The Wall Street Blood; or, Tick Tick, the Telegraph Girl

Museum Catalog Note *The Wall Street Blood; or, Tick Tick, the Telegraph Girl* by Albert W. Aiken, serialized in this August 1883 issue, follows Frances Carden, a telegraph operator at a New York ferry-house who harbors secret vengeance against a man from her past. When a well-dressed gentleman named Almon Dudley arrives to send a telegram to "Miss Madelaine Durang" at Washington's Willard's Hotel with instructions to prepare for her arrival, Frances recognizes him despite her changed appearance—darkened hair and complexion disguising her former identity as Mildred Dockall, whom he wronged years earlier. Simultaneously, Frances intercepts a message revealing a missing heiress worth a million dollars has fled to New York. She suspects Dudley's telegram concerns this same girl and resolves to thwart his schemes. The narrative introduces Willy Wool, a fifteen-year-old telegraph messenger-boy and orphan, who reports that Dudley has approached him offering money for undisclosed services, setting the plot in motion.