A first-person narrator traces a mystery set in motion by a brutal assault and the vanishing of a severed hand aboard ship. A reticent scholar and a secretive Eastern entourage are connected to a coveted religious relic, provoking repeated attempts to steal it and a series of strange, threatening signs. Investigations move through museum vaults, locked strong-rooms, and shadowed streets, encountering occult watchers, coded messages, and narrow escapes. Alliances shift as identities are revealed and the pursuit culminates in violent confrontations that determine the relic’s fate and close the central mystery.