Beadle's Dime New York Library, No. 577

: "mine gootness, dat's a mighty queer one!" exclaimed the mulatto. "What is you gwine to do with them, den?"

The doctor's reply was a mysterious smile. "You will see, Monkey, you will see. But first we must wait for the coming of the Invisible Hand."

The text becomes increasingly garbled after this point, but the narrative appears to involve a criminal organization called the Invisible Hand and some form of mysterious experiment or plan involving the bodies.

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Catalog Note:

Beadle's Dime Library No. 577 (November 13, 1889) features "Shadow Act" by Albert W. Aiken, opening a serial mystery centered on body-snatching and hidden criminal enterprise. In Chapter I, "The Mysterious Boxes," lawyer Rodney MacNabb and Doctor Lenicas Zimmer, a disreputable German-Jewish physician, deliver two pine boxes to Zimmer's dingy Bowery shop via express wagon. An Irish patrolman nearly intercepts them but accepts their cover story about alligators for a judge. Chapter II, "Back to Life," reveals the boxes contain human corpses—a man and a woman—hidden in a secret underground chamber accessed via an elaborate elevator mechanism hidden within the shop's chimney. Zimmer and his mulatto assistant, Monkey Bill, discuss plans involving a mysterious criminal organization called the Invisible Hand.