In Victorian London, amidst the artistic community and political conspiracies, loomed a man of adventurous spirit and great wit: Charles Augustus Howell, the Portuguee, born in Oporto to a Portuguese mother and an English father. He was an agent for great artists and art dealers, secret agent and master of blackmail. Arthur Conan Doyle made him a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories and called him the worst man in London.