In the late 1930s, British writer Peter Talbot is amazed and amused to find himself recruited by the Foreign Office Secret Service. Trailing a small-time criminal named James Peter Reilly, nicknamed Spike, to Belgium, Peter finds the man ill and dying in a cheap hotel. Spike is delirious but says one thing clearly - "Maud Millicent Simpson - if I can find her, I can find you!"

Spike dies soon afterward, and on the spur of the moment, Peter decides to assume the dead man's identity. A simple numeric code coupled with a battered romance novel found in Spike's luggage yields a message: "Go to Preedo's Library, Archmount Street, on Friday. Say you expect call. Await instructions." Peter takes Spike's passport, clothes and personal possessions and leaves his own in the dead man's room. Now "Peter Talbot" is apparently dead in Belgium and "James Peter Reilly" aka Spike is travelling to London to find the mysterious Mrs. Simpson and determine why the Foreign Office is interested in her and her shady employees.

Terry Clive, the heroine of this mystery, is one of those annoying young women who populate these old books. She tells the suspects, "You know who you are. If you don't do the right thing, I shall tell everything to the police on Tuesday." Which, of course, puts her in mortal danger of being bumped off before Tuesday, and so the plot progresses.

The ending is quite good, in spite of all this silliness. Maud Millicent Simpson is a delightfully venomous character, a Cruella de Vil for adults. A fun little mystery published in 1940. ( )