The creek between the canal and the river flows under Ladys Stairs, a crazy wooden house inhabited by Li Yoseph known to the police as a smuggler. The neighborhood suspects he is rich, and knows he is mad. Inspector Bradley is out to break a drug-smuggling gang which operates from an old house overhanging the Thames; the gang is headed by a criminal called Mark McGill. The disappearance of young Ron Perryman whom McGill has murdered and dumped in the river gives the Inspector his ideal opportunity to begin asking questions... Edgar Wallace established his reputation as a writer of detective thrillers, a genre in which he wrote more than 170 books, with the publication of The Four Just Men.