Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 805

About this issue

This is the opening installment of a serial detective story by J. C. Cowdrick, author of the "Broadway Billy" novels, in a Beadle and Adams weekly publication dated December 7, 1892. The narrative introduces a baffling robbery and murder case. Millionaire Humphrey Haldemyer is found dead in his library with a knife wound, his safe open and emptied. On the floor lies a severed woman's left hand—young, white-skinned, bearing marks where a broad ring had been worn. The hand was severed by a mechanical trap protecting the safe. Three nights pass with little progress until a detective reports that a young woman named Julia Donaldson, betrothed to Clyde Rosedale (Haldemyer's nephew), recently lost her left hand. The police claim she lost it in a railroad accident on the Central line that same night. Broadway Billy, a private detective, is summoned to investigate whether her story is genuine or whether she was actually the accomplice in the robbery-murder. The serial follows Billy, his talkative assistant Harry, and Silent Seth as they attempt to solve the mystery.