The Criminal

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Young lawyer Gordon West, in love with Anna Stevens, is suddenly called out of town. Anna learns that she is expecting and begs Gordon to marry her before he leaves, but because she doesn't make the situation sufficiently clear, he puts it off until his return. When he stays longer than expected and, goaded on by her cynical relatives' words: "Young lawyers with careers don't marry poor girls," Anna disappears. Her baby is born and she leaves it in a hamper with an explanatory note on West's doorstep. Unfortunately, Jim Wells, a crook, steals the hamper, and his wife Maggie persuades him to keep the child. Maggie finds the note giving the child's name as Nell, and keeps it. Meanwhile, Gordon West returns and puts detectives on Anna's trail, unsuccessfully. Many years later, Gordon is now district attorney and hot after the gang of which Wells is the head. Nell has been forced to aid the crooks in small thefts, and Reeves, a secret service man purporting to be an insurance collector, becomes interested in her. Wells learns who Reeves really is and kills him. Nell is found on the scene with a revolver in her hand and arrested on a murder charge. Gordon West is to prosecute the case. Then he learns that Nell is his own daughter, and tells her so. Free at last to confess, Nell tells her story. It clears up everything and reunites father and daughter.