Mrs. Althea Vail tells Wolfe she intends to pay the half-a-million-dollar ransom to the kidnappers, but she wants him to be certain she gets her husband Jimmy back alive and in one piece.

Jimmy comes to the brownstone to speak with Wolfe, but during the visit, Althea phones for her husband, having been told by a policeman that Dinah Utley has been found murdered.

In shock, Althea claims that the kidnappers must have killed her, as she was instructed to deliver the money through a series of phone calls and notes that led her to Iron Mine Road for the ransom drop.

From the Gazette's article and a conversation with Inspector Cramer, Wolfe and Archie learn that the case is open, the police undecided as to whether Jimmy was murdered or, in a slumber, accidentally pulled the statue onto himself.

Returning to the Vail-Tedder home, Archie speaks with Althea, who dismisses Wolfe's theory of murder and says that she is taking back what she said about Noel keeping the ransom money.

Once Frost has left, Wolfe summons Noel along with Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather, and sends them to the Vail-Tedder country house, where he has concluded the money is hidden.

After Noel has claimed the money and paid each of the detectives, Ben Dykes and Cramer arrive with a warrant for Archie and a legal summons for Wolfe, filed by Althea on an accusation of grand larceny.

The word "subdolous" appears in chapter 5, when Archie informs Wolfe that Ben Dykes, head of the Westchester County detectives, is at the door.