Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 908

About this issue

This 1894 Beadle and Adams pulp serial by Col. Prentiss Ingraham follows New York Nat, a young detective operating secret undercover work outside official police channels. The story opens with two criminals—Vance Vertner (alias "King of the Gallows," a man who has escaped hanging three times) and Star Dunning, a fugitive—meeting in New York streets and plotting together. Vertner poses as a clergyman, wearing disguise to avoid detection. Nat, posing as a Yale student named Nathaniel Norton, trails them to a Madison Square hotel and secures the adjoining room. He discovers Vertner's true identity and contacts his ally Sherman Canfield, a Nebraska gentleman with connections to the Secret Service, requesting background on the criminals. Nat commands an organized band called the Boy Police—boys aged twelve to twenty—and meets with them in a supposedly haunted mansion near the Hudson River, accompanied by his sister Olive, whose identity remains concealed from the group.