The film is based on the French novel L'Homme qui assassina, by Claude Farrère and the play of the same name by Pierre Frondaie.

[3] As described in a film magazine,[4] summoned in her desperation to help her in her anguish at the threatened separation from her child, American soldier Colonel Richard Loring (Powell) is witness to the blackguard conspiracy of Lord Archibald Falkland (Herbert) to dishonor his wife.

Lady Falkland (Murray) married the English ambassador to Turkey to satisfy her father's greed for wealth, and was a youthful sweetheart of Loring's in America.

Their romance was shattered by her enforced marriage to the Ambassador, who insists on keeping in their home in Constantinople his mistress Lady Edith (Tell), an English woman.

These two plot the compromise of the wife in a situation with Prince Cerniwicz (Harlam) and her separation from her boy Little Archibald (Johnson), and the outcome is the murder of Lord Falkland by the Colonel.