Aladdin of London by Max Pemberton

Captain Willy Forrest admitted that he had few virtues, but he never charged himself with the vice of idleness. In town or out of it, his trim man-servant, Abel, would wake him at seven o'clock and see that he had a cup of tea and the morning papers by a quarter-past. Fine physical condition was one of the ambitions of this lithe shapely person, whose father had been a jockey and whose mother had not forgotten to the day of her death the manner in which measurements are taken upon a counter.

Willy Forrest, by dint of perseverance, had really come to believe that these worthy parents never existed but in his imagination. To the world he was the second son of the late Sir John Forrest, Bart., whose first-born, supposed to be in Africa, had remained beyond the pale for many years. Society, which rarely questions pleasant people, took him at his word and opened many doors to him. In short, he was a type of adventurer by no means uncommon, and rarely unsuccessful when there are brains to back the pretensions.