Time and Again

A girl fed up with the torture of her stepmother fled to her maternal uncle's village where she fell in love with a rich boy.

Three short stories. Prague finally sees the approval of the subway construction. Thousands of individuals took part in preparing, course and finalizing construction of subway and their lives crossed at certain points of this construction.

Marjorie North, a department store clerk, falls in love and has an affair with the store owner's son, Gordon Trenwith, but realizes when her baby is born without a name that he meant only to use her as a plaything. Having turned down John Hayward, a struggling young lawyer, in the hope that Gordon would marry her, Marjorie finds herself alone until Claire Morgan and her new husband, Jerry Thompson, take her in. After several years, during which Marjorie's child is killed, John, now a successful attorney, discovers her whereabouts and, imagining that she originally rejected him because he was poor, again asks for her hand. Ashamed of her past, she refuses him with no explanation, but when she learns that Gordon plans to marry John's sister, she finally confesses everything in order to save the girl. In the subsequent fight between Gordon and John, the villain is killed, but at the trial Gordon's secretary confesses that he killed his employer to settle a score of his own concerning his wife's honor. John forgives Mary and they finally marry.

The story of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, master of dramatic points and surprisingly unfolding stories, depicts an early evening of Alfredo Traps, a successful business traveler. Our hero is returning from a very successful business trip on which he has negotiated lucrative contracts for his company. On the way, he misses his car. The repair will take until morning. Traps heads to a hotel, the only one in a small town. But the hotel turns out to be booked. The receptionist advises Traps that the owner, retired judge Wucht, sometimes lets rejected guests stay in the villa next door. This brings Traps not only to a beautiful old villa, but also to a strange old man's company. As they do every week, former Attorney General Zorn, former lawyer Kummer and former executioner Pilet, together with their host Wucht, host a lavish dinner party. And to make the feasting more interesting, they play trial by ordeal. The cases they usually discuss seriously are staged in a purely hypothetical way. Today, however, the old men have a unique opportunity - working with "live material", namely Alfredo Traps.