An old seafaring stranger with a heavy, locked op chest turns up from nowhere seeking lodgings with Hugh Moneylaws and his mother in Berwick-upon-Tweed, a rural English town bordering Scotland.
One night he sends Hugh, a young solicitor's clerk, to meet a man instead of him, as he is too ill, but when Hugh arrives at the destination, he finds a man murdered. Hugh's law firm gets involved to resolve the mystery.
Joseph Smith Fletcher (7 February 1863 – 30 January 1935) was an English journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction, and was one of the most prolific English writers of detective fiction.