Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual.
A powerful man posing as a gladiator in Rome's fourth century discovers a plan to put the beautiful Queen in prison, which he thwarts by exposing a sinister duke as a traitor.
When a worker digging up a rose bed in the garden of a rich, influential factory owner uncovers a skeleton, suspicion spreads: Is the man who is so respected in the town possibly a murderer?