The year is 1890. A ship is discovered adrift off the English coast, its crew missing, its captain lashed to the wheel, and its only passenger is a sinister black dog. This impenetrable mystery is clearly a case for the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, but for the first time in his illustrious career the great detective is baffled. Clearly the crew has been murdered and dumped, but what can account for the captain's expression of imponderable terror and his acute loss of blood, or the ship's strange cargo: fifty boxes of earth? The game is afoot, and Holmes, aided as ever by the faithful Dr. Watson, finds himself on the trail of no mortal enemy, but the arch-vampire himself-Count Dracula!