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Ewen Stranway answers an advertisement to meet an old gentleman Henri Raoul Charlebois who has told him that he is in debt. At his flat, he removes from his safe a large book bound in red morocco in which it lists his debts. When he was very poor, Stranway’s father had given him a dime. Now, fabulously wealthy, he desires to pay back all those who helped him as well as those who did not and he recruits...

The body of a young man is found splayed out in the middle of one of the most august public squares in England. Soon it is discovered that the dead man was at the center of a beguiling web of entanglements and intrigue. Constable Wiseman is at the scene, as is the handsome Frank Merril, nephew of rich John Martin. A small, shabby man in an ill-fitting frock coat and large gold rimmed spectacles pulls...