A London-based psychiatrist and a man of some means, Clive Riordan (Robert Newton), is seated in the stuffy confines of a gentlemen’s club. He’s one of a quartet of aged gents, all of whom are stationed around a table, harrumphing about one thing or another: the quality of the liquor being served or how Canadians are incapable of speaking the King’s English. Yet Riordan is preoccupied by, of all things, hot water bottles. He persists in sketching them on a piece of scratch paper. The good doctor has something on his mind.