H. Milner Kitchin

At a reception given by Arthur Hilton at his Sussex home the conversation turns to the subject of danger, with Hilton recalling a case in which he was involved as a Natal police commissioner. In it there were three guilty persons, but only one of them was hanged; the other two were sentenced to long terms, vowing vengeance on Hilton. Unknown to him, the same two men are now among his guests, and are determined to have their revenge.

This story of the British Silent Service operating on the coast of China finds Tom Fellows, captain of an opium-smuggling ship, going into a notorious Chinese joint called "The House of a Thousand Delights," where he finds a beautiful girl, Mary Blake, bound and captive. He starts a brawl, rescues Mary in the mêlée that follows, and then loses her when she flees to a hotel. He follows her and finds she is mixed up in some mysterious activity. However, he knows more about her than she does him (because he isn't what he is supposed to be - and she isn't, either), he stays close by, even to the point of using a machine-gun to dispel a mob at a Chinese temple.

Behind the doors of a foreign government's embassy in Washington D. C., a group of royal loyalists is attempting to raise funds to aid a counter-revolution and restore the deposed emperor in a new republic. They are led by an unknown leader called 'The Eagle."