An accountant and his principal contact Nero Wolfe: the first one accuses the charming Lara Fox of the theft of the salaries of a troupe of Carosello; the second defends the actress because he loves her. Not only is Lara exonerated by Wolfe, but she proposes herself as a client: her father and four others during the war entered into the "Covenant of the Six" with an English lord, Clivers, to help him escape from a prison. Freedom to them, a rich reward to them. The man never honored the debt: Wolfe's task is to help the survivors and their heirs to collect the sum until Clivers is in Rome. When Sordillo, another member of the Six in town to talk to Wolfe, is shot dead, Wolfe suspects that Clivers has something to do with it. Graziani, meanwhile, has found the wages of the troupe in Lara's car and intends to arrest her, but Wolfe hides the actress at home and so saves her. Then with the help of Archie Goodwin organizes a close confrontation with the lord, which surprisingly claims to have already paid the debt years earlier with another member of the Six, Meduni. Which, however, has long since disappeared. The version of Clivers is credible, even more so when Archie explains to Wolfe that the last survivor of the Six, a security guard named Sgroi, was strangely .