The novel is set at the beginning of the twentieth century in Paris. Here lives a Russian student who suffers attacks of a strange mental illness. One day in the Luxembourg Gardens, he gives some money to an elderly beggar โ a Russian emigrant, Pavel Alexandrovich Shcherbakov. And some time later, they meet again by chance. Shcherbakov is now rich; their acquaintance turns into a friendship. But soon Shcherbakov is found murdered in his own apartment, from which a golden Buddha statuette has also disappeared. Since Pavel Alexandrovich made a will in favor of his acquaintance, suspicion falls on the young man for the murder.