If Kate Archer had known just what the invitation entailed she most certainly would not have succumbed to the pleading of June Gladstone to spend a month's vacation at her father's luxurious farm.<P>Kate had met June at school and although four years her senior had gone out of her way to befriend the forlorn unattractive almost ugly girl in her early teens. Now five years later the invitation had appeared out of the blue and Kate found herself a guest in a strange isolated household of very bohemian ways with a menacing undercurrent that made Kate very uneasy. Suddenly things began to happen with astonishing rapidity. Clotilde June's beautiful stepsister was kidnapped in very gruesome circumstances and Kate had to play a nerve-racking part in delivering the ransom money.<P>But two murders occurred before peace was finally restored in the Gladstone household and the warped twisted mind of a murderer was revealed.