Click "free sample" to read the whole book no need to purchase. In late May 1914, when World War I is imminent in Europe, Richard Hannay returns home to London after having lived and worked in Rhodesia as a mining engineer. One night, his neighbor, an American who claims to be in fear for his life, asks if Hannay can let him in. The man appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilize Europe, beginning with a plan to assassinate the Greek Premier, Constantine Karolides, during his forthcoming visit to London on the forthcoming 15 June. The man, named Franklin P. Scudder, is a freelance spy and reveals that he has faked his own death with a corpse in his flat. Scudder claims to be following a ring of German spies called the Black Stone who are trying to steal Britain's naval defense plans for the outbreak of war and are also after him. Hannay, convinced of his honesty, lets Scudder hide in his flat. Police discover the fake suicide, but suspect nothing. Nonetheless, Hannay finds Scudder murdered in his flat a few days later. Feeling now bestowed with the responsibility to foil the plot, as well as in mortal danger himself, Hannay takes up Scudder's encoded little notebook and escapes his apartment under watch by the plotters by disguising himself as the milkman the next early morning.