When Tony makes his assistant vanish in a flash of fire during a charity performance at a mental hospital, one of the spectators (Star Wars' Mark Hamill) becomes hysterical. Tony learns that the boy was a witness to something horrible in a nearby small town. After traveling to the town, Tony discovers that the entire town is keeping a dark secret, and will do anything to keep it that way. Despite the aid of a sympathetic but intimidated town sheriff and his daughter, Tony finds that uncovering the secret the town is hiding is anything but easy.

A woman who begins laughing hysterically when her boyfriend Paul proposes to her falls down a staircase after he shakes her. Matt Matthews, a supposed friend, photographs Paul as he carries the body outside and convinces him that the police will never believe his version of what happened and that he should put the body into a trunk and dump it in the lake. Matthews then immediately proceeds to blackmail Paul. Tony Blake is involved when Paul's son, Danny, finds out what happens and attempts to help his father, only to be captured by the villains. Blake's investigation leads him to a rendezvous at an ornate, Gothic style inn where he must find his informant and outwit the blackmailers.

A band of modern-day pirates is seeking to hijack a tanker ship for its $4 million worth of fuel. They have coerced a merchant seaman to help them by kidnapping his wife, who had just gotten a role as Tony Blake's stage assistant. Tony steals onto the ship to overhear the pirates' nefarious plans and to try to devise a way to rescue husband and wife.