Stillton Academy, a small art college on the New England coast, is in financial trouble. The final straw may be the sudden disappearance of an instructor with a female student, daughter of the Academy’s only significant donor. Fred Taylor goes undercover as a member of the faculty and finds himself enmeshed in the conflicting motives of faculty, students, and the board of trustees. Meanwhile, the town of Stillton, Massachusetts, is visited by murder, and the motives of Fred’s employer, collector Clayton Reed, remain obscure. What is there in the town, or at the college, that whets his acute acquisitive instincts?