Beadle's Dime Library No. 595

This Beadle & Adams periodical (No. 595, Vol. XLVI, March 19, 1890) presents the first installment of "Playing for the Challoner Millions," a detective tale by Jackson Knox (pseudonym "Old Hawke"). The story opens at the annual Arion Society masked ball at the Metropolitan Opera House, where society siblings Randolph and Gladys Challoner observe a graceful Mephistopheles-costumed dancer. The dancer is revealed as Mark Wellborn, a detective and former suitor of Gladys, now estranged due to financial loss. Wellborn discovers a plot by English nobleman Lord Lionel Tressillian and his associate H. Peyton Weymouth to compromise and coerce Gladys into marriage, planning to drug Randolph and impersonate him. Wellborn intervenes, advising the Challoners to proceed to the Red House in Harlem while he gathers evidence. The Englishmen execute their scheme—Weymouth drugs Randolph's champagne and assumes his identity, while Wellborn (in disguise as the shepherdess) occupies Tressillian's attention on the ballroom floor.