An Oxford athlete notices a strange series of events surrounding an Egyptology student who owns many ancient Egyptian artefacts, including a mummy.

Lee Monkhouse takes a job as a tutor at a boys' school but all is not as it seems. The headmaster appears to be hiding something, while one of the other tutors, Theophilus St. James, terrorises the students...

Answering a peculiar advertisement for a doctor and entomologist, Philip is hired by the sinister Lord Linchmere to befriend his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Rossiter, a famous and reclusive beetle hunter.