The story concerns the complicated love life of amiable young Monty Bodkin, the nephew of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, who had previously appeared in Heavy Weather (1933) employed as the latest in the long line of Lord Emsworth's secretaries.

Monty Bodkin hopes to win back his fiancée Gertrude Butterwick, an England international hockey player travelling to a tournament, who has just ended their engagement without explanation.

Mabel informs Llewellyn that his wife Grayce, currently in Paris, has sent a message telling him that he is to smuggle her new pearl necklace through US customs to avoid paying duty.

Too afraid of his wife to refuse, Llewellyn frets about the risks for several days, his concern heightened by the erroneous belief that Monty is a spy working for the customs authorities.

Gertrude explains that she broke off her engagement after seeing a photograph of Monty in swimming costume, believing his "Sue" chest tattoo to be recent.

Monty is delighted to learn from Lottie that prohibition has been repealed, and calls his hotel's room service to order champagne.

A comic effect is created by the incongruous combination of formal and informal language in Wodehouse's narrative passages, as in the beginning of the novel: "Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French."

Before the first comma, the passage may be the beginning of a serious novel, but the sudden use of two colloquial words, "shifty" and "hangdog", prepares the reader for the semantic incongruity of the last part of the sentence.

[3] The garrulous steward Albert Peasemarch combines a colloquial, informal manner of speaking with long, formal words, such as when he discovers highly "copperising" inscriptions on the wall written in "undeliable" lipstick.

[9] The story was adapted for radio in 2000 by Patricia Hooker, with Nicholas Boulton as Monty Bodkin, Jonathan Firth as Reggie, Eleanor Tremain as Gertrude, Lorelei King as Lottie, Peter Woodthorpe as Peasemarch, John Guerrasio as Ivor Llewellyn, Barbara Barnes as Mabel, and Ian Masters as Ambrose.