Everyone knows that the late Lord Grimsdale's son died years ago in a shipwreck. Now, here is a man as large as life proclaiming himself Grimsdale's true heir and thus owner of the world's largest caloric fluid refining operation. Miss Gladys Dunchurch does not wish to involve herself. She is busy worrying about this new recording machine and how that will change her beloved show business? But to help her friend Charlie Decharles, she must discover how this mysterious Claimant is connected to a mystical cult, the government's new Office of Statistical Tabulation, a madman in an asylum who claims to travel through time, an attack on the first diplomatic meeting between Earth and the Moon, and two extremely exasperated ghosts.
