Nick Carter Stories No. 160, October 2, 1915: The Yellow Label; Or, Nick Carter and the Society Looters.

1915 pulp fiction at its finest. The story opens at the Marmawell Club, Manhattan's most exclusive den of wealth and secrets, where waiter Max Berne watches wealthy Alfred Knox Atherton with suspicious eyes. Berne has ears sharp enough to catch whispered conversations about expensive jewels and schemes that don't belong in polite society. He sees opportunity: leverage this knowledge, climb out of his station, maybe get rich in the process. But Berne doesn't know he's being watched too, by Nick Carter, the legendary detective who operates as much in the shadows as his quarry operates in the light. This is early detective fiction before it became refined: quick-moving, clever, unapologetically about outsmarting criminals who think they're smarter than everyone else. The "yellow label" remains a mystery, a clue that threads through the plot like a thread through a pearl. For readers curious about where detective fiction began before Holmes became the only name that mattered.