The Shadow 018 Dead Men Live

DEAD MEN LIVE was originally published in the November 15, 1932 issue of The Shadow Magazine. No, we're not talking about zombies, here. These are actual living men who have been abducted. Their deaths have been faked. To the world at large, they are dead; in actuality, they live confined and forced to reveal their closely guarded secrets. It will take The Shadow to discover their unfortunate plight and release them from the sinister castle in which they are held prisoners. 

 

Lamont Cranston is among a select few potential investors who has been granted the privilege of witnessing Clark Murdock's latest experiments in atomic disintegration. Murdock, a stoop-shouldered, gray-haired man of around fifty, is a world-renowned chemist. He has made some remarkable discoveries and has consented to display his promising inventions to potential investors. 

Cranston stands in Murdock's lab, viewing a large, hollow sphere of glass. Inside tiny sparks appear, then intensify. There are countless bursts of flame as invisible particles break asunder in atomic action. Murdock explains that he has discovered a method of atomic control which is the gateway to power surpassing all dreams. Say, now, this sounds pretty valuable. Valuable enough to steal! Valuable enough to kill for! 

(To put things in perspective, keep in mind that this story was written in early 1932. At that point in time, atomic power was still the work of fiction. It was ten years later in 1942 when Enrico Fermi first successfully controlled a chain reaction releasing energy from the atom's nucleus.) 

 

Later that evening, after all the visitors have gone, Doctor Gerald Savette, one of those witnesses, returns to Murdock's lab. He jabs a sharp hypodermic needle into Murdock's shoulder. Clark Murdock falls to the floor, in every simulation of death. Savette stores away the body in a packing crate and has truckmen haul it away. He then sets his sinister plan into action; placing a dead body made to look like Murdock at the lab table, and letting the atomic reaction run wild. 

The next morning, newspapers report a terrific explosion and fire at Clark Murdock's laboratory. His body was found in the wreckage. A noted scientist has died. Or so the world believes. But we know that Murdock still lives, and has been spirited away to some undisclosed location. 

 

And Clark Murdock isn't the only person whose death has been faked. Others still live, prisoners, while everyone believes them dead. Nearly three years ago there was a fire at Doctor Savette's sanitarium on Long Island. Austin Bellamy, a retired manufacturer had perished in the blaze. Or so it was thought. Then there was the strange disappearance of Professor Pierre Rachaud, a radio technician who was considered an expert on television. He was alleged to have died at sea, during an ocean voyage. 

So what is exactly going on, here? We learn early in this story that we're dealing with three master criminals. Doctor Gerald Savette is just one of the group. Glade Tremont, respected attorney, is the second. And the third is bushy-haired Ivan Orlinov, wealthy Russian of the czarist realm, who had become a naturalized American citizen. These three having been "collecting" men of wealth and men of specialized knowledge. 

The headquarters of this trio of sinister characters is a large estate of some thirty acres located in the rolling mountainsides of the Catskills. Situated about three miles from the small town of Glendale is a replica of a medieval castle. Inside this foreboding gray stone structure surrounded by high-spiked iron fences, prisoners are forced to continue work on their inventions. Men of wealth are forced to give up their millions. And in the dungeon below, men are tortured if they don't cooperate. 

 

It will take all the cunning of The Shadow to discover the masterminds behind this horrible scheme. It will take all The Shadow's power to defeat the army of gangland's best who guard the castle. And it will take all of The Shadow's amazing powers, when he too is injected with the "death serum" and falls victim to the same terrible fate shared by so many others. Yes, The Shadow becomes one of the dead men who live! 

The Shadow doesn't have a lot of help, in this early story. There are only very brief appearances by contact-men Burbank and Rutledge Mann. Clyde Burke, reporter for the New York Classic, has a small part in the first half of the tale. Harry Vincent is sent overseas to Europe to do some research, and only receives several brief references. Hawkeye and Moe Shrevnitz had not yet been introduced into the magazine series. Most of the action is carried by Cliff Marsland. 

 

Cliff Marsland had been introduced to the series about six months earlier. He was The Shadow's agent in the underworld, well-suited for the job since he had spent time in Sing Sing prison. Of course, he was actually innocent; he had taken the blame for someone else. But he kept that fact secret so he could mix in with the denizens of gangland and be an effective agent for The Shadow. And so he is, in this story. 

 

Cliff Marsland becomes our proxy hero in this tale. He is sent by The Shadow to work undercover as Orlinov's secretary. He insidiously worms his way into the gang, and spies on their secret conversations. As such, he gets a good deal of the action in the piece. 

We are given a tantalizing hint of Marsland's background. We are told: 

"Cliff Marsland played hunches. He was a man of action. He had gained his craving for excitement on the battlefields of France. He had continued it in the service of The Shadow."

 

Marsland carries a fountain pen containing The Shadow's special ink. It's with this clear-blue ink that Cliff writes his reports to The Shadow. He quickly seals the reports, knowing that the coded writing will disappear after too much exposure to the air. But he carelessly leaves the pen lying around, and Ivan Orlinov find it. When he discovers the unusual properties of the ink, he realizes that Cliff Marsland isn't to be trusted. Thus Marsland is captured, tortured and becomes a victim in need of rescue by The Shadow. 

 

The Shadow was being broadcast on radio at the time of this story in 1932, but not in the form that he is best remembered. In that year, The Shadow was still just the narrator for dramatic stories. Yet, his presence on the radio is mentioned in this novel: 

"It was true that his voice was heard over the radio, in a program over a national broadcasting chain. That also served The Shadow's purpose. The tones of his mysterious voice were recognized by all who heard them. Yet all the efforts of the underworld to learn the identity of the broadcaster had come to no avail. 

 

The Shadow spoke from a soundproof room, boxed with black curtains. His method of entrance and exit from the place was a mystery that had never been solved - not even by those connected with the broadcasting studio."

Such was the integration of the pulp novels with the then-current radio broadcasts. The magazine stories admitted that The Shadow was on the radio. They alleged that these broadcasts were The Shadow's way of making his voice recognizable so that the denizens of the underworld would fear the sound of his voice when they encountered him in person. 

 

The exact nature of the magazine character was not fully realized when this story was written. Although most things had fallen into place, there were still a few things that hadn't hardened into cement yet. The Shadow does wear his famous girasol ring, the fire opal that is "unmatched in all the world." Of course, after many year passed, we learned that there were actually two identical "matching" stones, both eyes of a Xincan idol. 

 

In The Shadow's sanctum, we are told, twice, that he sits beneath the rays of a green shaded lamp. This changed and constantly became a "bluish" light for the run of the series. 

 

But while in the sanctum, we get an interesting view of The Shadow sitting at a different table. It's a makeup table in a corner of the sanctum, at which The Shadow puts on his amazing disguises. We see: 

"... his white hands appeared within the sphere of light. The hands appeared with what seemed to be a thin mask of wire gauze, no more than a skeleton framework filled with a few solid patches. The object disappeared as it was raised into the dark.... Guised with the colorless surface of the thin mask, only The Shadow's eyes were visible as they glowed through a plastic mass of grayish blur!"

 

Yes, he's the master of disguise. He can change his features at will by adjusting that wire gauze. In this story, he becomes a nameless tall man clad in a dark suit. He also appears in his most famous disguise as millionaire Lamont Cranston. And he even takes on the guise of one of the three masterminds, sporting the perfectly formed face of Glade Tremont! 

This is the early Shadow who can make himself appear as anyone, with only moments of preparation. He's also The Shadow who shoots to kill, and the body count rises rapidly. By the end of the mystery, at least thirty gangsters have bitten the dust, courtesy of The Shadow. 

 

Pitiful captives, forced to produce their life's work for a trio of brain thieves. And only The Shadow to stand between these slaves who are forced to perfect their inventions, and their sinister captors. It all has the makings for a terrific Shadow mystery novel!