Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 653

This issue of Beadle's Weekly (No. 653, January 2, 1890) features the beginning of "Gathering the Guilty Gang" by T. C. Harbaugh, a detective/crime serial. The story opens in a New York pawnshop where the one-eyed proprietor Mordecai Moses receives mysterious visits: first an unknown woman redeeming a pawn ticket for a small package, then the street urchin Billy Bantam (the "Boy Beagle") pawning a distinctive gold cross entwined with a silver serpent set with emeralds. Billy returns the fifty-dollar advance to an ailing man called Colonel Poynter, who sends a telegram to detective Lemuel Lynx in New Orleans reading "They are here; but my hand is dead, and I can't hold on long." Poynter reveals to Billy that he was poisoned while pursuing thieves who stole estate documents and falsely accused him of fraud. Billy then visits a girl named Nanice, confiding details of Poynter's struggle for vindication before the poisoned man dies.