Thomas Pitt is the powerful head of Britain's Special Branch, and some people fear that he may have been promoted beyond his abilities. He, too, has moments of self-doubt, especially as rumors reach him of a plot to blow up connections on the Dover-London rail line, - on which Austrian duke Alois Habsburg is soon to travel to visit his royal English kin. Why would anyone destroy an entire train to kill one person, or are the rumors designed to distract Pitt from an even more devastating plot?