pulps
Top-Notch Magazine, December 15, 1924
TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE Vol. LX, No. 4, December 15, 1924 This Christmas-themed pulp magazine issue features "His Christmas Masquerade," a complete novel by William Wallace Cook. The story opens with Dick Summerfield, a pickpocket known as "Delaney the Dip," fleeing Christmas shoppers in Bloomfield after police shoot at a suspect during the holiday season. Delaney hops a westbound freight train seeking shelter. Finding an empty box car with clean straw, he settles in for the night, expecting solitude—until a flashlight beam suddenly illuminates the darkness and a voice challenges him from the car's other end, suggesting he is not alone. The issue also includes five shorter stories by authors including Nell Martin, Hapsburg Liebe, Frank Richardson Pierce, and William Byron Mowery, covering romance, mountaineer feuds, and adventure themes. Two serial novels continue: "Wizard of the Desert" by E. Whitman Chambers (Part II) involving corporate intrigue in the Southwest, and "Frozen Magic" by Albert M. Treynor (Part I), set in a Canadian wilderness mystery. The issue contains additional verse and prose pieces.