Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 751

This issue of Dime Novel Library (No. 751, March 15, 1893) features "The Puzzle of Number Nine: The Story of a New York Sensation" by Captain Howard Holmes, author of the "Captain Coldgrip" novels.

The detective serial introduces partners Silas Tracer (tall, thin-faced, controlled) and Phineas Tripp (diminutive but brilliant strategist), who solve criminal cases in New York without soliciting business. When a boy named Bobbles reports a murder at Number Nine on the avenue, Tracer investigates. He finds an unidentified elderly man dead in an armchair, a dagger in his breast. The victim, who arrived the previous evening seeking to rent the house from owner Royal Legare (now in Cuba), is unknown to all. Tracer discovers a dagger sheath in the room of Garish Legare, the owner's adopted son, along with bloodstains. The sheath matches the blade. Miss Lockwood, the maid, becomes agitated upon seeing it. Tripp identifies the sheath as Spanish, sixteenth-century, and speculates someone will hang. The mystery deepens when Garish cannot be located.