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A conservative middle aged professor engages in a relationship with a femme fatale, he's plunged into a nightmarish world of blackmail and murder.
—duke1029
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Gotham College professor Wanley and his friends become obsessed with the portrait of a woman in the window next to the men's club. Wanley happens to meet the woman while admiring her portrait, and ends up in her apartment for talk and a bit of champagne. Her boyfriend bursts in and misinterprets Wanley's presence, whereupon a scuffle ensues and the boyfriend gets killed. In order to protect his reputation, the professor agrees to dump the body and help cover up the killing, but becomes increasingly suspect as the police uncover more and more clues and a blackmailer begins leaning on the woman.
—Ed Sutton <esutton@mindspring.com>
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Having waved his holidaying family off to Maine and after having a couple of drinks at the private men's club, the middle-aged and very composed psychology professor, Richard Wanley, stops to admire once again Alice Reed's mysteriously alluring portrait in the store-front window of the adjacent art gallery. Suddenly, Wanley sees the same woman in the flesh--and as one drink leads to another in the charming lady's apartment--an unforeseen act of blind jealousy combined with a brief moment of weakness will result in a hideous murder committed in self-defence. Has the esteemed friend and unimpeachable academic the courage to call the police or will he do anything for the cruelly beautiful woman in the window?
—Nick Riganas
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Richard Wanley, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Gotham College in New York, is on his own as his wife and children are away for the summer. He and his two best friends, physician Michael Barkstane and DA Frank Lalor, have all admired the painting of the beautiful woman in a store window. So Wanley is pleasantly surprised that he meets the woman late one evening as he stands admiring the portrait on his own, she who invites him to her apartment for an innocent drink to view some sketches of her done by the same artist. Wanley's plan to boast to his friends about meeting her changes when their quiet evening is interrupted by the unexpected entrance of her jealous and violent boyfriend. In being attacked by the man, Wanley ends up killing him in a case of self defense. Instead of calling the police, Wanley is able to convince the woman that they should hide the fact of the killing as they both have too much to lose in the process with neither of them outwardly being tied to the dead man or each other: she believes nobody knows that she and the dead man even knew each other let alone dated as he refused to go out together in public and probably made sure no one ever saw him enter her apartment; she is even sure the name he gave her, Frank Howard, is not his real name; and between her and Wanley, all either knows about the other is Wanley eventually discovering her name being Alice Reed and where she lives. Despite not knowing anything about police procedure in murder investigations, Wanley offers to take care of disposing of the body while she destroys any evidence of either him or the dead man ever having been in her apartment, after which they will never have to see each other again. Wanley is able to dispose of the body in the woods, it which he knows will eventually be found with no ties back to them. Things take a turn when the dead man is found and his identity is divulged, and as Lalor is placed in charge of the investigation for his office, he who continually fills in his friends on what he and the police discover from evidence, which ends up being much more than Wanley would have ever imagined.
—Huggo
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When the family of Gotham College Professor Richard Wanley travels, he meets with his close friends Dr. Michael Barkstane and District Attorney Frank Lalor in a club for talking. Wanley is fascinated with the portrait of a young woman in the next door window, and they discuss about affairs and middle-age crisis while drinking. When Wanley leaves the club, he walks to the window to admire the picture once more and he meets Alice Reed, who was the model of the painting. She invites him for a drink and they end the night in her apartment for seeing sketches of Alice made by the same artist. While drinking champagne, her temperable lover arrives and misunderstands the presence of Richard, hitting and suffocating him. In self-defense, Richard stabs the man with a pair of scissors on the back and kills him. They decide to get rid off the body, dumping the body in the woods and destroying the evidences, but when they are blackmailed by the scum Heidt, Professor Wanley tells Alice that there are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer, all of them with a high price.
—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Professor Richard Wanley, at the university's psychology department, lectures about the homicidal impulse. But the subject is about to become closer to him than he could have imagined. Standing before a display window and admiring a painting of a beautiful woman leads him to meet the subject of the artwork. Wanley's dull life is about to take a turn toward the adventure he craves--or thinks he craves until he gets it. In the woman's apartment, a man suddenly storms in and attacks him. The woman hands Wanley a pair of scissors to defend himself. And suddenly Wanley has a body to dispose of. Meanwhile, Wanley's two friends prove to be fateful. One is a doctor who can prescribe him a sleeping potion. The other is the district attorney investigating a man's disappearance. And a stranger with a penchant for blackmail may seal his fate.
—J. Spurlin
