While perusing the books of an engineering company, fastidious auditor Frank Manning encounters rum goings on when he is approached by a woman who claiming she is being blackmailed. She begs him to find certain letters and he eventually agrees. Having obtained the letters, he takes them to a specified address where, to his horror, he finds a man, fully clothed, dead in the bath.
The Idol of Paris is based on Paiva, Queen of Love, a novel by Alfred Schirokauer. Set in the mid-19th century, the film traces the rags-to-riches story of a girl named Theresa. Sleeping her way to the top, she becomes a highly sought-after Parisian courtesan, one worthy of the attentions of the Emperor Napoleon. But Theresa has no time for the Emperor, not with such virile lovers as Hertz around and about.