Beadle's Dime Library #665: The Girl Detective

The Frisco Detective: The Golden Gate Find "The Frisco Detective: The Golden Gate Find" by Albert W. Aiken opens in San Francisco where Police Chief Alexander Kettleton, short of funds after a poker loss, is visited by Englishman Samuel Macarthty. Macarthty seeks Kettleton's aid in locating a child lost in San Francisco twenty years prior—the heir to five million dollars. Macarthty reveals that his brother Archibald fled England as a youth, made a fortune in California gold mining, then lost everything through a disputed Spanish land-grant title. Before dying, Archibald confessed to fathering an abandoned infant in San Francisco and urged his brother to find the child and make amends, promising it wealth restored through a congressional decision favoring old Spanish land-grant claims. The narrative combines detective mystery with themes of redemption, westward enterprise, and inheritance complications stemming from California's contentious land disputes.