Married college professor Andrew Gentling reluctantly agrees to have a drink with Catherine Sykes, a wartime girlfriend.

Andrew tries to retrieve Catherine's diary containing evidence of the affair from her bedroom, but he is attacked by a dog and suffers a deep cut on his hand.

As doctors in the area have been advised to immediately report all dog bites, Andrew is unable to receive medical treatment and believes that he is dying.

No longer eluding capture, he is told that the dog that had attacked him was not actually rabid; the police had concocted the ruse to force the suspect to reveal himself.

But for the most part our erstwhile detective and comedian is forced to play a role of rather painful proportions with forbidding austerity ... Powell is propelled into troubles that are neither funny nor flattering to him.