By day, Artie Quick holds down a job as a salesgirl in women’s accessories at Filene’s. By night, she disguises herself as a man to pursue studies in Criminal Investigation at the YMCA's Evening Institute for Younger Men. Artie sets out in search of something to investigate with her pal Theodore, an upper-crust young bachelor whose interest in Boston's occult counterculture has drawn him into the study of magic. Their journey begins on Boston Common --- where the tramps and the groundskeepers swap rumors about unearthly screams and other unsettling anomalies --- but soon they uncover a series of violent abductions that take them on an adventure from the highest corridors of power to the depths of an abandoned mass transit tunnel, its excavation suspiciously never completed.