A staff reporter records the dictated account of a man who says he knows the true sequence of strange events tied to a lonely mansion. The narrative presents two enterprising partners who acquire a peculiar inventor's device, the intense attachment that grows between the inventor and a new neighbor, and the circumstances that culminate in a brutal crime within the old house. Subsequent sections follow the police investigation, the reactions of those involved, and uncanny interventions by persons no longer living, as the informant’s recollection attempts to assemble a single explanation for the baffling affair.