American University Professor Gregory Skiller is ready to habitually and carelessly incinerate with a ray of doubt not only the morals and customs of his contemporaries, but also his own feelings. Moreover, he is trying to teach his students this dangerous activity. And he doesn’t notice how the most real and undoubted dangers are gathering over his head. For the state police are investigating the long-standing kidnapping and murder of a twelve-year-old girl. And then - and a young student of Professor Skiller. And the evidence points so clearly to the professor that he is arrested. Handcuffs, bars on the windows, the guard's gun on the tower - there is no doubt about such things. Three loving women professors decide that the only way to get him out of prison is to find the real criminal. The detective plot moves in bizarre ways and ends with a completely unexpected ending. Readers of Efimov will meet in the narrative the matured heroes of his previous novels: “Court and Case”, “Archives of the Last Judgment”, “The Seventh Wife”.