While out on a walk Eleanor Trewynn her niece Megan & her neighbour Nick spot a young half-drowned Indian man floating in the water. Delirious & concussed he utters a cryptic message about his family being trapped in a cave & his mother dying. The young man unconscious & unable to help is whisked away to a hospital while a desperate effort is mounted find the missing family in time. The local police inspector presumes that they are refugees from East Africa abandoned by the smugglers who brought them in so while the countryside is being scoured for the family Eleanor herself descends into a dangerous den of smugglers in a desperate search to find the man responsible while there is still time.