Stanley Brown, ace reporter for a news syndicate, is on a date when he receives a summons from Hardwick, his editor, to report to work and begin trailing Grand Duke Ferdinand, a visiting dignitary from Ruritania. After grudgingly following the duke through various accidents in America, Stanley ends up with him in Paris. At a health spa, Stanley disguises himself as a cripple so that his newspaper rival, William S. Briggs, who also has been sent to report on Ferdinand, will not recognize him. Stanley's ruse is exposed, however, when a girl accidentally crashes her bike into his wheelchair and introduces herself as Jane Hamilton of Baltimore. Jane and Stanley quickly fall in love with each other. Later, Ruritanian royalists hold a banquet in Vichy to celebrate the duke's birthday.