Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 844

# Museum Catalog Note

This Beadle and Adams dime novel installment (No. 844, Vol. II) features "Life Insurance Conspirators" by J. C. Cowdrick, author of Broadway Billy stories. Detective William Weston, nicknamed Broadway Billy, witnesses a murder during a catastrophic New York thunderstorm and electrical wire disaster. A bearded man deliberately kills a young man named Charles Pleyton using a live wire while chaos reigns. Billy is knocked unconscious pursuing the killer and awakens in a hospital. He later discovers that Pleyton was one of ten men enrolled in a mutual life insurance scheme worth approximately $150,000 to the final survivor. Two surviving members, Aaron Buckly and John Edwards, hire Billy to investigate whether foul play caused three recent member deaths, unaware that Pleyton—the fourth victim—was murdered.