The Witching Hour

Jack Brookfield, a famous gentleman gambler of Louisville, Ky., finds that he is possessed of remarkable psychic power. His intuition in card games and other games of chance seems to be the result of mental telepathy or mindreading and his power over other men is a combination of hypnotism and will. He dominates everyone with whom he comes in contact. As a young man, Brookfield was deeply in love with Helen who answered his proposal with a request that he give her a written promise never to gamble again. Brookfield resented her distrust of him and they drifted apart. Years afterward, Brookfield, now conducting a famous gambling house to which only the wealthy come, finds that Helen, who has been married and is now a widow, is again in Louisville with her son Clay, a youth of twenty-one. Brookfield sees in the eyes of the boy the reflection of his mother, and his old love for the mother is awakened. Brookfield gives a theater and supper party in honor of Helen's return to Louisville, and while the guests are enjoying themselves, one of the habitues of Brookfield's place intrudes and makes himself obnoxious to both the men and women of the party. He has been annoying Clay Whipple ever since Clay first came to Brookfield's gambling house, and the night of the party, this annoyance reaches its height. For generations, the Whipple family has had a strange obsession in the form of a fear and unexplained dread of the sight of a cat's eye, and this fear is most marked in Clay. At the dinner party. Denning, the pest, is wearing a large cat's eye pin, and as he torments Clay, the boy's eyes fall upon the dreaded cat's eye. Immediately he becomes half-crazed but tries to control himself. Clay rushes from the room, only to be followed by the drunken, leaving Denning, who is bound that the boy shall look at the pin. Finally Clay, driven to desperation, picks up a heavy ivory tusk, which Brookfield uses for a paper cutter, and kills Denning. One of the guests of the party is Frank Hardmuth, the District Attorney of Louisville, who is in love with Brookfield's niece, Viola Campbell. Hardmuth is jealous of Clay, who is the real object of Viola's affection. As a witness to the murder, Hardmuth sees a means of putting Clay out of the way and he conducts the trial himself, obtaining a verdict of guilty, and a sentence of death. There seems to be no appeal from the verdict until Clay's mother is looking over some old letters finds one from George Prentice to her mother. Georg