Beadle's Dime Library No. 299

# Museum Catalog Note

This issue of Beadle's Dime Novels (Vol. XXIII, No. 299, July 16, 1884) contains "Three of a Kind: Tiger Dick, Iron Despard, and the Sportive Sport," by Philip S. Warne, author of the Tiger Dick and Patent-Leather Joe series.

The narrative opens in a mountain miners' hut at midnight, where Bob Cady has finally deciphered a cryptogram map after four years of labor, revealing the location of a rich gold mine. Upon completing the translation, his partner Joe Moran attacks him with murderous intent, seeking to steal the papers and claim the wealth alone. The two men struggle in darkness, the papers torn to fragments, both bleeding heavily. One pursues the other through the night until a revolver emerges from the darkness to halt the killer.

The second chapter shifts to San Francisco, introducing a military-bearing man arriving by evening train with aristocratic features and Southern demeanor, anticipating reunion with someone awaited. The excerpt suggests complications arising in domestic circumstance, introducing tensions into an established domestic arrangement.