Simon Brade, connoisseur of Chinese porcelain and talented amateur detective, is surprised to receive a visit from Stephen Lucat, a senator of the the recently ceded European nation of Tzembia. Lucat wishes Brade to investigate the murder of a scientist - an event he believes to be connected with a series of art thefts. Each of the robberies appears to have been committed by a left-shouldered man who was spotted at the scene, and who left a number of deliberately planted signatures to claim the crimes as his own. Moreover, Lucat believes these outrages to be linked in some way to a plot to instigate a revolution in Lucat's country. Initially reluctant, it is only after Brade himself becomes the latest victim of the left-shouldered thief that he agrees to travel to Tzembia, and to attend a party hosted by the mysterious Mr. Henry Smith...
Originally published in 1940, this is a vintage murder mystery thriller from the golden age of crime fiction.