When Bunker Bean, a timid stenographer for the brutish J. C. Kent, an aircraft manufacturing executive, learns about reincarnation from his friend, Dr. Meyerhauser, he becomes convinced that he was an important, successful figure in a previous life. To confirm his beliefs, Bunker visits fortune-teller Countess Cassandra, who tells him that he is a reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte. Soon after, Bunker receives a letter informing him that his uncle has died and has willed him $5,000 and the rights to the patent of his uncle's invention, a gyro-stablilizer device for airplanes. Bunker then is ordered to Kent's country home for a weekend of work and, in his boss's library, finds a biography of Napoleon. Stimulated by the section on Napoleon's love affairs, Bunker boldly spanks Kent's pretty daughter Mary when she insists on dating a notorious playboy. Humiliated by Mary's subsequent fury, Bunker re-visits Cassandra and her partner, Professor Balthazer, who assure Bunker that he is actually a reincarnation of Ram Tah, a wise and brave Egyptian pharoah. Kent, meanwhile, learns that Bunker owns the gyro-stablilizer patent and, although he knows that it is worth a considerable sum, offers him one hundred dollars for it. Inspired by a sawdust reproduction of Ram Tah's mummy, which Balthazer has sold to him for $1,000, Bunker becomes determined to force Kent to pay him a fair price and to marry Mary. During negotiations with Kent and his business rival, however, Bunker discovers that his mummy is a fake and suddenly loses his confidence. After Mary, who has fallen in love with the "new" Bunker, persuades him that his transformation is genuine, Bunker manipulates Kent into a $50,000 offer and then informs his boss that Mary is now Mrs. Bunker Bean.