Jinx On a Terran Inheritance

The dying ruler of a small interstellar kingdom made a minor Old-Earth bureaucrat named Hobart Floyt the surprised inheritor of an interstellar spacecraft. There were just a few minor problems: The dead ruler never told Floyt how to find the ship. The bureaucrats of Earth wanted the ship for themselves, and someone kept trying to murder Floyt and his friend Alacrity Fitzhugh.