The airport payroll is stolen, and one of the notes is changed in Rome by a small-time confidence trickster. Garnett uses the lesser criminal to lead him to the real thief.

It is panic stations at Kensington air terminal when air security officer Alan Garnett brings together the passengers from an apparently routine flight from Paris.

The extension of the airstrip on a lovely Pacific island will mean the coming of tourists and the end of a peaceful native paradise. So when the beacon light is deliberately extinguished, sabotage is suspected.