Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 800

1892 · 16 pages

This issue of the *Beadle and Adams* weekly (No. 800, November 22, 1892) features the opening installment of "The Romance of the Steel Hand Fraud" by J. C. Cowdrick, author of the "Broadway Billy" novels. The detective story concerns Broadway Billy and his two assistants, Happy Harry and Silent Seth, investigating a mysterious case involving a supernatural "Steel Hand." Miss Clementine Rudolff has hired them after encountering a ghostly steel hand in her locked room that leaves threatening notes and a dagger, then vanishes without trace. Billy plans to stake out the room that night to determine whether Miss Rudolff is delusional or genuinely threatened by an unknown adversary. A second warning note appears, instructing him to abandon the case. The narrative alternates between the banter of the detective team debating whether the phenomenon is genuine, spectral, or imaginary, and Rudolff's account of her strange experiences.

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