Ben the tramp, with his usual genius for trouble, runs into danger when he finds a dead body and decides to help out.

Ben knew that whenever his thumbs were itching, something `orrible' was about to happen. Sure enough, on one foggy afternoon of itchy thumbs, the hapless Ben is implicated in criminal activity by the police - the kind of mistake it isn't easy to explain. Doing a runner, Ben hides in the basement of a deserted house, where he discovers the body of a well-dressed man, shot through the head . . . and much more trouble than he bargained for.

The subsequent hair-raising events are charged with all the mounting excitement that made J. Jefferson Farjeon a peerless storyteller and Ben one of the most popular but unorthodox amateur detectives of his day.