pulps
The Argosy, Vol. 51
The Fate of the Hara Diamond, Chapter IX–X This serialized adventure follows Captain Edmund Ducie, a impoverished former military officer, who rescues the injured Russian M. Platzoff from a railway carriage disaster near "The Golden Griffin" tavern. Ducie tends Platzoff's head wound while the Russian recovers. Platzoff anxiously searches for a missing despatch box containing papers—particularly a blue sheet covered in figures prefaced by Italian text from *The Confessions of Parthento the Mystic* (Amsterdam, 1698), containing cryptic information of great importance. Though Ducie recovers the diamond pin, he claims the critical manuscript is lost, but secretly pockets it. After Platzoff's recovery and departure, Chapter X reveals Ducie's character: born into gentry wealth, he is an incurable gambler who has squandered his nine-thousand-pound inheritance and most of his paternal inheritance, surviving through his father's allowance. The text is cut off mid-sentence.