Albert Campion is called in to investigate when a ring of international thieves stand ready to steal the Gyrth Chalice, a pricelss goblet held in trust for the British Crown by the Gyrth family and protected by a curse.

Albert Campion investigates the relationship between the murder of Paul Barnabas and the disappearance of his cousin, Tom, twenty years earlier.

When the guests at an old country house in Suffolk decide to test the sanguineous legend of the Black Dudley dagger, the fatal outcome results in Albert Campion's confrontation with the century's most diabolic criminal mind.

Fact catches up with fiction when the secret of telepathic communication is discovered. But the device at the centre of the mystery is in the possession of two schoolboys and whether they stole it or invented it, there are powerful interests who will kill to get hold of it. Albert Campion faces as deadly a challenge as any in his career.

When Averna, a tiny but oil-rich principality on the Adriatic Sea, becomes a vital port after an earthquake, Albert Campion is called in to track down proof that the land belongs to an aristocratic family, believed long died out. With an unscrupulous financier and his hired thugs also on the trail, Campion and his confederates must unravel the mystery, while defending the Fitton family, claimants to the title, in the strange Suffolk village of Pontisbright....