The Toast of Death (1915)

• 75%
• 1915
• Drama
• Scott Sidney
• Thomas H. Ince
• Harry Keenan
• Louise Glaum
• Herschel Mayall

Mlle. Poppea, of the Imperial Ballet, had fascinated all Calcutta. But most conspicuous among her devotees was Captain Drake, of the Royal Singapore Blues. It was not so generally known that Prince Yar Khan, of Her Majesty's Bengalese Dragoons, also was an ardent suitor of this Circe of the West. Drake's and the dancer's infatuation was mutual. One evening, awaiting him Poppea sat before coil upon coil of Indian pearls. "To the fairest of the fair," read the card in the casket, "from her devoted slave, Yar Khan." Captain Drake made his entrance. She was Drake's, she told the Englishman, and his alone. A few weeks later, Poppea held in her hand Yar Khan's letter of proposal. "He is a prince," she whispered to herself. "He is rich. Why not?" Within the hour, Yar Khan rode away from their interview. Poppea and consented to marry him. And simultaneously in the perfumed, dim-curtained chamber of Poppea, Drake was demanding the meaning of the priceless, strange ring on her finger. As he learned the truth he turned away. For a moment she searched him with her great, lustrous eyes. Then, putting her face close to his, she whispered, "Need my marriage make any difference to us?" After the honeymoon. Prince Yar Khan and his bride received their "mutual" friend many times at the palace. Drake came and went with the full confidence of Poppea's husband. Then, unexpectedly, the Prince was ordered south. Yar Khan was chagrined and sorrowful that he must take his bride into the sweltering southland. They had been gone about a month when, one day, Captain Drake was handed a letter. "And I'm sick of it," the letter concluded, "sick of the heat, the greasy natives, and being worshiped by a fool. If you don't come to me I shall go mad. Poppea." The "mutual" friend, absent from the army at Calcutta on a plea of ill health, was made extraordinarily welcome by Prince Yar Khan. Then, one morning, the Prince, entering his wife's room, saw on the candle-stand by her bed a heap of cigar ashes. The awakening was swift and terrible. True to the code of the Orient, he determined to work secretly. That evening he entrapped the lovers together. Placing a guard over them, Yar Khan retired to his study. He poured out two identical glasses of wine. Then, into one of these he dropped a quantity of arsenic. Poppea and Drake were led before him. "One of these is harmless," he addressed the Englishman, "the other fatal. My wife will choose for you." At last she waveringly held out toward Drake one of the glasses. Ceremoniously, the two men drained the fatal toast. The Indian prince still stood, statue-like and smiling, when with a sudden, horrible writhe of his body. Drake fell over on the table, dead.