Le Poison Hindou

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A comparatively mild horror. A chemist discovers that his wife has deceived him. Talking pleasantly to her and her lover he offers them sweetmeats, explaining that the taste of vanilla in them is an ingenious dodge of a brother chemist. Then he relates a story from Kipling of a Brahman who discovered his wife's infidelity and induced her and her lover to eat sweetmeats which really contained a subtle poison with the effect of decomposing the spinal marrow and making them paralytic. By this time they are terrified; he throws off the mask, declares that that is what he has done to them; gives them five minutes to decide which one of them shall die and which be saved, and goes out. There follows a scene of recrimination, ending in the lover trying to kill the lady. Back comes the husband, points the moral to his erring wife, tells them there was no prison in the sweetmeats - their sensations was simply due to fear - and turns them out of his house. It is crudely written, with no artistic merit, but free from anything to make it impossible. Recommended for licence. G. S. Street