Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 538

1887 · 16 pages

Museum Catalog Note *The Trail of a Missing Hand: A Story of New York Villainy* by T. C. Harbaugh opens this November 15, 1887 issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly publication. The serial features Dodger Dick, a young dock detective, and his new client Eustace Tracy Collins, a well-dressed gentleman of twenty. Collins engages Dick after witnessing a carriage in Central Park dump a severed woman's hand into a lake. Collins recovers it but loses the wrapped object when Jack Pennell, a stevedore, deliberately trips him on the docks. Dick and Collins return to search the scene, where street urchin Frowsy Tad reveals that Kidd Gauntlet discovered something wrapped in paper nearby. The narrative combines detective work with New York street life, introducing working-class dock characters and street orphans as Collins and Dick pursue the mystery of the severed hand and its original owner.

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