Nestor Burma's past comes knocking when Blita, a young gypsy woman, leads him to the Salpetriere hospital where he discovers the recently deceased Abel Benoit, an old buddy from his anarchist days. While Burma has chosen to move onto the (more or less) straight and narrow as a private eye, his friend had stayed on the other side of the law as a counterfeiter and worse, until his own past caught up with him - lethally.