MORTMAIN

New York: Scribners - Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928. Book. Very Good. Hardcover. First Printing - First Thus. 12mo. 314 pp. First Thus - re-issues the 1907 Appleton edition. Green patterned cloth decorated in gilt on the spine. Light wear at the corners of the boards with fading in the gilt on the spine; short tear along the edge of the rear pastedown; hinges tight, gutters intact; no interior markings; no dustjacket. Illustrated with seven black and white plates by uncredited artists, all present and accounted for. Arthur Train was reasonably well known for his legal thrillers and courtroom intrigue, maybe the first but definitely not the last lawyer to write about what he knew. Mortmain was filmed in 1915, directed by Theodore Marston and starring Robert Edeson, Donald Hall, Edward Elkas, Joseph Weber, Muriel Ostriche, Karin Norman and others. Surgeon Crisp announces to his student doctors and friends that he has solved the problem of limb-grafting, and shows proofs as he successfully grafts a paw from one cat onto another. Among those deeply interested is Mortmain, a friend of Dr. Crisp's. Mortmain is a gentleman of leisure and collector of rare art subjects and is heavily in debt to his friend, Gordon Russell. He is warned of that debt by Russell's lawyer, a friend of Mortmain's. While Russell at first has no desire to call in the loans, when the two men become rivals for the affections of Russel's ward, Bella Forsythe, things change....