War is on. Archie Goodwin becomes Major Goodwin. Wolfe abandons cooking and orchids, taking up physical training and gymnastics. He has decided to go to the front and kill fascists with his own hands. However, the army needs not Wolfe’s hands, but his brains. Major Goodwin receives an assignment from command: to knock Wolfe’s brains back into place. But Wolfe, as always, is unbearably stubborn and simply will not listen to arguments. Goodwin has no choice but to fabricate evidence against himself in a committed crime—the murder of a young woman. Reading in the newspaper about the arrest of “the assistant of the famous Nero Wolfe,” Wolfe flies into a rage. Physical training immediately gives way to cooking, and his mind switches to investigating the crime.