When Peter Hays is convicted for the murder of Selma Molloy's husband, the case looks cut and dried. But though she is as pretty as a picture, he is the one that was framed - and Nero Wolfe knows it!

Then someone in New York City starts producing more dead bodies, and Wolfe's hired help Archie Goodwin links one of the corpses with half a million dollars in a safe deposit box. When money talks it costs nothing to listen, and this particular fortune has an unguarded tongue.

Once Wolfe makes the connection with the Molloy murder, Peter Hays is on his way to freedom - and the fat detective is on his way to another fat fee.