Alec Maitland, after several years abroad, returns to London down on his luck, when he meets a former friend, Charles Biddulph, an official in one of the chief Government Offices in Whitehall. Biddulph, aware of Maitland's special gifts and at the moment in need of a secret agent whose connection with the Ministry would not be suspected, offers him a commission to ferret out certain strange happenings which threaten a British Crown Colony in Africa. Maitland, temporarily living over a tobacco shop in Soho and selling photographic enlargements for a dealer, accepts with alacrity. But he soon finds the job much more difficult and dangerous than it was represented by Biddulph, when the scene moves from London to the Scottish grouse moor.

The tale is one of the open air, of wits pitted against wits, of bloodshed, of hair-breadth escapes, of flight and pursuit, of intrigue in high places, finishing with a piece of neat detection and a surprise both for the guileless Maitland and the reader.

Night in Glengyle was published in 1933.