From the exhibition
Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 702
· April 6, 1892

This 1892 Beadle and Adams pulp magazine contains "The Female Jekyll and Hyde: A Weird Mystery of the Great Metropolis" by William G. Patten, featuring his recurring character Double-voice Dan, a private detective. In Chapter I, Detective Dan discovers Colonel Andrew Wayne dead in his study, stabbed by an ornamental Spanish dagger engraved with "Cordova." The victim's son, Rodney Wayne, claims he saw a devilish, wrinkled face with snaggy teeth at the window and fired two shots. Dan identifies the serpent-hilted dagger as a crucial clue. In Chapter II, police bring in Scrimpy Stubbs, a street urchin and newspaper seller, who claims to have witnessed two suspects—Bark Murphy and Hack Gibson—fleeing the neighborhood toward Forty-seventh Street and Broadway approximately thirty minutes after the murder. Dan begins questioning the boy, suspecting the gamin may provide vital information for solving the crime.
Public domain (pre-1929), restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain