A lonely piece of beach front property sits vacant, perched high on a cliff overlooking the coast of Maine standing some forgotten eternal vigil, waiting for someone or something to relight the hearths and bring the old house back to it's former glory. A wealthy dilettante named Joyce Brockford purchases the dilapidated sentinel, with it's maritime secrets and it's checkered past in the hopes of restoring the old place as a summer home, away from his parents prying eyes.

Finding some strange artifacts in the home Mr. Brockford enlists the help of a Boston based private investigator Jack Sulivan, who had recently been in the dailies as part of a 30 year old missing persons case involving the kidnap and apparent murder of orphans by a Mr Walter Corbitt. Along with Sulivan, the reporter who cracked the case Robert Fisk, a P.I. friend of Jack's Jacob Stride, a doctor, also involved in the Corbitt affair, Robert Mcfly, the mysterious drifter mentioned in the papers Raymond Miller and an architect Walthrop Chaucer brought in to assets the structural integrity of the house set out for the secluded house from Boston as a storm rolled in off the Atlantic.