 At a New Year s Eve party where Guy Lombardo (as himself, albeit about 30 years older than he would have been at the time), Inspector Queen finds blood on a drawing-room floor outside a phone booth, and a knife wedged in the phone booth s door. When Inspector Queen pulls the knife out and opens the door, a body tumbles out. Inspector Queen then finds the phone itself dangling, picks it up and hears a bewildered stranger on the other end. The dead man, a wealthy industrialist, had telephoned the stranger but couldn t talk because the knife had severed his vocal cords. The industrialist had been unable to crawl out of the booth because the knife jammed it shut. There are a plethora of suspects whom the industrialist had insulted just before his death.