Charles Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, and literary critic. Williams was a member of the Inklings, a literary discussion group at Oxford University in England, whose members included J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield.

An evil antiquarian illegally purchases the fabled Stone of King Solomon from its Muslim guardian in Baghdad and returns to England to discover not only that the Stone can multiply itself infinitely without diminishing the original, but that it also allows its possessor to transcend the barriers of space and time.