Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 185

1882 · 32 pages

Man Spider; or, The Beautiful Sphinx A serialized mystery-adventure by A. P. Morris (author of "The Man of Steel" and other dime novels), published in *Beadle & Adams* weekly, May 10, 1882. Hubert Ulster, a wealthy St. Louis banker who fled England a decade earlier under mysterious circumstances, receives a cryptic letter from Jean Banquo, a fortune-teller and astrologer, offering to reveal the location of a hidden closet in Ulster's house—a secret Ulster has spent nine years seeking. Despite initial skepticism, Ulster dispatches his trusted servant Azrak to consult Banquo, paying one thousand dollars for information. Azrak describes his surreal visit to the astrologer's subterranean study, filled with arcane instruments and celestial charts. Banquo provides precise spatial instructions for locating a plug in the third-floor floorboards that conceals a wire mechanism. Ulster's pursuit of this discovery appears connected to a haunting—a spider-like specter from his past called "the Spider of Wirthmoor" that torments his nightmares. The narrative opens in Gothic mystery-thriller territory, blending domestic unease with occult elements and long-buried guilt.

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