October 1907, East London. A mask maker works painstakingly to rebuild injured faces out of painted copper alloy, until he is brutally murdered at his workbench. The police suspect a burglary gone wrong, but when a much more high-profile killing shocks the city just weeks later, one man is convinced the two crimes are connected. Somehow it falls to Harry Catcliffe, a dissolute young industrialist with a gift for being in the wrong place, to try and discover the truth.