Henry Seton Merriman

Henry Seton Merriman was Hugh Stowell Scott, a Lloyd's underwriter who hid behind a pen name so his City colleagues would not learn he wrote novels. He travelled to every country he set a book in — Russia, Spain, Corsica, Poland — and his tales of political intrigue, admired by Stevenson's circle for their spare hard prose, sold enormously before his death at forty-one.