Modest and unassuming theology student Paul Pennyfeather falls victim to the drunken antics of the Bollinger Club and is subsequently expelled from Oxford for running through the grounds of Scone College without his trousers. Having thereby defaulted on the conditions of his inheritance, he is forced to take a job teaching at an obscure private school in Wales called Llanabba, run by Dr Fagan. Paul soon discovers that the other masters are all failures in life.
Attracted to the mother of one of his pupils, a wealthy widow called the Honourable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, he is delighted to be hired by her as tutor to her son during the vacation. Living in her country mansion, he becomes aware of her lovers and drug use but fails to realise that her business is running a chain of high-class brothels in Latin America. She however wants to marry him. First he has to fly to Marseille, where a consignment of her girls bound for Brazil has been held up by the police, who need bribing. Paul's activities there are shadowed by his college friend Potts, who now works for the League of Nations investigating human trafficking.
Back in London, he is arrested on the morning of the wedding and, taking the fall to protect his fiancée's honour, is sentenced to seven years in prison for traffic in prostitution. In jail he meets several former staff from Llanabba, which has been closed. Unable to wait seven years, Margot marries a government minister, who arranges for Paul to be rushed from prison to a private clinic for an urgent operation. The clinic is run by Dr Fagan, who certifies that Paul died under anaesthetic and puts him on a boat to Greece.
Deciding to resume his interrupted theological studies, Paul grows a heavy moustache and applies under his own name to Scone, saying he is a distant cousin of the dead criminal. The novel ends as it started, with Paul sitting in his room listening to the distant shouts of the Bollinger Club.[7][8]
