Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 871

This pulp serial, "The Crook-Cashier" by Capt. Howard Holmes, opens with a bank robbery at the Goldstone Bank on Wall Street. Bank president Sergius Shanks discovers his private safe has been breached; a locksmith and detective Tracy Trailer are summoned. Inside, Trailer finds a severed human finger bearing a gold ring—apparently torn off when the thief closed the safe door. Shanks, trembling, reveals his private drawer has been emptied of unspecified valuables, causing him to declare himself "ruined" and "marked" by "the accursed shadow." Trailer pursues leads, visiting a Canal Street bird store where he encounters a suspicious man named Stacy, who reveals an unnamed visitor arrived late Saturday with stolen money, boasting of imminent Wall Street plunder. Trailer returns to his rooms where he gifts a canary to a fourteen-year-old girl named Nipsie Atom, who claims to possess startling information.