Beauregard Bottomley is a man of the mind, saturated with knowledge, a very brilliant man - but one who is also unemployed. Beauregard can afford such pleasures as an evening walk with his sister Gwen, which is where we find him right now, caught up in a crowd whipped into an excited frenzy for a television quiz show. Masquerade for Money pays five dollars for the first question, ten for the second and so on. So what should happen when Beauregard, the man who knows everything, goes on the quiz show?