Based on In the Next Room (1923 play) by Eleanor Robeson Belmont and Harriet Ford and The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet (1912 novel) by Burton E. Stevenson[1]
Aboard a ship, newspaper reporter Jim Moore falls for passenger Sandy Vantine and meets her uncle Paul, who is in possession of a small wooden chest that he believes could be a copy made by the mysterious Black Parrot, a notorious art forger. Scotland Yard inspector Colonel Piggott is also aboard, presumably on the Parrot's tail.
Jim proposes to Sandy and meets her relatives and family acquaintances. They include Madame de Charierre, the chest's rightful owner, whose maid Julia had been trying to retrieve it because a secret drawer contained compromising love letters. A police constable named Grady arrives and Jim contacts Piggott as well. Paul and another guest quickly end up dead and Piggott quickly declares everyone in the house to be a suspect.
A second hidden compartment contains priceless diamonds. Jim and Sandy realize just in time that Piggott is the Black Parrot who has been pursuing the jewels all along.
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Theodore Strauss wrote: "It is complete with standard equipment—a priceless old cabinet with secret drawers, a beribboned packet of scented letters, veiled women bearing a double identity, muffled figures silhouetted at the library window as the clock chimes midnight, and a butler with a guilt complex (probably because all the scenarists are pointing the finger of suspicion at him, but that doesn't fool us any more). But somehow each moment of suspense is merely a prelude to long-winded deductions in the library. In short, 'The Case of the Black Parrott' [sic] is on the verbose side, though there's no such bird in it."[3]
^Strauss, Theodore (1941-01-10). "The Screen: 'Hudson's Bay,' a Ponderous Epic, at the Roxy—'The Case of the Black Parrot,' at the Palace". The New York Times. p. 23.
