David Cummins is trapped in a dry cistern, wondering whether death will come to him there. A flashback to a week earlier unfolds the sequence of misfortunes that landed him in this perilous hole, tracing the uneasy path from street-born despair to a life-changing, high-stakes impersonation.
[David Cummins] is a bright but down-and-out vagrant who catches the eye of a police officer one night as he gazes longingly at a revolver displayed in a pawn shop window. A sharp reply to the officer’s question lands him in jail on a charge of “no visible means of support.” The following day, the judge’s sentence looms: either [$50 or 30 days]. But fate shifts when a lawyer, Philip Cagle, steps in with an unusual proposal. He explains that the missing estate of a wealthy man, Malcolm Taylor, looms over a legal question—Taylor has vanished for seven years and is about to be declared legally dead, a contingency that would complicate the lives of those left behind. The bargain is startling: if David will impersonate the missing man, he will be paid a substantial sum, and after some bargaining, the amount is settled at a far larger figure. They drive to the missing man’s opulent mansion perched near a cliff, and David must convincingly fool three key people: the man’s wife, Evelyn Taylor; the man’s brother Calder Taylor, and the brother’s wife Nadine Taylor, played by the respective cast.
The plan encounters immediate tension as Calder, the resentful brother, makes his dislike crystal clear, and Evelyn is undeniably wary, if not outright cold, toward the stranger who bears Taylor’s name. It is soon clear that Malcolm’s final years were anything but peaceful, and Nadine also carries secrets of her own. The test of trust begins in earnest when Nadine notices irregularities—specifically, the absence of the familiar wrist scars that would have marked David as an imposter. She tries to leverage this inconsistency for profit, offering to stay silent in exchange for a share of the estate. David relays the situation to [Philip Cagle], who makes a call that unsettles Nadine even further. The plot thickens when Nadine agrees to meet him at a lonely spot on the estate, but her attempt to double-cross the impersonator ends fatally as she is killed and dumped from the cliff into the ocean. The authorities chalk her death up to an accident, and the impersonation seems to hold—until the web of deceit begins to tighten around everyone involved.
As events unfold, the tension crescendos: Cagle, intent on securing the payoff and protecting his own interests, drugs David and leaves him in the cistern to perish amid the bones of Malcolm Taylor, who lies dead beside him. David crawls out, his resolve hardening as he realizes the dangerous game he has walked into. Meanwhile, Calder is shown the precarious nature of Nadine’s death, with Evelyn increasingly uneasy and ready to abandon the mansion and the life that came with it. She confronts Calder at Nadine’s favorite cliffside spot, accusing him of murder, and a struggle erupts as Calder attempts to push her into danger. David, newly escaped from the cistern, rushes to intervene as Evelyn’s screams pierce the night. He manages to disable Calder with a flash of quick thinking and a nighttime ambush, allowing Evelyn a chance to escape his grasp.
The confrontation with Philip Cagle comes to a head as Cagle pulls a gun, and a distant police siren cues a dramatic turn of events. Cagle had phoned the authorities to stage a getaway for Calder, hoping to pin Nadine’s death on accident and to seize the fortune for himself. In the resulting struggle, David uses the moment to invert the escape, turning out the lights so Cagle’s shots miss, and a pursuit ensues. Angel, the estate dog, remains a constant alarming presence, tracking Cagle to the cistern’s edge where their confrontation ends in a violent tumble. The dog’s exertions drive Cagle toward a fatal end as he falls into the cistern, pulling the final thread of the scheme taut.
In the end, the truth comes to light, and the various lies unravel before the watching police. The confession frees Evelyn from the fear of exposure, and she reveals she can now return to [David Cummins], with forgiveness and a renewed, if guarded, affection. The film closes on a note of quiet resolution, where justice and humanity converge after a sequence of deceit, danger, and near-tragic misadventure, leaving the uneasy truth of the past laid bare for all to see.
