The handicapped John Tuthill Crane is seized by his mother with "cannibal love". The heavily rich woman knows how to arrange his life in such a way that he is and remains dependent on her in every way. In his 37th year, John meets a girl on a vacation trip who also claims him completely for herself. She persuades him to murder his mother and he agrees. But at the moment when his lover and him want to throw his mother from a train running over a viaduct, John becomes weak, and his mother and him together plunge John's lover into the depths.