Mr. Silas D'Odd is a rich man who bought a feudal mansion known as Goresthorpe Grange. He enjoys having all the furniture fitting in a medieval castle: crest, armors, tapestries, ancestors portraits, etc. But there is something important missing. A ghost. Even his neighbor, Mr. Jorrocks of Havistock Farm, has a ghost. Mr. D'Odd decides to write to his cousin, Jack Brocket, a man able to find anything if it can be sold. After a few days, Jack meets Mr. Abrahams, a man pretending to have already done a similar job once or twice. D'Odd immediately invites him to his mansion. This good-humourous little man explains that ghosts may be seen at a quarter to one with the use of a Lucoptolycus potion. When the time has come, Mr. D'Odd drinks the potion and falls in a semi-unconsciousness, starting to see ghosts... Half a dozen different ones come and introduce themselves to the lanlord. Some are ugly, some scary, murderers, lone souls... Mr. D'Odd chooses the last one, a beautiful lady with a seraphic smile. After that, he falls asleep because of the drug, but he is soon awakened by his wife yelling they have been robbed. Scotland Yard tells him that the description of Mr. Abrahams corresponds perfectly to Jemmy Wilson, alias The Nottingham Crakster.