As the story opens, the sound of a girls voice in a single cry of horror rings through the halls of a dismal old mansion on the Baltimore Pike. The rescuers who break in the door find Malachi Trent's niece staring spellbound at his dead body. Obviously a death by accident! Yet Jerningham, the dramatist, sensing the grimmest drama of his career, proves that the accident was murder and would become the prelude to another Murder Yet to Come.

For three perilous days and nights a blind struggle is waged against the Satanic cleverness of the unknown murderer within the household, to prevent the second crime. The story of these thrilling hours is vividly complete that nothing need prevent you (if you like to stop and work things out), from beating Jerningham himself to the solution-nothing that is, except the sheer impossibility of leaving aside the book before the end.

This novel won a national Detective Murder Mystery Contest in 1929.