Syrie Van Epp kidnaps millionaire ornithologist Christopher Vaughan, key shareholder of the Templar Costmetic Company. Syrie intends to gain control of the firm in order to exploit the unique properties of its most valuable product.
With the help of her 'pet scientist' who can raise people from the dead, Syrie plans to resurrect Scrotty - the only person who knows how to contact Sampson Whitby, 'a genius accountant'. Things don't quite work out as planned.
Harold Lemming, a client who has spent seven years searching for his missing amnesiac brother, makes his annual visit to Scrotty; the case seems to be going nowhere. Elsewhere, Syrie is eager to help the man she finds in her car to regain his lost memory after he tells her that the one thing he remembers is a phrase: 'Two million pounds'...
Queen Helena Of Morphonia comes to Britain to seek her son, King Ferdinand. In turn, both Ferdinand and Theobald Aboo, President of the International Brotherhood of Emergent Africans, want Scrotty to find Pearl, the girl with whom the King has become infatuated and who is unwittingly at the centre of a racist furore. Unsurprisingly, Syrie Van Epp has a hand in the intrigue.