Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 84

This issue of the New York-based pulp weekly (Vol. VII, No. 84, December 31, 1879) contains "Hunted Down; or, The League of Three," by Albert W. Aiken, the opening installment of a serial detective/revenge narrative.

At a masquerade ball in Newport, gentlemen Tulip Roche (a fashionable New York heir) and Herman Stoll (a Wall Street broker) discover their mutual hatred for the wealthy Angus Montgomery, who has evidently won away Frances Chauncy from Roche's romantic claims. Montgomery attends with Chauncy, and the two men resolve vengeance. During the evening, a mysterious figure dressed entirely in white—identified as "the White Witch"—intercepts Montgomery and Chauncy, delivering an ominous prophetic warning about Montgomery's impending doom within a month, before leading him privately to a balcony. The narrative establishes a conspiracy of two men plotting against a charismatic rival while supernatural/mysterious elements enter the plot.