A series of murders has been committed by someone with a new model gun, a Mord-Gessel X 38. Indeed, Daisuke himself is almost killed while investigating the case. This occurred while he was with Ritsuko, daughter of a company president. Detective Kimura thinks that the president himself, returned to Japan after an absence of fifteen years, might be the killer, or at least the man who supplied the gun. Ritsuko's father limps and though she explains this as the result of a traffic accident, Kimura remembers a narcotics smuggler named Suginami who shot himself in the ankle and then escaped from the hospital. He believes that the company president and the drug peddler are the same.