Plot Summary:It is the fate of a small frontier town, adjoining the no-man's-land where the Russians and Austrians are fighting out one of the final campaigns of World War I, to be occupied one day by the Russians, the next by the Austrians, and the inhabitants soon acquire a complacent view of the changing allegiances. To the town comes Ann Warschaska, intent on avenging the suicide of her sister, who has killed herself after being betrayed by an Austrian officer. She knows no more about his identity than the number of his room at the "Hotel Imperial". She gets a job at the hotel as a maid but soon combines this work with modeling, when an eccentric Russian, General Videnko, with a passion for painting asks her to pose for him. Breaking into the fatal Room 12, she finds Lt. Nemassey, a young Austrian officer who has taken refuge there after being separated from the army. Thinking him the betrayer of her sister, she plans to hand him over to the occupying-Russians, but relents when she learns that there are two Room 12's. The man actually guilty of the crime is a Russian spy who holds a commission in the Austrian army. Believing him to be a fellow-soldier in distress, Nenassey makes plans to help him escape, but finds out at the last minute that he is a Russian spy. A strange turn events allows Nenassey to aid Anna in her mission and rid his country of a dangerous enemy at the same time. General Videnko, meanwhile, is giving a grand-style banquet for the man who will never be able to attend another.
