The story revolves around a man named Maxim who is a detective. He deliberately adopts an avatar which makes him look like an utter fool. He always act like a child and immature but in actual life he is a genius. Maxim projects that he has a problem of being forgetful and absent-minded. He also have a backhand named John. He is the one who brings complicated murder cases to Maxim, as he believes that Maxim is capable of solving these cases given his superior mental skills. Maxim however continues to behave in an eccentric manner with John as well, who tolerates his useless banter as he is aware that Maxim puts on a charade of a fool to conceal his genius self.

One evening, John reaches Maxim informing him about a murder case in the city.  The murder case gets disclosed here when John brings Maxim to an old building. John tells him that a murder has occurred in a building that had remained closed for about five years. Maxim then jokes for a while and then enquires about the owners of the building. He gets to know that the building is owned by a reputed Doctor of the town, who is also John neighbor. 

When Maxim asks information about the house, John replies: Actually, it was the property of one of his (Doctor’s) friends. And the friend had bought it from someone else. They were old friends but their jobs had distanced them. About nine years ago, Doctor sahib received a letter that was written to him from that very building. His friend wrote to him saying that he was extremely unwell and would probably not live much longer; and he wanted to tell Doctor Sahib something important before dying… By the time he reached, his friend had passed away. He discovered that his friend had lived in the building but he never found out what he wanted to say. 

The house also has a grave which is taken care of by a grave keeper. In order to begin solving the murder case, Maxim and John go to the house where the murder has taken place. When they reach the house they discover that one more murder has taken place as another man lay dead. Similar to that of the previous murder, the dead person has three wounds on his back. The murdered boy held a paper in his hand which is taken out by Maxim with much difficulty. He doesn’t inform John of the paper and quietly keeps it in his pocket.

One evening, Maxim goes to a night club .There he meets the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau who had been his father’s class fellow. He exchanges a few words then goes on to sit with Lady Rose. For a time, he indulges in a flirtatious conversation with Lady Rose and then manages to make his way into her home. After that they both go to a sleep. 

We come to know the reason for Maxim visit to the club. He had already known that Sir Firoz, Lady Rose husband, was not in town. When Maxim was sure that Lady Rose was sleeping soundly, he enters Sir Firoz library very stealthily. There he discovers that the piece of the paper that he had procured from the dead boy’s hand had the same stamp as that of Sir Firoz letterhead. This stamp was the insignia of Sir Firoz ancestors. He then rearranges the papers and leaves the library. There seemed to be a relation between the murdered boy and Sir Firoz. After returning to his home, he again goes to the house of murder. In the village he meets a man from the family of the person who had sold the building to Doctor sahib’s friend. This man reveals that Ayaz sahib had bought the building from them ten years ago. Just before he died, he had transferred the house legally to his friend, the Doctor Sahib. Although Ayaz Sahib had lived in the building for three years, no one in the village knew much about him. He however had a servant, who looked after a mysterious grave in the building and still lived in the front part of the building. Here, Maxim gets to know there was also a mysterious grave and the servant looked after it. On enquiring about the grave, he gets to know that that grave was suddenly discovered by Ayaz  when he had a dream about it. The original owners of the building had no knowledge of this grave. Maxim also gets to know that the room in which the murdered bodies were found were plastered by Ayaz  himself. Maxim then goes to talk to the grave keeper. The grave keeper reveals to him that one day the Doctor Sahib’s daughter had brought a man to the room where the murder had occurred, and two days later the murdered body was found.

Maxim and John exchange a few words where Maxim expresses his desire to meet the Doctor Sahib to solve the murder mystery. They both  go to the Doctor sahib’s house.  The Doctor’s daughter, is also present. Both question the Doctor sahib on how the house was passed on to him from Ayaz. He states that he met Ayaz some thirty years back in very strange circumstances. They both meet in a club  where sudden fight started and Ayaz rescued Doctor sahib . That was the beginning of their friendship but he never got to know anything about Ayaz’s personal life. When John comments that he was a saint, which was believed by the villagers as well, the Doctor sahib replies that he does not believe this. He maintains that though Ayaz was a good man, he was not a saint. The conversation with Doctor sahib ends, and both of them take their leave. On the way-out Maxim spots Doctor’s daughter, who is heading somewhere in her car. He requests her to give him a lift. In the car, after a bit of light hearted conversation, he asks her where she was on the night of fourteenth. She gets a bit flustered with this question as she did not expect Maxim to have any knowledge about it. They stop in the middle where daughter recounts the entire incident to Maxim. She tells him that two months previously she had met a man at Sir Firoz birthday party. The man had taken the keys to the house from her, got duplicate keys made and then returned them to her on the eve of the fifteenth. She then reveals that she met him at  Nightclub.

Now that Maxim had crucial pieces of information about the murder, he started re-arranging these pieces in his mind, in order to deduce the motive behind the crime. He started to wonder what possible connection Sir Firoz  might have in this matter. As Maxim was brooding over this, Daughter suddenly comes and tells him that the man who got her in this mess had just entered a bar. Maxim then asks her to leave and follows the man into the bar. A while later a second man comes and sits with the first man. Maxim was clearly able to overhear their conversation. The two talked about how everything was becoming a mess. They talked about how they needed to finish a task today. Having gathered all this information, Maxim calls up John to tell him that a police patrol must be around the house of murder within the next one hour. He again goes to eavesdrop on the two men’s conversation. In their conversation, they keep referring to an old man. The two men then leave in a car and Maxim follows them in another car. . For a while, maxim loses them but then he sees an old man and instinctively follows him.  Maxim sees the man entering a house. He reaches the house too and as he was pressing his ears to hear the conversation, two men suddenly open the door and pull Maxim inside.  He is taken into a room where seven men are sitting. The old man seemed to be the head of this gang. Maxim continues to behave like a stupid fool. As soon as the men try to catch him, he pulls out a doll from his pocket, presses the doll’s , smoke comes gushing out. Due to the smoke everyone  become unconscious.  Maxim quickly grabs the old man’s bag, and runs away from there. He somehow manages to get out of the house. 

john reveals the murder of another young boy and his body is found just some distance from the house of murder. He is the same man that maxim had earlier followed from the bar. John then reaches Maxim home. When he reaches there, Maxim again teases John with his nonsensical banter. Then later gives him the bag that he had taken from the gang the previous night. On examining the bag, John reveals that these papers belonged to the Foreign Office. John then mentions that these papers were stolen nine years ago from a responsible officer of the Foreign Office. He was murdered and these papers were stolen from him. Along with that officer, another man was also travelling, but somehow that man got lucky and escaped. But no one was ever able to find that man and it was assumed that he was killed too. Maxim then tells John to take the papers while he tends to some other work.

Maxim then reaches to John and shows him the threatening letter that he had received. They both decide to go the house of murder. Maxim tells John to keep the guardian of the grave busy in a conversation while he searches the house. Maxim searches the entire house while John engages the grave keeper in a conversation. Suddenly, they hear a strange cry. The guardian immediately turns around. Behind him a large space could be seen in the wall. John is surprised to see it. He went into the dark space and it felt to him as he was walking in a basement.  When he reaches , he finds himself rising out of the grave of a martyr. The tombstone lay open like the lid of a box. He finds himself in the room where the murders had happened. The grave keeper starts shouting that they had destroyed him. One of the walls of the room had three knives attached to it. Suddenly, the grave-keeper hits John and runs away. He jumps into the grave and disappears. At this point Maxim enters and tells John that he had mistakenly pressed a lever, which led to the discovery of the secret door. 

After that, Maxim gets a threat call, wherein the speaker commands him to bring the papers and hand them over to him.  Maxim doesn’t take the conversation with this man seriously and makes fun of him, and also demands thirty thousand rupees in exchange for the papers. He then says that he will handover the papers at Nightclub.  Maxim then goes to the Nightclub with the papers where he greets Lady Rose. He then goes to the man who is waiting at a table for the papers. Maxim hands over the bag to the man, takes the money and tells the man to move out quickly.

The man comes out of the night club and sits in the car. To his utter surprise, as soon as he opens the bag, three frogs jump out, and there is a commotion in the car. The men are annoyed at the audacity of Maxim and decide to take revenge on him for having treated them with such disdain. Maxim is certain that the men will come back to the nightclub to look for him. Soon after the exchange, he calls John to come and pick him up immediately. As he waits for John, he sees the old man entering the club from whom he had taken the papers. The old man comes to Maxim and digs in the revolver’s barrel into him and threatens him. He asks Maxim about the papers. With a sudden unexpected move, John and his men enter at this moment and capture the old man and his two accomplices. Maxim pulls off the beard from the old man, and his true identity is revealed as Sir Firoz, who was a foreign spy. 

The person accompanying the Foreign Office secretary, who was killed, was Ayaz. He had half the papers and the secretary had the other half of the papers. The criminals were only able to get half of the papers and since then were in the pursuit of other half of the papers. Ayaz lays out a plan to get hold of the men who had stolen the papers. He buys the house in the village, discovers a grave and lays out a fool proof mechanism. But the servant dies unexpectedly. Ayaz then buries the servant and disguises himself as the servant. Before this he had legally transferred the house to Doctor Sahib and got himself a room. He made elaborate effort to make the criminals believe that the papers were hidden there. The papers were actually in the secret wall compartment. As soon as someone came close to the compartment, Ayaz would make ghostly noises from beneath the tombstone. As soon as the men got away in fear, the mechanism, set by Ayaz, would start functioning, wherein three blades would pierce the man’s back. He did all this just to capture the chief, but in his scheme of things, he had not expected to contend with Maxim. It is Maxim who gets the papers from the criminals and also manages to capture them. The novel ends on a humorous note with Maxim fooling once again with Ayaz…!!!