An American Nobel Prize-winner mixes it up with spies when he travels to Stockholm to collect his award.

Newly arrived in Stockholm to receive their Nobel prizes are American novelist Andrew Craig (literature), refugee Max Stratman (physics), John Garrett and Carlo Farelli (medicine), and a French couple, Claude and Denise Marceau (chemistry). Communist agents kidnap Stratman, enlisting the aid of his niece, Emily, on the pretense that the man whom they will put in Stratman's place is her father, the scientist's identical twin, whom she believed dead. The Communists plan to take the real Stratman behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the impostor behind to denounce the United States in his acceptance speech. The frustrated, alcoholic Craig, whose professed interest in the prize is purely financial, proclaims at a press conference that he no longer writes serious literature but produces only detective stories; and he promptly improvises a story about the kidnaping of a Nobel Prize winner. Having known Stratman, Craig soon becomes suspicious of the impostor; starts his own investigation; and finds himself at the center of an intrigue. Though several attempts are made upon Craig's life, the police and Inger Lisa Andersen, a pretty Swedish official assigned to keep him out of trouble, refuse to believe his story; but eventually he convinces Inger that Stratman is being smuggled out of the country. Almost singlehanded he rescues Stratman from a freighter and brings him back to his hotel. Exhausted by his experience, the old man suffers a heart attack but is revived by Garrett and Farelli, who had previously been enemies. When Stratman makes his appearance at the Nobel ceremonies, his brother flees from the scene and is mistakenly killed by a Communist. It is then revealed that the impersonator was a professional actor, the twin having died years before in Russia. With a changed attitude, Craig then accepts the award and begins a romance with Inger.