And these little notebooks were the repository of suppressed facts ranging over twenty-odd years.

Gerald Stanley Lee would have recognized them instantly as coming under the head of what he calls Sh! An hour later Cutty returned the notebooks to their abiding place, his memory refreshed.

The poor devil! A dissolute father and uncle, dissolute forbears, corrupt blood weakened by intermarriage, what hope was there?
Only one--the rich, fiery blood of the Calabrian mother.
But why had the chap come to America?
Why not England or the Riviera, where rank, even if shorn of its prerogatives, is still treated respectfully?
But America! Cutty's head went up.

Perhaps that was it--to barter his phantom greatness for money, to dazzle some rich fool of an American girl.

In that case Karlov would be welcome.