Beadle's Dime Library No. 386

This issue contains "The Gotham Flats Mystery," a serialized detective story by Jackson Knox (credited as "Old Hawk"). Hawk Heron, a private detective identifiable by a tattooed hawk-and-vulture emblem, discovers the body of Olga Ashcombe in Madison Square and learns of her mother's murder in the Gotham Flats apartment building. The widow was strangled by garroting; Olga died of unspecified causes. A music teacher, Wolfgang Schmidt, reports a large, well-dressed masked man abducted Olga after killing her mother. Schmidt identifies the same man as a mysterious theater patron who watched Olga perform nightly at the Thalia Theater for a week. Heron recognizes the description as matching a suspected forger he has been tracking. Heron speculates the perpetrator is Count Ivan Kotzka, suggesting prior knowledge of the Ashcombe family. The detective pursues the case to headquarters.