The day he lost his job, Rex Barney receives in a disbursement of a will, one skeleton key. Big deal. He'd rather have money. But the key is his entrance to the exclusive Spyglass House, a private club built on the fault line of time and space, each side-door opening onto another world.
So it is when Rex stumbles out into a 19th century Indjia, a land of snake charmers and elephants, steam engines and sailing ships, he falls in with two shady ladies who promise him sweetmeats and card tricks on a train to Norpur if he will help them appropriate a stash of jewels worth enough to live large in Londoon or Pariie.
It sounds like great fun until he is shanghaied aboard a tall ship, runs into pirates seeking to separate head from body, treks through mangrove swamps infested with snakes and mosquitoes, faces jungle people who are out looking for stew meat, and eats stirred-fried beetles which taste a little like chicken, but a whole lot like puke. And all this before he gets caught in the crossfire over who should be the Maharaja of Donjobi.
Great fun if he can ever get back to the safety of Spyglass House.