Alan Badel plays the stranger, who arrives in a small town, costumed as a flamboyant itinerant magician with a folding bag of tricks. After a week in town, where the outrageous behaviour of 'Napoleon' soon gives him a reputation for harmless, flamboyant buffonery, he visits a businessman. The businessman is known to keep regular hours and the stranger bedevils him with irritating magic tricks. The last of these tricks leaves the man handcuffed in his office.