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Clayton, Jeff. Jeff Clayton was created by the pseudonymous "William Ward" and appeared in fifty-four stories in Adventure Series and Boys’ Best Weekly from 1910 through 1912, beginning with “Jeff Clayton’s Man-Trap; or, The Inn of Terror” (Adventure Series #47, 1910).

Jeff Clayton is a Great Detective. He is a consulting detective in New York City. He is assisted by Snoopy Havens and Harper Gordon and by a Chinese manservant named Pong. Among the criminals that Clayton takes on is Jesse James. A number of Clayton's adventures, particularly in Boys’ Best Weekly, were rewritten Sexton Blake stories; the rewriting was often sloppy, so that, in Boys' Best Weekly #54 Clayton has the following phone conversation while requesting a bloodhound: "Yes...I've wired to Tinker to send Pedro down by the next train." The allusions are to Sexton Blake's assistant and bloodhound, with the unintended effect of implying that Clayton and Blake are friends. In the Jeff Clayton stories in Adventure Series the setting is American, while in the Boys’ Best Weekly stories the setting is English.

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