Same Old Charmer

Floor captains and wine stewards the world over were invariably impressed with tall, greying, debonair, 58-year-old Norman Morton-Stewart. "His usual lunch bill was around -L-18 ($50)," said an awed headwaiter in Birmingham last week. Even Norman's pretty young (29) wife, whom he invariably introduced as "Lady Barbara," was overawed by her husband, the manager of a local travel bureau, and also somewhat vague about the source of his wealth. "He used to tell me he had inherited a huge fortune in America from an uncle," she said. "His father was a very big man too, and his aunts had a large estate in Scotland." From the time they first met three years ago, Barbara had been too much in love to ask questions, and she scarcely batted an eye when Morton-Stewart told friends that their son was heir to a dukedom.

Two months ago, Barbara Morton-Stewart began to get a broader insight into her husband's nature and finances when he suddenly vanished from Birmingham, leaving her with a large staff of unpaid servants, a mountain of unpaid bills, and a tender note saying: "My darling Baba, I shall always love you. I am terribly sorry."

As newspaper reporters dug into the mystery of the missing glamour boy, at least one other equally smitten wife emerged from the past. "It wasn't until after our marriage was annulled that I learned he'd been married earlier to an American girl," said the ex-Mrs. Morton-Stewart. "I ran into him a year ago, and he took me out to lunch--champagne, a whole chicken, liqueurs. Even while I called him a dirty dog, he smiled into my eyes. He was still the same old charmer."

Meanwhile, as his past unfolded in the press. Refugee Morton-Stewart was blazing a glittering, champagne-splashed trail. In Paris, he enchanted the cafe set with a series of brilliant parties at a little bistro in the Rue Pierre Charron. But when detectives, spurred on by the travel agency, in Birmingham, arrived to check up on "the gay Englishman." he had disappeared. The travel agency did not say why they wanted Morton-Stewart, only that they were "most anxious to trace him." It was not hard. Soon afterward he checked into Rome's Hotel Excelsior as Horace Albert Hall. He stayed only long enough (a week) to woo and win a pretty young Italian widow, then left her in the lurch and sped on.

In Cairo, Colombo and Singapore he flashed ready cash, picked up all tabs, made a host of new friends, and moved on to Sydney, Australia. There he registered (as Hall) in the leading hotel and began entertaining lavishly. "The pound-a-minute bloke," his new friends called him. To the more sympathetic of them, Norman occasionally showed a picture of his wife. "My darling Barbara," he would say, "she died ten months ago." Sydney's ladies gave their sympathies. One of them was only too happy to have her picture taken with Morton-Stewart at a fashionable nightclub. The picture in the papers brought the detectives on the run, but once again, Morton-Stewart was too quick for them. Leaving his dress clothes, his silk and nylon shirts and his handmade shoes behind, he fled.

Last week, at the end of the line--in the mining town of Kalgoorlie on the very edge of the great Australian desert--detectives at last caught up with Norman Morton-Stewart. He was down to his last eleven shillings elghtpence ha'penny. Charged with vagrancy and clapped into a tin-roofed jail that crawled with cockroaches, he put in a collect call to England. "Darling!" cooed his faithful Lady Barbara, "don't worry about anything! When are you coming home?"

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