When a wealthy middle aged woman is found dead in her boudoir the only thing that seems certain is that robbery is not the motive. She was found wearing a fortune in pearls and other jewels, and with a paper snake wrapped around her neck. Even more bizarrely, she had been killed twice, once by poison and once by a blow to the head. There are plenty of suspects: the niece, the social secretary, the cousin who managed her financial affairs, the maid whose actions are suspicious the "count," even the nosey neighbor, but little in the way of evidence. With the police baffled, the famous private detective, Fleming Stone, is called in. But has he become too close to one of the suspects to solve the mystery of . . . The Curved Blades