Lois Williams watched old Mrs. Montfort sign her will and had no foreboding of the terror that was to follow. At most, she felt a small chill, which she absent-mindedly attributed to the damp coolness of Mrs. Montfort's pre-Revolutionary house.

Yet later she is startled by an odd similarity between the voice of a young woman at the village inn and the remembered voice of the old woman. Explaining the event to Bob Oliver, editor of the Glenville Advertiser, Lois tries to call it coincidence. So does Bob—until he learns of a fatal mugging in Greenwich Village and has a talk with sad-faced Detective Nathan Shapiro of the Manhattan Police Force.

Then they are caught in a mystery of elusive identities, disjointed telephone calls—and an unnamed terror that pursues them down a narrow, winding road and into a blinding storm. They are, in fact, involved in big-M murder, playing a defensive game against a ruthless killer.