Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 553

This issue of Beadle and Adams' pulp weekly (No. 553, February 23, 1888) contains "Sharper than the Sharps," a detective serial by T. C. Harbaugh. The story features Dodger Dick, a young boy sleuth of New York, who photographs criminals in disguise using a camera concealed in a blacking kit. After capturing "Gotham Guy" (Guy Gardette) and his associate Broadway Bink on the Battery, Dick is hired by a man named Noggles to investigate a missing-person case involving Lucy Marigold, a woman who disappeared from city records three years prior. When Dick encounters Noggles on an elevated train and follows him home, Noggles dismisses him abruptly. Noggles then reveals to Gotham Guy that they plan to eliminate Dick as a threat, suspecting he may eventually discover their scheme connected to the "great Marigold fortune."