Double vie剧情介绍

George Landal and his wife, Blanche, were newly wedded. He was a young physician with brilliant prospects and splendid social connections. Blanche was the only daughter of Mr. Ravenne, a man of great wealth. One evening, as George is leaving for the club, he takes Blanche in his arms to kiss her goodnight. Her eyes, rapt with love, look into his and he in mock seriousness tells her he can read her very thoughts. She makes no reply; he has hypnotized her. It was a power he had mastered in his medical student days and now as an experiment he leaves her there while he runs off for a few hours at his club. Later in the evening be returns and arouses her from her hypnotic state by a mere snap of his finger. She awakes as though naught had happened. Night after night he would repeat this, then go to his club. He was losing heavily these days at the club. Things were at a desperate pass; he must have money. Blanche's father had refused to help him out. Disgrace faced him that night at the club if he could not pay. Like those who are weak he determines on suicide. He gets his revolver. He wants to live, yet his next thought is of the disgrace to face if he does. Then comes the infernal inspiration; Blanche shall get the money he needs. He calls to her bedroom. She appears and it is but a look from him and the spell is on; her will is nil; his will is all. Now she is but a thing to command. He tells her to dress. She does. He tells her to go to her father's home and up to his bedroom. There she is to take the keys from under his pillow, then go down to the library and unlock the safe, take out a sum of money and return with it to him. She reaches her father's and the keys are soon secured. The safe is opened and most mechanically he is counting out the money he has told her to obtain. She has turned to go when her father appears, having heard her come down the stairs. The father attempts to bar her path and she, whom a mere schoolboy could otherwise have toyed with, thinks her powerful father aside with the ease which accrues to abnormal strength. As he falls he strikes the heavy carved table leg with his head and she passes out of the room. Landal receives her as she returns, takes the money and leads her to her room. When she is back in bed he revives her from her state of hypnotic coma and soon she is again in a state of natural sleep. Early in the morning there comes an urgent message from the doctor at her father's home. Her father is dead. She hurries over to the home and looks long and with only that love which grief can prove, on the face that she had loved so well. The doctors decided he had died during an apoplectic spell. Landal left her alone in her sorrow upon the pretense of attending a Medical Congress. Her health commenced to fail and she sent for the old doctor who had brought her into the world. He found her muttering incoherencies and her actions were strange. There is but one way to learn what caused her babble and that is to hypnotize her. He did and he heard her relate the horrible, terrifying truth. Landal returns and his actions toward Blanche spur the old doctor into a decision. All are attending an evening function when the old doctor proposes that Blanche consent to be a subject for a hypnotic test. Landal objects, though when pressed for his reason, dare not give it. Blanche is brought under the spell and recounts the incidents which caused her father's death. Landal attempts to escape, but the doctor has thoughtfully had a detective at hand and he is arrested.