Sam Adler appeared one afternoon at Marion Hayden’s door trying for the big payoff—Blackmail. The next day he was dead—paid off with a knife in the back—and for the Haydens the nightmare had just begun.

Adler’s story had been stunning enough before—now, with State Police Lieutenant Garvey pushing hard it could mean a murder indictment for both of them. And Garvey kept the questions coming fast—questions that all reduced to one: Was Ted Corbin alive? Ted Corbin—Marion Hayden’s ex-husband, and by every evidence dead these two years in an airplane accident.

Doris Lamar knew some of the answers—but she had her own good reasons for keeping them to herself.

John Hayden didn’t have any answers—yet. But he did have two photographs and a hunch; and that was why he was traveling desperately across the country now—in search of a dead man.

For if Corbin were alive he might know all the answers—might very well be the answer.

This was John Hayden’s last chance: he had to find Corbin ... he had to find him.

The pace and tension build in every page of this tale of greed, jealousy and hatred by the dean of American mystery writers. Here is one of George Harmon Coxe’s neatest, briskest performances.