Killed Against Orders

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Odanah Durand and her father are in their beautiful home admiring Durand's fine collection of ivories, when Bully Harris is admitted. Odanah greets him coldly apparently displeased at his appearance. Durand greets him cordially, and after a whispered conversation. Bully leaves. Odanah attends a ball at the residence of Mrs. Rice and as the snap on a diamond bracelet which her father has given her has broken, she tells the maid to put the bracelet in the dresser drawer with other jewels. Subsequently, the maid finds the drawer open, and a general alarm is given. The district attorney, Wallace Maynard, whom Odanah meets at the hall, calls the police. At her home, later in the evening, Odanah sees her father enter through a window and immediately he hands her the jewels stolen at the Rice home. She hides them in her gown and when the police search, they find nothing. Odanah loves Maynard, and she tells her father that she can never marry a decent man while he continues to be a thief. Durand, a master criminal, who is idolized by the gang, goes to them and tells them that he is through. They plead with him and he consents to assist a millionaire that evening. The police are tipped off, and Odanah to save her father, hurries to the marked residence to warn him. The owner of the place is killed by one of the robbers, and Durand, who did not fire the shot, is caught while trying to save Odanah, who has entered the house to save him. At the trial, Maynard, whose political future rests on whether the master criminal is convicted, tricks Odanah into offering condemning evidence, and her father is sentenced to life imprisonment. Odanah then becomes a hardened criminal herself, realizing that the man she loved has tricked her. At the head of the gang her father was once the leader of, she carries through a scheme whereby she extorts $5,000 from a wealthy dry goods merchant, against whom she threatens to bring action for $20,000 for false arrest for shoplifting. Odanah pities the detective who caught her in the store and who is discharged because of the case, and place an envelope containing money under the door of his flat. She meets Maynard in the shoplifting case and scorns him. She asks him why he doesn't investigate the case, and he tells her he loves her. She gives him no encouragement whatever. Finally, she tells him he may call upon her on one condition, viz., that he effect her father's release from prison. He is influenced wholly by his love for her and gets a pardon from the Governor for Durand, who returns home. Odanah has loved Maynard all through her terrible ordeal, and gladly receives him into her life. Although she is looked upon with contempt by her erstwhile friends and acquaintances Odanah is happy in the realization of the fact that her beloved father has been freed and the object of her love returned to her.