The Moving Finger - Edward Phillips Oppenheim

One fateful day, landowner Mr. Henry Rochester encounters a young boy meditating on a hillside. On a whim, he gifts the boy with pound500 to make something of himself, on the condition that he ‘does not fail’. Years later the boy returns as Mr Bertrand Saton, a mystical con-artist and play-boy, and Rochester and Saton become sworn enemies. A tale of spirituality and charlatanism in Edwardian England from author E. Phillips Oppenheim.