
While in class with two students - the Russian Ludlow and the American Faber - in the prestigious sports club in which she is a fencing instructor, Neya Tormic is accused by Mrs Falchi of the theft of a jewel. The cousin and colleague Carla asks for help from Nero Wolfe: Neya is none other than the daughter of the only woman whom the investigator has loved. Despite noticing that Carla also went to him to hide a microfilm, Wolfe is astonished and almost moved; that's why he sends Archie Goodwin to the club to investigate.
As soon as he arrives in Rome with his faithful assistant Archie Goodwin, the famous American investigator, Nero Wolfe, is contacted by his first client: a woman asks to find a boarder in the hotel where she works, disappeared for days
Recruited as a chaperone at a reception for mothers-girls, Archie Goodwin assists helplessly with the death of one of the two young escorts, Lucia, poisoned with arsenic. The police are sure it is suicide, but Archie is convinced of the opposite, and initially Nero Wolfe suspects the victim's ex-boyfriend, who had been abandoned to the news of the pregnancy and later lost the child.