Amiable but stolid peer Bill, Lord Dawlish, possessor of a slender income and a querulous fiancée, resolves to seek his fortune in America. But before he can even get on the boat, he discovers that the eccentric American millionaire whom he cured of slicing his approach-shots on the links at Marvis Bay a few months earlier has unexpectedly left him five million dollars, as a reward for his altruistic action.

But to Bill, noblesse more or less obliges him to share the fortune with the old man's disinherited niece, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth refuses to take a dollar, however, Bill discovers just how difficult it can be to give money away, in a tale of assumed identities, bees, automobile magnates, disastrous dancing, and a monkey called Eustace....