This is not a Colonel Primrose story -- but the earmarks of Leslie Ford's techniques are here in the chattily social atmosphere, the stress on conflicts of personality, on romantic byplay rather than on the routine unravelling of mystery. A young doctor, about to hang out his shingle in Annapolis, is unwittingly involved as accessory after the fact of what looks like a murder in defense of her good name. Three young people are up to the hilt- and the fact that the doctor experiences love at first sight doesn't help make his thinking very clear. Lots of red herrings and false clues and complications of character and incident keep the reader from seeing the truth before a simple fact in medicine provides the missing link, and the case is solved to the satisfaction of all who matter.