No one is immune from an ordinary attack of appendicitis. Even the powers that be. And it so happened that one fine day a British minister was taken to a private clinic with such a prosaic diagnosis. As it turned out, he could not have chosen a more dangerous place for himself, even if he had wanted to. Among the hospital staff, by the will of fate, there was, firstly, a woman who had once been abandoned by him, thirsting for revenge, and secondly, a certain very unbalanced communist, resolutely opposed to all members of the bourgeois government. And finally, the most terrible of all enemies - the former best friend. All of these individuals certainly had ample opportunities to settle scores with their opponent, and some of them seemed to make their cherished dream come true - during the operation the patient was injected with a lethal dose of a drug .However, Inspector Alleyn, who began the investigation, suspects that the deceased could have other, less obvious, but even more dangerous enemies.