After.certain events in the summer of 1939, MI6’s Section D realises that certain operations are beyond its remit and a more specialist unit is required to work alongside them, leaving the department free to concentrate on the now apparently quite mundane tasks of wartime propaganda and sabotage. Members of the Section and the wider Intelligence Service are asked, discretely, if there is anyone with experience of such matters who would have the necessary contacts and determination to see through such a delicate and down-right dangerous initiative.
Fortunately for Major Lawrence Grand, Head of Section D, working on his staff is the Australian businessman turned saboteur George Taylor. He knows just the man: stubborn, intelligent, and currently twiddling his thumbs waiting to get in on the action—Alexander, Viscount Towton.
Swayed by the Major’s arguments, permission is granted for a formal approach to Towton. Delighted, His Lordship accepts his commission and, in late August, 1939, Towton and his secretary, Miss Elizabeth Parrish, set up the newest unit of Britain’s hush-hush defense forces, Section M. Initially located in a suite of the Metropole Hotel, London, they are soon working very closely with their new neighbors, Section D. Towton also establishes a research and training facility at his family’s estate near Edenbridge, Kent, recruiting various scholars, scientists, and engineers from across his business empire to build gadgets for, and train, his new unit.
Having developed close ties with the Medieval Metaphysics department at Miskatonic University, Oxford, during the course of his private studies, Lord Towton asks his friend, Prof. Wilberforce Fountain, to aid him in setting up and managing the more esoteric side of his new enterprise. With assistance from Lawrence Grand and his military contacts, Towton secures the services of Lt.-Cmdr. Quentin Riley and his hand-picked Special Service “Phantom” Unit, helping to formalize and solidify the more combative aspects of the Section’s remit.

It is now January 1940. the BEF are fighting in Europe. In preparation for possible air attacks on the English coast gun emplacements are being built. At one site near Dover something odd has been encountered. 4 members of section M have been sent to investigate...