The widows and children of survivors of the H.M.S. Bounty rule Pitcairn Island, fighting off sailors and intruders.

A bumbling, long-winded and crooked Southern senator, considered by some as a dark horse for the Presidency, panics his party when his tell-all diary is stolen.

Charlie Chan, with son Jimmy on a week's pass from the Army, takes up a request for help at a castle-home, miles from anywhere in the American desert south-west and inhabited by an eccentric, reclusive historian and his wife, a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia. Once there, he finds the request's legitimacy denied by all who are present, but still necessary as one houseguest has already been murdered, the other guests are at each other's throat, and the Borgia-related chatelain is suspected...