Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 325

# Kelley, Hickey & Co., The Sleuths of Philadelphia

Edward L. Wheeler's detective serial centers on scheming Jack Fallon, a cousin recently embroiled in embezzlement at a Philadelphia banking house. In August 1882, near Market Street, Fallon encounters his younger cousin Ernest Floyd, recently promoted to chief clerk by their elderly banker relative. Fallon probes whether the wealthy uncle has made his will, eyeing an inheritance, while Floyd shows dutiful indifference to such matters.

Dan Hickey, a private detective, overhears their conversation and grows suspicious of Fallon's sudden visit to Ridgway Park—a disreputable island resort in the Delaware. Hickey enlists Sewer Sam, a street urchin and junior investigator for his firm, to shadow Fallon. At the park, Hickey discovers Fallon meeting secretly with Kitty, a young woman who confesses the banker is gravely ill and Ernest is rushing to meet his arriving cousin Belle at Gloucester. Fallon urgently requires her help with unspecified "business." She threatens exposure if he doesn't marry her immediately, setting a dramatic confrontation in motion.