Lonely, desperate businessman Benjamin Hoffman (Peter Sellers) coerces his callow secretary, Janet Smith (Sinead Cusack), to spend a romantic holiday with him by threatening to turn her fiancé in to the cops for a crime he committed. Smith agrees to go away with Hoffman and so he promises to destroy the information he has on her fiancé. Smith's revulsion for the man eventually turns to sympathy, however, when she gets a glimpse of how truly disturbed he is underneath his icy demeanor.