Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk are private investigators. They are not only partners, but close friends - that is, until the day Marty Hopkirk is run down by a car and killed. Everyone assumes it is an accident - until the startled Jeff Randall is faced by Hopkirk, suddenly materialising to tell his former partner that the killing was murder, the outcome of a divorce case the firm was working on for Mrs Fay Sorrensen.

Jeff Randall is confined to his bed. He has met with an accident - a fall from a balcony - and he's therefore a captive audience when Marty Hopkirk insists on telling of a case he handled entirely on his own, without mentioning it to Jeff, before he met his death and became a ghost. Jeff is forced to listen, disbelievingly, to a remarkable spy drama which began with a telephone call asking for him.

Jean Hopkirk is the subject of some strange psychic phenomena when efforts are made to persuade her that her late husband is trying to contact her, but why?

It's hard to trust a ghost when he says he has seen a murder and you then find that the victim is still alive. Jeff Randall doesn't know what to believe when his ghost detective partner Marty Hopkirk repeatedly reports dramatic events which appear to be without foundation.

Death comes to one member of a mind-reading act when reaching the Russian Roulette part of the turn when his partner asks a member of the audience to load the gun. One cartridge is live - the others blank. The routine has been performed time and time again, but on this occasion the live cartridge is in the wrong chamber. The victim is Fernandez, and his partner Abel is accused of the murder.

Aristocrat Harold Pargiter and his Lords rob the British vault for a document proving that his family titles and deeds were stolen by King John in the 13th century, and his succession to the throne.