A wealthy industrialist, James U. Sperling, asks Wolfe to obtain evidence that his daughter's suitor, Louis Rony, is a Communist. Wolfe will neither investigate marital disputes nor collect evidence for divorce cases, but Sperling's request is apparently acceptable. Wolfe recasts the job as finding any information that will cause daughter Gwenn to break it off with Rony, and Sperling agrees.
Wolfe begins the investigation by sending Archie to spend a weekend at Sperling's country estate near Mount Kisco. Rony, and two of Sperling's business associates, are also present as guests. Archie is undercover, as "Andy Goodwin," to avoid alerting the family – and Rony – that a private detective is in their midst.
But daughter Madeline has harbored a crush on Archie for years, having seen his picture and a story about him in the Gazette almost ten years earlier. She knows he's not Andy, but she implies that she'll keep it to herself.
At the Sperlings' swimming pool, Archie notices Rony repeatedly check the contents of a wallet attached to his swimming trunks, and wonders what he's hiding. He prepares a strong sedative for Rony and plans to dope his cocktail with it; later, with Rony drugged, Archie can search Rony's room for whatever was hidden in that wallet. Archie dopes his own drink and surreptitiously exchanges it for Rony's. A few minutes later Archie discovers that Rony has emptied his glass – the one with the dope – into an ice bucket.
Bemused, Archie goes to his room. Preparing for bed, he can't stop yawning and just before passing out he realizes that he's been drugged himself. The next day he suffers the drug's aftereffects, but manages to work it out that someone had drugged Rony's drink before Archie exchanged their glasses. Rony was apparently anticipating something of the sort when he dumped his drink. Archie plans to return to Manhattan that night and offers to give Rony a lift. When Rony accepts the offer, Archie lays a trap.
On the road that night, they are waylaid by Wolfe operatives Saul Panzer and Ruth Brady. They pretend to knock Archie out and actually do knock Rony out. While he's unconscious, Archie searches him and finds a membership card for the American Communist party. Archie takes photographs of the card and pretends to come to when Rony regains consciousness.
When Archie gets back to the brownstone Wolfe informs him that he has had a phone call from Arnold Zeck. Zeck, a crime boss introduced in And Be a Villain, has warned Wolfe to drop his investigation of Rony or suffer consequences. Just as Wolfe tells Archie of the phone call, Zeck's men open fire with machine guns from across the street, destroying the plant rooms' windows and most of the orchids.
With replacement materials purchased and repairs underway, Wolfe and Archie decamp for the Sperling estate. There, Wolfe discloses the reason that Sperling hired him. He describes Zeck's operations, the warning Zeck gave him, and what Zeck then did to his orchids, impressing on Gwenn the connection between Zeck and Rony. Gwenn leaves the family meeting, announcing that she will take a few hours to decide what to do about Rony.
Later, Madeline asks Archie for help – she can't find Gwenn. As they search the grounds for her, Archie finds a body that he recognizes as Rony's. It has been run over by a car, and it's just a few feet away from the estate's long driveway. Then Madeline and Archie find Gwenn. She had decided to break it off with Rony, and had phoned earlier to ask him to come to the house.
Archie reports to Wolfe, and the police are notified. Lieutenant Con Noonan, Archie's bête noire in Westchester, has a moment of triumph when it is determined that it was Wolfe's car that ran Rony over. But then one of Sperling's houseguests and business associates, Webster Kane, confesses – he borrowed Wolfe's car to run an errand in Mount Kisco and accidentally hit and ran over Rony in the driveway. Kane lost his head, re-parked the car, and pretended to know nothing of the accident.
Wolfe doesn’t buy it, but the District Attorney does, and Wolfe returns with Archie to the brownstone. Wolfe isn't through: he still has the photograph of the Communist party membership card to use as a screw. Wolfe does use it, in combination with detailed information about the Party's internal meetings, to force the Communists to help him expose Rony's murderer.
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