The Black Gang by H.C. McNeile

It was just about the time that Ginger Martin's wife became, all unconsciously, a widow, that the sitting-room bell of a certain private suite in the Ritz was rung. The occupants of the room were two in number -- a man and a woman -- and they had arrived only that morning from the Continent. The man, whose signature in the register announced him to be the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor -- looked a splendid specimen of the right sort of clergyman. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a pair of shrewd, kindly eyes and a great mass of snow-white hair, he was the type of man who attracted attention wherever he went, and in whatever society he found himself. A faint twang in his speech betrayed his nationality, and, indeed, he made no secret of it. He was an American born and bred, who had been seeing first hand for himself some of the dreadful horrors of the famine which was ravaging Central Europe.

And with him had gone his daughter Janet -- that faithful, constant companion of his, who since her mother's death had never left him. She was a good-looking girl, too -- though perhaps unkind people might have said girlhood's happy days had receded somewhat into the past. Thirty, perhaps -- even thirty-five -- though her father always alluded to her as "My little girl."