This is the story of a group of students who played a prank on their friend Paul. The joke got out of hand, and Paul became disabled. Years later, all the former students—including Paul—built solid careers. Growing older, the pranksters, driven by a sense of guilt, organized a so-called League of Atonement and began helping the maimed.
However, soon two of those guilty of Paul’s disability die: one fell off a cliff, the other poisoned himself with sleeping pills. The first was ruled an accident, the second suicide—yet the former students receive poems from Chapin in which he hints that it was he who killed them both…
Frightened men turn to Nero Wolfe for help.