Lady Penelope finds her old friend Deborah, the Duchess of Royston, playing roulette in a French casino. When the Duchess tells Penelope that she has lost everything except for her precious Braquasso painting 'Portrait Of A Gazelle', their conversation is overheard by a pair of gangsters, Chandler and Brophy. Penelope realises that the roulette table is fixed but she and Parker are unable to prevent the crooked casino owner from escaping with Deborah’s money. Later, Penelope learns that the Duchess has been forced to put her home up for sale so, to help her, she and Jeff arrange a meeting with Wilbur Dandridge III, head of Gazelle Automations Inc. in New York. Deborah agrees to loan the Braquasso painting to Dandridge on a rental basis, taking the picture to New York herself. But on her arrival in America, the Duchess is kidnapped by Chandler and Brophy who steal the painting and leave her tied up in the basement of an old house...