Rival gangsters from Chicago move to London and attempt to extort money from rich Britons.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful Government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously.

Breton doctor René Laennec fights tooth and nail against consumption, all the more desperately as his brother Michaud has just died of it.