When the painter Christopher Bean dies, some unscrupulous art dealers try to get several of his paintings cheaply from a family who have no idea of their value.
Paris plumber Elmer Tuttle is enlisted by socialite Patricia Alden to help make her lover Tony Lagorce jealous. With the help of his friend Julius J. McCracken and through the high society contacts he has made through Patricia, Elmer hopes to find financing for his latest invention, a pistol with a range-finding light. Comic complications ensue when Elmer's effort to interest a military leader is misconstrued as an assassination attempt.
Lonely in his English country estate, Sir Basil decides to gather his grown (albeit illegitimate) children around him in his declining years. He uses a ledger which keeps track of the payments he has been making to ex-lovers to locate 2 of them, and a third is found by a lawyer in New York, her mother was too proud to accept any money. Sir Basil is a curmudgeon, and his three adult children have a hard time with him at first. Toni, the American, is a free spirit who had a budding career in show business. Jeffery is English and a semi-gentleman, and Maria is Italian, with a Latin temperament. They begin to bond, especially Sir Basil and Toni, whose outgoing personality finally wins over the old man. But past lives begin to creep back into the picture and threaten the old man's plans for a life filled with his children.
