The Shadow 277 The Toll of Death

THE TOLL OF DEATH was originally published in the March 1944 issue of The Shadow Magazine. A curse lies upon Long Valley. A curse that goes back to Revolutionary times. A curse that has taken lives of those foolish enough to be caught within the shadow of Ragged Rock. Now The Shadow will challenge that curse! This 1944 novel, "The Toll of Death" shares several things in common with the earlier 1935 Shadow mystery "Bells of Doom." But only a few. It's not really a re-write, as suggested in Will Murray's "The Duende History Of The Shadow Magazine." The sound of a tolling bell is heard after someone dies. That's the only thing that the two stories have in common. The earlier novel was a terrific classic Shadow mystery. The one being reviewed here is merely average, judged by others from the 1944 era. Harry Vincent is the proxy hero in this story. That's unusual, because in most of The Shadow adventures, the proxy hero is a stranger. It's someone who we meet for the first time, someone who gets involved in a strange situation, someone who is innocent, and someone who The Shadow assists during the process of solving the mystery. It's not often that one of The Shadow's agents gets the role of proxy hero. Harry Vincent was the proxy hero in the very first Shadow pulp novel from 1931, and he gets that role again here in "The Toll of Death." The setting of our story is a valley in up-state New York known as Long Valley. It seems that a strange curse has fallen upon this valley. Anyone caught in the shadow of Ragged Rock, a large rock formation at the end of the valley, is doomed to a horrible death. Each evening, as the sun sets, the shadow of Ragged Rock extends across the valley floor. And those in its path have either picked up and moved, or have met the curse. When someone dies, a bell is heard tolling throughout the entire valley. The toll of death! Where is the mystery bell? No one knows. From where does the sound emanate? Seemingly from a solid cliff known as "Half Dome." But a careful search of the area has shown nothing. Who's behind it? What's it all about? The history of the curse goes back to revolutionary times when an American Robin Hood by the name of Black Arthur was finally caught and killed up on Ragged Rock. From that day on, the shadow of the rock laid its curse upon all who came within it. Whenever a death occurred, a big bell clanged through the valley, emanating from the woods near Half Dome. And all that brings us to today, when land promoter Craig Rexford is trying to sell small plots of land at the north end of Long Valley to new homeowners. But he's encountering opposition from various sources, including the infamous curse. Yes, people still believe in the curse to this day. And people who defy the curse are still dying. All which, as is understandable, tends to put a crimp in the local real estate sales. Lamont Cranston is one of the people Rexford is trying to interest in investing, and The Shadow is going to get to the bottom of this curse business. Is the curse real, or is there a sinister plot behind it all? And who would have any reason to resurrect the curse? And why? The Shadow is determined to find out and put to rest the curse, now and forever. The Shadow sends in Harry Vincent as a prospective land buyer. And no sooner does Harry arrive in Long Valley but there's another death from the curse. And sure enough, shortly thereafter a great clang echoes through the valley. It's the toll of a mighty bell, a toll of death! Harry meets beautiful young Shirley Grantham, daughter of one of the wealthy landowners. Now, usually when Harry is involved in a case, there's no romantic entanglements for him. Not always, of course. There were a few times, throughout the eighteen-year magazine run, when he got a little romance. And this is one of them. Shirley Grantham lives on the edge of Long Valley, just outside the small town of Valley Center. Harry meets her not far into the story, and begins to fall for her. There's nothing too obvious or blatant, here. No professions of love, no kissing. That's not Gibson's style. But there are a few mentions of his romantic interest. Unfortunately for Harry, it's not to be. Every time there's an opportunity for him to explore romance, something comes up to direct his attentions elsewhere. Poor unrequited Harry. Although Vincent gives The Shadow the most assistance in this story, Margo Lane also shows up to help out. And Burbank gets to leave his dark office and switchboard, and takes a trip to Long Valley to assist in triangulating the source of the tolling bell. As usual, no one sees Burbank's face clearly. That was a running thread through all of The Shadow magazine stories. He's always conveniently turned away. In this story: "He was a man who sat with his back toward the rest, munching a hamburger as he stared through the window toward the highway junction. Nobody saw his face."Only the three agents make an appearance in this story. The others aren't even mentioned. And there's no sign of the police, either. There's no mention of Commissioner Ralph Weston, Inspector Cardona or even any local Long Valley police. The Shadow does get to use his abilities at disguise a couple of times in this story. Of course there is the Cranston disguise, which most readers just take for granted, by 1944. The Shadow also takes the opportunity to don the guise of a local eccentric named Old Jeb. And there's one more disguise in the story, but I don't want to spoil the surprise ending, so will just leave it at that. The Shadow no longer makes any attempt at keeping his disguises secret from his agents. In earlier Shadow novels, his agents had no clue to indicate that the man they knew as Lamont Cranston was really The Shadow in disguise. But by 1944, it was common knowledge among his agents. In this story, Cranston pulls on the black cloak and slouch hat of The Shadow right in front of Margo Lane and Harry Vincent. Personally, I preferred the earlier days, when he was more of a mystery man, even to his closest agents. By the time this story was published, the radio version of The Shadow had been on the air long enough that many radio listeners were also pulp readers. The radio listeners were convinced that The Shadow had hypnotic powers, so author Walter Gibson threw them a bone in this story. He doesn't have The Shadow becoming invisible, but he does allow that The Shadow can hypnotize Harry. He even tosses in the old "cloud men's minds" phrase to warm the hearts of radio listeners. Here's how Gibson describes The Shadow unearthing Harry's repressed memories: "Harry met Cranston's probing eyes. They had a probing power that was reputed to cloud men's minds, but in Harry's case they stirred vague recollections into actualities... Cranston caught Harry as he swayed, gave a finger-snap in front of his subject's eyes. Coming out of his partial trance..."Even though the world was still at war when this was written and published, there is only one reference to the global conflict in the entire story. Craig Rexford refers to the Long Valley real estate project as "our post-war project." You'd think there would be other references to something that stood so large in every reader's life. But this was supposed to be escapist fare, and I guess it wouldn't do to emphasize the subject, in that case. When the story finally draws to a satisfactory conclusion, there is one mild surprise. The villain lives! Normally in these stories, the criminal mastermind dies at the end. Often he is just wounded by The Shadow, and then shot multiple times by the police, leaving a mutilated corpse. Sometimes he meets his demise in a devious trap he had set for The Shadow. But rarely, and this is one of those rare cases, the bad guy goes to jail. And so it is here. The "man of murder started his trip to the hospital that would be a stop-over on his journey to the county jail." Justice is still served, but the killer is alive. While "The Toll of Death" is an enjoyable mystery in its own right, it just doesn't feel like a Shadow novel. The black-cloaked Shadow doesn't appear in the story very often; most of the time we see Lamont Cranston, instead. And when The Shadow does appear, it seems somewhat perfunctory. Something in this story is just a bit off. Perhaps part of it was the matter of banter. Walter Gibson rarely puts humor in his Shadow novels, but there's a weak attempt at it, here. Harry Vincent banters with Shirley. He banters with the desk clerk at the hotel. It's weak banter, unfortunately, lacking in humor. It's a lame attempt at humor which seems out of character for poor Harry. Not sure what Gibson's trying, here. But it sure didn't work for me. If you were looking for a short (35,000 words), generic mystery to read some night, this would fill the bill. But if you specifically wanted to read a Shadow mystery, this shouldn't be your first choice. When it comes to The Shadow, you could do a lot better. It's not a bad mystery; it's a bad Shadow mystery.