Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 881

# Clubman-Crook's Cat's-paw

This serial installment by William R. Eyster presents the opening chapters of a crime narrative. Harry Heathcote, a cashier at the Nail and Lumber Bank, faces financial ruin from stock losses. His acquaintance Roger Vanderlyn proposes they rob the bank's vault together, dividing the proceeds—approximately fifty thousand dollars each—and escaping via Vanderlyn's yacht, the Sunbeam, to the Chinese seas.

Heathcote executes the theft that evening, drugging the reliable watchman John Owens and securing roughly one hundred thousand dollars in cash. The two conspirators alter their appearance afterward to evade detection. Meanwhile, a mysterious wealthy woman and her maid, observing the crime from a hotel window, determine to manipulate the situation for their own profit, seeking "gold in sight—and, perhaps, revenge." Heathcote references a secret organization called the Golden Rule as a means of safe passage, though the text cuts off mid-explanation.