It all started with a murder 20 years earlier. A ragpicker was found in a closet, stabbed in the back with a jewelled dagger-through an ace of spades! There's a reward for the solution to this old murder and Bill Chattuck, driver for MacWhorter's Motorized Circus, must get that reward-and prove the legitimacy of his girl, Melody-or they'll never get married! But first, there's the matter of that rare copy of Beowulf with a secret coded message in it, and the windingest road in the world, Old Twistibus, standing between Bill and happiness. It's a crazy contretemps only Harry Stephen Keeler could unravel.