Chain of Circumstances

Keith Fox, a struggling young American playwright in Paris, has just completed his new play but is very secretive about it, even with his two closest friends - Bonnie Lenox, a charming and resourceful girl who loves Keith deeply despite his all-consuming ambition - and Basil Worthing, a young Englishman, an ex-actor now semi-beatnik

Into this picture comes a successful Broadway playwright, Robin Meredith, who needs someone to type his new play and accepts Bonnie's suggestion of Keith

But when he starts to type Robin's play, Keith is horrified to realize that it deals with the same historical subject as his own

It drives him to a desperate decision - to do away with Robin - and further, to appropriate Robin's play as his own

So he evolves an elaborate "perfect crime" (with Basil's unwitting assistance)

But Robin's dying words throw him into a turmoil: The handwritten script which Robin had given him for typing is not the only copy, and now Keith will never know when or where the other carbon copy may appear to condemn him

The chain of circumstances tightens even more around him when the crafty Basil begins to piece together many curious little discrepancies, with a view to a fat blackmail income

From this point on, the action takes swift and startling turns

The dramatic irony of the last five minutes can't be revealed here, but it's designed to hold an audience breathless until literally the last line