Plot Summary

The lack of an olive for his Dry Martini drives Adrian Weynfeldt one night to a nearby bar. There he meets a beautiful woman whose direct style and unpolished charm he can not escape. He takes Lorena home. The next morning Lorena stands outside the balcony railing and wants to jump down. The awkward Weynfeldt manages to dissuade her from her project. From now on, Lorena blames him for her life and tempts him to help her out of financial bottlenecks on several occasions. So he begins to pay her debts to a man named Pedroni, whom Lorena claims is a debt collector. Then his old friend Dr. Baier asks him for an impossible favor: Weynfeldt is to release a forgery of the painting "Le Salamandre" by Felix Vallotton for auction. But what does Lorena have to do with it? And is Weynfeldt, who has hitherto had nothing to do with the counterfeiters and blackmailers, resist the temptation?