In a small African port, a tawdry bar is run by a old man named Webb Fallon. Fallon is actually a vampire, but he is becoming weary of his "life" of the past few hundred years.
Duke Fergus falls for Ann 'Flaxen' Tarry in the Barbary Coast in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loses money to crooked gambler Boss Tito Morell, goes home, learns to gamble, and returns. After he makes a fortune, he opens his own place with Flaxen as the entertainer; but the 1906 quake destroys his place.
The spirit of an executed murderer enters the body of a physician, and forces him to do its bidding--namely, murder.
