Flattery

Petted and pampered all his life, Reginald Mallory has grown to manhood easily swayed by flattery. On the verge of an outstanding career in civil engineering, he is appointed city engineer by a corrupt cartel of politicians and contractors, who use his vanity to further their crooked ends. Mallory is wheedled into signing a contract for the construction of a new city hall that will provide the minimum of quality at the maximum of cost. Everyone loses faith in Mallory except Betty Biddle, his sweetheart, who is the daughter of the president of a construction company. Mallory appears to have turned crooked, but he finally demonstrates his honesty--first by producing enough documentary evidence to convict the cartel of fraud and then by blowing up the partly finished city hall to demonstrate its substandard construction.