Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 685

1890 · 16 pages

*Breaking the Eureka Spider's Web* by T. C. Harbaugh begins when Ahijah Axtell, a countryman newly arrived in New York, hears a boy playing flute from a tenement window. Drawn upstairs, he meets Happy Hugh, a sixteen-year-old musician. Axtell reveals his granddaughter Nelly disappeared five years ago from their home; he received a mysterious letter signed "Jack Xerxes" claiming she's happy and wants to be forgotten. Happy Hugh agrees to help investigate. The boy suspects Joly Jenkins, manager of the Eureka Employment Bureau whom he tutors on flute, knows something—Jenkins mentions a rare female flutist player recently, contradicting his later claim of being an only child. The detective work appears focused on tracing Nelly through the city's employment bureau network.

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