Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 803

Five Links in the Clue This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly publication (No. 803, December 13, 1892) features the opening installment of "Five Links in the Clue" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, a serial detective mystery. The story centers on the puzzling death of a reclusive old miser called "the Hermit of the Potomac," found stabbed through the heart in his locked mansion on the Potomac River. Though a large sum of money and valuables remained untouched, authorities debate whether the death is suicide or murder. The house was sealed from within with no apparent means of entry or exit. After Captain Castleton of the Secret Service exhausts investigative leads, his chief resolves to hire the young detective Dick Doom—known as "the Ferret of the Golden Fetters"—to unravel the mystery.