Percival Stuffington, nicknamed "Stuffie", is a good-for-nothing, a womanizer and a crook. He belongs to the theatre of the grotesque. His ignorance and dishonesty is exposed when he poses as a teacher of English to foreign students in a London private school. He flies to California, where he tries to pass as a golf instructor. Finally he plans to extort money from a former fellow student by poisoning him, and promising the quick delivery of the antidote against a staggering sum.