Munsey's Magazine, April 1927

Catalog Note: "The Prince and the Piker" by George F. Worts This novelette depicts a transatlantic voyage aboard the Vandalia where John Murray, a mysterious, aloof young man bound for Shanghai, becomes the object of fascination for Sally Banning, a worldly and determined young woman. Despite Murray's deliberate social isolation—he eats alone, reads constantly, and avoids all interaction—Sally pursues him, intrigued by his apparent romantic background and previous encounters with him at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel. When her father Mr. Banning, a railroad president, eventually introduces himself to Murray (discovering him reading "Practical Plumbing"), the narrative begins to resolve the young man's carefully maintained mystery and his reasons for maintaining distance from social contact.