The Scorpion's Sting (1915)

Moren Masters serves his prison term and is released. He meets an old sea-faring acquaintance just returned from a voyage with a pocket full of money, and is taken by him to a low opium den run by a disreputable Chinaman. Here his evil genius appears to him and suggests that he should possess himself of his companion's earnings. Masters declares that he would sell his soul for wealth, and the evil spirit shows him an easy way. To accomplish his purpose he does not stop short of murder, and with the connivance of the Chinaman he disposes of the body and subsequently adds to his ill-gotten gains by gambling with the frequenters of the place, against whom he has the luck of the Devil. With this beginning he starts a systematic career of fraud and deception, and some time later we find him managing director of a swindling company, a member of as exclusive club, and to all appearances a respectable member of society. Here we see him despoiling the widow and the orphan, on terms of friendship with the ultra-respectable, and secretly living a life of licentious depravity. His fancy is attracted by the charms of Peggy Lofting, daughter of the Bishop of Lowden, and he is soon received by them as a welcome guest, though he is regarded with unveiled suspicion by Peg's fiancé, Gerald, a young curate, who, through the influence of the Bishop, is appointed to a fashionable West End church. Masters determines to rid himself of one whom he regards as a dangerous rival. The young curate himself does much to prejudice his hopes of advancement for he carries out the duties of his curacy with more zeal than discretion and berates his with such vigor that he is requested to transfer his services elsewhere. He finds more congenial work in the West End. To discredit him in the eyes of the Bishop and his daughter, Masters employs the services of a woman to whom he has promised marriage. Arranging that he should be discovered in a position which, to anyone credulous, might be construed as compromising, he succeeds in breaking off the engagement. An announcement in the papers of the forthcoming engagement of Masters to the daughter of the Bishop of Lowden convinces the cast-off mistress that he has no intention of carrying out his compact. She goes to his home with murder in her heart, but Masters meets her in the grounds. There is a violent struggle, and for a second time his hands are stained with blood. He rejoins his guests, but the woman's injuries are not immediately fatal. When the reception is at its height she staggers in and denounces her murderer before she falls to the ground in a dying condition. The guests attempt to seize Masters, but, breaking away from them, he escapes in a motor car. As he flies through the country his evil spirit appears at his side and Masters realizes that the time has come for him to pay the price of his worldly success. He loses control of the machine, which crashes over a steep bank and he is crushed beneath its ruins.