Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1108

The Two Detectives; or, The Fortunes of a Bowery Girl

Serial fiction by Albert W. Aiken. December 1900 issue of Beadle's Half Dime Library. The narrative opens in a Bowery basement saloon called "The Dive," where a sixteen-year-old orphan girl confronts Giacomo ("Jocky"), the Italian proprietor who has raised and exploited her. The girl refuses Jocky's demand that she steal, asserting her moral opposition despite her impoverished circumstances and physical abuse. When Jocky strikes at her, she evades and hits him under the ear, sending him reeling. Rocky Hill, a brutish local figure present in the saloon, watches gleefully. Jocky retrieves a knife to attack her. The narrative then shifts to a wealthy Manhattan mansion, where elderly retired merchant Obadiah Ollkoff confronts his young nephew Algernon about mounting debts, particularly a tailor's bill of two hundred ten dollars. Ollkoff warns he will pay this final debt but threatens disinheritance if Algernon continues his spendthrift ways.