Educated in London, France, and Italy, he studied art in Paris, but
gave up the idea of being an artist in order to continue traveling. In
Russia, he gathered materials for his first book, Guilty Bonds (1891).
He alternated careers as newspaperman and novelist in the 1890s and
1910s and, it is said, after World War I was involved in espionage work
for the British government. He was one of the earliest authors of
espionage fiction and wrote more than a hundred novels of spy fiction.