Beadle's Dime Library No. 451

About this issue

This installment features the opening mystery of "Griplock, the Rocket Detective" by Jackson Knox, author of the Hawk Heron detective series. The story concerns the murder of Miss Arabella Hanshaw, a wealthy young woman found stabbed multiple times in her apartment at the Belgrade. Found dead on the morning after parting with her admirer Harold Markoe, she has been killed with an ornate dagger and a lock of her golden hair severed and carried away by the murderer. The crime presents a locked-building puzzle: all entrances are secured from the inside, yet suspicion cannot attach to the building's respectable tenants. Mrs. Golightly, a widow across the street, provides crucial testimony about a veiled woman departing in a mysterious coach shortly after the murder, and about Markoe's suspicious movements. Markoe himself, reading newspaper accounts implicating him, consults with his friend Willis Hawley, a detective, seeking help to clear his name and protect his reputation with another woman, Helen.