He's a wealthy idler...a dilettante songwriter...a shallow fashion plate...and a top secret agent!Equally welcome in Manhattan's swankiest homes and Europe's toniest salons, Yorke Norroy is known and liked by foreign noblemen, show-business luminaries and captains of industry during the years prior to the First World War. But none of them knows that this charming young clubman is secretly America's foremost diplomatic agent, answerable only to high-placed government officials and regularly assigned to dangerous missions in foreign countries. Norroy's career seems destined to end abruptly when he is diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition-but circumstances beyond his control force the agent to embark on a desperate rescue mission that may prove to be his last! Written in 1908, this adventurous exercise in international intrigue is a vivid read with a surprisingly modern flavor.George Bronson-Howard (1879-1922) lived a life nearly as active and exciting as that of his most famous character, Yorke Norroy. A Johns Hopkins graduate who became a civil servant to support his orphaned siblings, Bronson-Howard spent years in the Far East and the Philippines, moonlighting as a war cor- respondent and (rumor has it) a member of Imperial China's secret service. In addition to innumerable yarns for the pulps he wrote scenarios for Hollywood studios in the early years of the silent-movie era, even bringing Norroy to the screen. The "Forgotten Classics of Pulp Fiction" series brings back into print ten outstanding novels originally published in rough-paper magazines that flourished during the early decades of the 20th century.