and puts it down in a spot sheltered from the wind. Cautiously he crouches up to a window of the office, where the matron of the school sits attending to her correspondence. A sharp rap brings Susan Farlow to the window. Hargreaves hurriedly steals back to his carriage and drives off. Puzzled by the tap on the pane Miss Farlow swings open the doors. Before her on the threshold lies a baby, wrapped in garments of expensive texture. Pinned to the child's silken outer wraps is an envelope and inside the letter a note and a gold bracelet. "The name of this child is Florence Gray," the note reads. "Take care of her and educate her. I shall provide liberally for her. The other half of the enclosed bracelet will identify me when I send for her." Seventeen years pass. Florence Gray has become a young woman and one of the most popular girls in the Farlow school. Throughout her girlhood she has never wanted for anything and from time to time liberal remittances and presents reach her from her parent. The scene changes to the home of Stanley Hargreaves, father of Florence Gray. Hargreaves, when a young man, had joined the Black Hundred. This was an organization of Russian millionaires. Circumstances made him an exile from Russia. Branded as a traitor by his fellows, the young millionaire knew that a price had been set upon his head. The passing of years had changed his appearance, however, and now, nearly twenty-five years after his departure from Europe, he hopes that the beard and the moustache he has grown, together with the changes which time has marked upon his features, have altered him beyond recognition. Feeling assured that he will not be remembered if he returns to his old haunts, Hargreaves determines to claim his daughter, dispose of his estate and servants, liquidate his holdings, and return to Russia. He sends a note to the Farlow school demanding the return of Florence Gray, settles his daughter's bills and then, to celebrate his departure, enters one of the most fashionable of New York's restaurants. He is recognized as he enters by James Norton, a reporter. Hargreaves invites the reporter to dinner and introduces him to Countess Olga Petroff and her companion, Braine. Hargreaves, as he sits down to dinner with the reporter at an adjacent table, little realizes that his nearby acquaintances, Braine and Countess Olga, are watching him closely and that they recognize in him the man for whom they have been commissioned to seek the world over. So sure are they of their identification that both hurriedly leave the restaurant for the local headquarters of the Russian secret society. There they inform resident members of the Black Hundred that they have recognized in Hargreaves a former member of their band and that the opportunity to wreak the vengeance of the Black Hundred is at hand. A picture of Hargreaves, taken in his youth, when he was a faithful member of the society, has come into possession of the New York chapter. This picture, now carefully preserved by Countess Petroff, is handed around among the band for identification. The conspirators, their faces covered with black masks, are sitting about a long table in a secret room when the Countess and Braine tap on the door and are admitted. Two members are delegated to spy upon Hargreaves while the rest mature their plans for his downfall. From the moment he leaves the Fifth Avenue restaurant Stanley Hargreaves is a marked man. One or another of the Black Hundred shadows him constantly. They watch him as he withdraws his wealth from the safe deposit vaults of a Wall Street bank; they learn through the unsuspicious servants of his preparations for a hurried departure, and they view from a distance his secret interview with Stevens on a Long Island aviation field. The first intimation that Hargreaves receives that his identity has been discovered is a note slipped under his door by Braine. The note warns Hargreaves that the members of the Black Hundred are aware that he has withdrawn his wealth from the bank and that he plans flight. They tell him not to try to escape. As Hargreaves, with trembling fingers, reads the note, he staggers back against the mantle in his library and there flashes before his mind's eye the picture of his introduction into the Black Hundred years before. He sees himself again a young man, clad in Russian garb, pledging himself, while he clasps hands with the aged president of the secret order, to devote his life and wealth to the promotion of the aims of the society. The note from the enemy causes Hargreaves to make a quick change in his plans. Hastily shaving his beard and moustache he dons a rough suit and, upon ascertaining that his home is surrounded, goes to the roof of the mansion and sets off a rocket to call Stevens to his aid. The rocket is seen by the conspirators as it roars up from the roof into the darkness. They determine to break into the isolated home of the renegade member of their band. They attack the massive entrance doors of the mansion with iron bars, dealing blow after blow that echoes through the mansion. In the distance Braine, the leader of the band, sees a balloon creeping across the sky toward the House of Mystery. Realizing that Hargreaves intends to escape in the car of the balloon the band redoubles its attack on the door of the mansion. As the balloon sweeps across the roof of the House of Mystery Hargreaves clutches at the basket. He manages to obtain a hold just as the big bag, struck by a sudden gust of wind, leaps into the air and is carried away over the tree tops. In his struggles to get into the basket of the balloon. Hargreaves is assisted by the pilot. The millionaire finally crawls up over the edge of the wickerwork car and falls exhausted on the floor. While the balloon drifts out over the ocean, back in the House of Mystery Hargreaves' butler does his best to cope with the members of the Black Hundred who finally manage to break into the mansion. The conspirators, upon smashing in the great front door at once run to the roof of the house just as the balloon skims away across the tree tops. Braine shoots at the big bag in an effort to puncture it. Shot after shot goes wild but finally one takes effect and the balloon is seen rapidly sinking toward the sea. Braine runs below to tell his fellow conspirators of his successful shot. He finds that they have hound Jones, the butler, and are giving him the third degree, in an effort to make him reveal where Hargreaves has hidden his wealth. But someone has already removed all the money from the safe built into the wall of Hargreaves' library, and Jones is able only to point to the empty compartments. Far out at sea a collapsed balloon bag drifts about on the wave tops, kept afloat by the wickerwork car and the few remaining feet of gas within the bag.—Moving Picture World synopsis
- Episode 2: "The False Friend" Jones, the butler, struggles to free himself. Removing the receiver from the telephone resting on the table near his chair, with his teeth, the butler calls police headquarters. A platoon of police soon arrives and unbinds him. They find the safe in the Hargreaves' home broken open and its contents scattered about. A search is begun for the conspirators. Florence Gray (Hargreaves' daughter) arrives with Miss Farlow to find her father gone. Jones, who meets her at the station, produces the other half of the bracelet which Florence carries, and gives her a letter from her father instructing her to trust implicitly in him. Florence hardly has had time to adjust herself to her new surroundings when she has two visitors. One of them is Norton, the reporter, who reveals himself as a true friend. The other is Countess Olga Petroff who, upon the pretense that she knew Florence's father, tries to ingratiate herself in the girl's confidence. While the Countess, Norton, Florence and Miss Farlow are together, two of the conspirators, representing themselves to be Central Office detectives, force their way into the house in an effort to find Hargreaves' money for which they did not have time to search thoroughly the night before. Norton at once recognizes the detectives as impostors and calls up police headquarters. The conspirators suspect the reporter and while a desperate fight is in progress the police arrive. The two conspirators are captured and are taken away. During the fight the Countess Petroff, seeing the struggle going against Braine, succeeds in tripping up the reporter. Norton, however, manages to pinion his man, and, although suspicious of the Countess, says nothing when the police arrive. She is allowed to depart without being molested. The conspirators, taking advantage of a street accident, in which a child is run down by an automobile, break away from the police when the vigilance of the latter is relaxed for a moment. The exciting episode in which Norton has figured cements the friendship between him and Florence and the reel closes with a pretty scene between the young people. The Countess Olga, clever adventuress that she is, still remains unsuspected of complicity with the conspirators who are plotting the death of Florence Gray's father and the seizure of his great fortune.—Moving Picture World synopsis
- Episode 3: "The Safe in the Lonely Warehouse" The Black Hundred learns, through the daily papers, that Hargreaves, after drifting 300 miles out to sea, has been picked up while swimming about the wreck of the balloon in which he escaped from the House of Mystery. When Hargreaves lands at the dock newspapermen try to interview him but he escapes in the crowd. Norton, knowing that the conspirators believe that Hargreaves has his fortune upon his person, lays a trap for them. By judiciously tipping the watchman of the wharf where the ship which landed Hargreaves moored, Norton misleads Countess Olga into believing that Hargreaves' wealth is locked up in a box safe in the wharf office. The Countess hurries at once to the Charity Ball where she meets Braine and tells him what she has learned. Braine collects a dozen gangsters in an East Side saloon and creeps up to the wharf office, intent upon cracking the safe and removing the treasure chest which he believes is within. Norton posts a dozen patrolmen behind barrels near the office door. The gangsters are captured while at work, but Braine, whom Norton wished most to catch, jumps into the river and swims away in the darkness.—Moving Picture World synopsis
- Episode 4: "The Top Floor Flat" Working on the theory that Florence Gray, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Stanley Hargreaves, the hunted millionaire, knows where her father's money is hidden, the Black Hundred conspirators determine to trap her in their rooms and there force her to reveal the secret she is believed to possess. In carrying out this plan they are aided by their knowledge that Florence Gray never has seen her father, a circumstance which obviously would enable one of their number to disguise himself to impersonate Stanley Hargreaves and thus ingratiate himself into the guileless child's affections and confidence. Braine, aptly named, for he is the intelligent, driving force behind the Black Hundred's plot to get Hargreaves' fortune, drafts a note calculated to appeal to the father-love of the simple boarding-school graduate. The conspirator's note read as follows: "My darling daughter, I must see you to-night. Come to 78 Grove Street, top floor, at 8 o'clock. Confide in no one if you would not seal my death warrant. Your loving father." That night Braine, unwilling to trust any of his fellow conspirators with so delicate a mission, creeps into the park surrounding the house and climbs in his stocking-feet to the roof of the veranda upon which Florence Gray's bedroom window opens. Florence, only half asleep, hears someone tampering with her window. Too terror-stricken to scream, she leaps from her bed and then to the window. Braine, his object attained, has gone. Florence picks up the envelope and tears it open. Its contents have not the ring of sincerity but Florence is too eager to clasp her father in her arms to long consider what she believes may only be her own false suspicion. Down at the entrance to the mansion Jones, the butler, opens the door to find A. Leo Stevens, the aeronaut, with a message for him. Braine, creeping across the lawn, sees the balloonist talking with the butler, but in his hurry to escape attaches little importance to the circumstance. Prevented by the note's caution from confiding her doubts to Miss Farlow, her companion, Florence is undecided as to what to do. Her desire to see her parent wins over her suspicions, however, and that evening a heavily veiled young woman steals out through the grounds of the Hargreaves mansion toward the address named in the note. She finds 84 Grove Street an apartment house in a secluded and unpretentious neighborhood. She makes her way from landing to landing until she reaches the door leading into the apartment on the top floor. A knock soon brings what appears to be a venerable old man to the door. Florence is undecided what to do, but as the old man bears a striking resemblance to the painting of her father the girl does not resist when he clasps her in his arms. Something rings false and the timid girl is quick to sense the dissonance. Her suspicions are verified only too quickly. The conversation too quickly passes to the subject of Hargraves' wealth. The question convinces the girl that she has been trapped, that the man to whom she is talking is a cleverly disguised impostor. While the latter's back is turned, she stealthily tries a door behind her. It is locked. When she tries another door in the room the stranger leads her away from it with a benevolent smile. While he had his arms about her Florence was horrified to see in the mantel mirror five faces peering through a door. The false father leaves the room. She hears him planning with the conspirators to torture her into a confession. She sees one of the men struggling with a writhing python which is to be freed in the room with her if she does not tell them what they want to know. The false father seizes Florence by her throat at the moment the conspirators enter with the python. Florence seizes a chair and smashes the only lamp in the room. While the conspirators grope about, the girl quickly shuts herself in a cabinet built into the wall. The gangsters believe, when they discover her absence, that she has thrown herself from the window. But, as they peer out, a noise behind them makes them turn, only to see Florence dash through the open doorway into the hall. She locks the door behind her and flees to safety.—Moving Picture World synopsis
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By what name was The Million Dollar Mystery (1914) officially released in Canada in English?
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