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Learn more- Grant, police reporter on The New York Chronicle, is assigned to interview Jenny Dobbs on her sixtieth birthday. Jenny, the richest woman in the United States, has the reputation of being the meanest. She refuses Grant the interview, but his disappointment is assuaged when he makes the acquaintance of Jenny's niece, Claire. "Two-Spot" Thomey, a confidence man, learns that Jenny has in her possession two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of bonds. While she is on her way to the butcher shop to do her own shopping, he kidnaps her in a taxi and takes her to a room in a tenement in Throgg's Neck. There he fails to force her in sign an order for the bonds, and determines to keep her a prisoner until she agrees to sign. Worried over her aunt's failure to return from the butcher shop, Claire seeks the assistance of her friend, Tom Grant. He promises to look her aunt up, but the next day he has nothing but failure to report. He takes Claire out to lunch in the Shanghai Café. There Grant sees a man whom he recognizes as Phil Kelsey, who poses as a doctor, but who, in reality, is a confidence man. Thomey enters and sits down at the table with Kelsey. Grant overhears him say, "Yes, old Jenny Dobbs, I've got her up at Throgg's Neck, but I can't get her to come across." Kelsey says, "Take me to her; I think I can make her see things your way." When they leave the café and jump into a taxi, Grant and Claire follow them. Arrived at Throgg's Neck, Grant sees the two conspirators enter the house and lock the door after them. But he manages to gain a point of vantage by scaling fire-escapes to the roof of the next building. From here he sees Kelsey trying to force Jenny to sign the order by threatening her with a small, sharp knife. Grant appropriates the flagpole from the roof, winds the rope around it, stretches the pole across to the roof of the house in which Jenny is a prisoner, and by catching hold of the end of the rope and jumping off the roof, Grant is able to lower himself to Jenny's window and at the same time swing across to her building. He leaps through the window, just in time to save her. Claire has, meanwhile, gone for the police, who arrive and make Thomey and Kelsey prisoners. Jenny produces the bonds out of her old umbrella, awards Grant with fifty cents for his trouble, and is persuaded to consent to an interview.
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