The student Stanislaus Demba learns one evening that his beloved Sonja wants to break up with him for another man. The penniless man thinks he can dissuade her by taking her on a trip. To get money, he tries to sell valuable books from the university library. However, he gets caught, and only through a daring leap is Demba able to escape from the police. Handcuffed, he rushes through a crazy Vienna of the Austro-Hungarian era and seems to be able to force his luck at the card table after all. Leo Perutz wrote this sophisticated novel in 1917, whose themes influenced Alfred Hitchcock, Eric Ambler, and others.