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‘Appearances often deceive.’ Cobie Grant

T he young, handsome, and clever American financier, Cobie Grant, arrives in London high society in early 1892. Because of his immense wealth he is nicknamed The Dollar Prince. Haunted by his own secret illegitimacy, he tries to protect the helpless. By chance he saves two young girls from misery and ruin. The first, the aristocratic Lady Dinah Freville, ill-treated by her family, he tricks into marriage. He tells her that he cannot love her but will look after her. In doing so, he transforms her from an ugly duckling into a swan. From fearing him, she comes to love him, particularly after he initiates her into passion.

The second, Lizzie Steele, is a little girl who has been sold to a nighthouse and he secretly rescues her before she can be sexually abused by Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, an apparently respectable MP and Cabinet Minister. With the help of the Salvation Army, Cobie places her into a home he funds for other similar waifs and strays. He also pursues Sir Ratcliffe in order to see him punished for his wickedness. Using a false name, he bribes the police to raid the nighthouse. They arrest the madame and her accomplices, but Sir Ratcliffe and his sidekick, Hoskyns, have been privately warned to stay away that night.

However, Cobie continues to watch and pursue Sir Ratcliffe and, in doing so, he is himself pursued by the honest Inspector Walker, who (wrongly) suspects him and his motives, particularly when he thinks that he has discovered that Cobie, as a young man, had a criminal past as a gunman in the American West.

Meanwhile, Sir Ratcliffe, through Hoskyns, has Lizzie Steele traced and kidnapped, after which he abuses and kills her. In turn, Cobie tracks down and disposes of Hoskyns, setting fire to the house which he was running—but is still unable to implicate Sir Ratcliffe who remains at large and whom he meets in society. In his crusade he has the help of his friend from his Western adventures, Hendrick Van Deusen. Like Cobie, he is now outwardly respectable, and both are active participants in the social scene around the Prince of Wales.

Dinah has become the season’s latest success. She is unaware of her husband’s secret life, but, being a clever girl, is suspicious that there is more to him than meets the eye. She has embarked on a campaign to persuade him to love her as passionately as she loves him. Indirectly, she helps him to evade the police at the time of Hoskyns’s death and the fire. Cobie, who has always previously refused to involve himself emotionally with anyone—even his parents—has already begun to feel the pull of her many attractions, and is trying to resist them.

This part of their story ends with them having become the favourites of the Prince of Wales and they are about to visit Sandringham, his Norfolk home—together with Sir Ratcliffe, who is still at large and is beginning to suspect that Cobie is after him. Will Cobie corner him? Will Inspector Walker corner Cobie first? Will Dinah’s campaign succeed? Now read on…