Furio, Vittorio and professor Valli are looking for seven seals, each of which carries a set of words that together must form a sentence with which it will be possible to take possession of the immense treasure of the Ming. Four of these seals are already in the hands of our friends, but the missing three have come into the possession of a certain Morton, an American bandit.
This is the last story in the Seven Seals saga and is left incomplete due to the closure of Audace.
After a journey that has taken them almost all round the world, Furio, Vittorio and Valli reach New York, where the seal they are after has fallen into the hands of a certain Morton. Valli takes them to an old friend, commissario Bruni, an Italian. Bruni's advice is to drop the idea of crossing Morton at once: he is the master of New York, head of an organisation of criminals without precedent, owner behind the scenes of almost every public place in the city, and he holds thousands of people, a few big names in the government among them, by blackmail. The police have never caught him red-handed; he always has his alibi ready. Seeing that the three will not be put off, Bruni tells them where to find him: every night at the "Blu Star", a dance café with a gambling room. That evening a young policeman, Buddy takes them there. Morton makes his entrance like a prince of the royal house, a squat man with a purple, nasty face, on his arm the beautiful Miss Margareth, "angel's face and heart of stone", with his secretary Baroux, a naturalised Frenchman, behind them. After dinner Furio and Vittorio lose a hundred dollars at the roulette table to avoid suspicion, and learn that Morton goes up to his office on the first floor at about one in the morning to collect the night's takings. At half past one the four meet upstairs; Furio knocks and goes in alone. Morton takes him for one more ruined gambler come to beg a loan and sign promissory notes. "I need you to give me something, but it isn't money," says Furio. "The Ming seal that Stevens handed you." Under the revolver in Furio's pocket Morton opens the safe and hands over the fifth seal of the Ming - but in opening it he has secretly pressed an alarm button, and a shoot-out breaks out in the corridor: "Look out, Furio, we're surrounded!" Furio floors Morton with a tremendous punch, ties him hand and foot with the window curtains, and makes for the door to help his friends.
The shooting in the corridor goes on while Furio finishes tying up Morton. Outside, Valli, Vittorio and Stefan are holding out behind overturned tables, but the gang has taken the whole staircase. Furio tells Vittorio to hang on and goes back into the office with his revolver at Morton's temple. The gangster gives in: the seals are in a safe behind the tapestry, opened by turning the dial to spell RAMSETE. Inside are three caskets, and in them the three missing seals - "and now the seven seals are in our hands!" Furio then makes Morton show him the way out that avoids the stairs: behind the curtain past the table, a secret door onto a stair down to the street behind the building. The friends crawl into the office, barricade the door with all the furniture, and Furio takes leave of Morton. At the foot of the stair a colossal Black doorman blocks the exit; Furio knocks him flat, the four jump into Morton's powerful car and Vittorio drives off just as Morton and his gang burst out and pile into two cars after them. A furious chase follows through the night streets, shots flying among the terrified night-owls, until Furio bursts a tyre on the nearest car and overturns it; the second stops to help, and the friends vanish. Next morning commissario Bruni advises them to leave the country, since Morton will not forget such an affront. Two days later Furio, Vittorio and Valli sail for Italy. Out at sea Valli deciphers the last seals, and the full sentence reads: "The dragon watches its lair in the temple of the Lady of the beneficent river, beyond the seventh column." In his opinion, the treasure of the Ming lies under the seventh column of the temple of the Goddess of the Yangtze-Kiang. "Then after a short rest in Italy we'll take a nice little trip to China!"
