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"The Avenger" - Thomas Dixon, a general manager of a railroad, is seated in his office. Lucy Hargis (a small town acquaintance) enters. Dixon is told the story of how she was happily married in the small town when he was a civil engineer for his railroad. She was told she should be in New York studying. Thus she ran away from her husband and two children, but not with Dixon as the small town people believed. She became famous. When the play opens she was headed home because he two boys were killed in a railroad wreck. She leaves and then her husband enters, not knowing she had been there. The manager sees a revolver pointed at him by the husband who makes him sit and listen. He tells of how his two sons were killed on the manager's railroad, and that he know the manager's own son is travelling on the railroad that night. The husband has fixed the bridge to fall with the train. The father tries to call to her the train to stop but the deranged husband does not let him near the phone. When the train is due to arrive at the bridge the father collapses. The door to the office is broken open. The husband explains that the train is safe; he only wanted the manager to experience 15 minutes of what he is suffering.
The audience hardly breathed for the last ten minutes of the act, so intense was the interest. The act was given many curtains at the finale.
James Durkin did exceptionally well as the husband. As did Irving White as the manager. The plot is probably the biggest that has ever taken place in 16 minutes.
Source:
Variety 24:7 (10/21/1911)