During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received - as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham - what is purported to be an Elizabethan portrait. The painting depicts a beautiful young man in late-sixteenth-century costume, whom Graham claimed to be Willie Hughes, a boy-actor serving in Shakespeare's company. This prompts Erskine's guest to delve deeper into the mystery surrounding...