Bertie Wooster vows that nothing will induce him to return to Totleigh Towers, lair of former magistrate Sir Watkyn Bassett. Apart from Sir Watkyn himself, the place is infested with his ghastly daughter Madeline and her admirer, would-be dictator Roderick Spode. But when his old friend 'Stinker' Pinker asks for Bertie's help, there is nothing for it but to buckle down and go there. His subsequent adventures involve a black statuette, a Brazilian explorer with a healthy appetite for whisky-and-soda, an angry policeman, and all the horrors of a school treat. It takes Jeeves, posing as Chief Inspector Witherspoon of the Yard, to sort out the mess and retrieve his employer from the soup.