[The Shadow 61] • Spoils of the Shadow

SPOILS OF THE SHADOW was originally published in the September 1, 1934 issue of The Shadow Magazine. A wave of crime has struck Manhattan, and the crook has challenged the master of darkness: Don't interfere or death will rain down upon innocent victims. The Shadow must accept the foul dare or accept defeat. Here we have another terrific Shadow mystery adventure. It's pulp novels like these that make The Shadow such a beloved pulp character. This story showcases everything fans have come to love about the pulp thrillers. You have a criminal mastermind with powerful lieutenants who seems to have an unbeatable plan. There's our heroic protagonist of nearly superhuman abilities battling against prodigious odds against an impossible situation. There are death traps from which no one could seemingly escape. There are strange crimes with no possible explanation. Action... suspense... thrills... all make this story the kind of mystery for which readers clamored. It begins on board a train. Riding the rails across Virginia, The Shadow spies a suspicious signboard at it flies past. It contains a hidden message that only The Shadow would notice. That communique leads him to a seemingly innocent magazine advertisement which contains another secret message which is directed only to The Shadow. He doesn't know who has placed the ad; the identity of the person seeking to contact The Shadow remains a mystery. But he decides to go to the address in the secret message and meet the unknown personage who seeks a meeting with The Shadow. When he arrives at the Washington hotel mentioned in the message, he meets a suave man of shrewd appearance named Mark Tyrell. Tyrell is a business promoter and a man of social prominence. The Shadow stands there cloaked in black as Tyrell tells him that he -- Tyrell -- is honest... for now. But he plans on turning to crime, and warns The Shadow not to interfere. "I have planned five robberies. In each case I intend, with proper aid, to purloin a single object of high value." His plans are made, and if The Shadow interferes, innocent people will die. There's nothing The Shadow can do to prevent it. He must either let Tyrell commit his astounding crimes unmolested, or be responsible for the death of innocent bystanders. All this makes for an interesting premise. What is The Shadow to do? One by one, crimes are committed. The Shadow is present at each of the social events where the impossible crimes take place. He appears to do nothing. Is there something up his sleeve? Is he taking secret action? Or is he abiding by the terms that Tyrell originally gave? Believe me, this story will have you guessing. The crimes themselves are most original and clever. First an ancient and valuable fourteenth-century, Sicilian tapestry disappears from the home of Sebastian Dutton. How it is accomplished is most ingenious. The Shadow is present at the party at Dutton's home, yet seems powerless to prevent the robbery. The second crime involves rare Chinese screens from the Forbidden Palace in Pekin worth a hundred thousand dollars. The golden screens are stolen out from under the watchful eyes of old Rudolph Brockthorpe. Again, The Shadow is present at the robbery but does nothing to stop it. Millionaire collector Ferrell Gault's gem-encrusted gold Buddha is next. And again, The Shadow is present when it disappears. What will be next? And what will The Shadow do about it? Ya just gotta read this one! The only loose thread, by story's end, was how Tyrell got his secret message into that billboard and magazine ad that first brought The Shadow into the mystery. Does he work for the ad agency? Does he know someone there? Does he own it? The advertisements appear, but we never really find out how that was arranged. It's a minor technicality, but a slightly annoying one. It was in the early Shadow novels, like this one, that readers often got to see The Shadow use his amazing abilities at disguise. As the years passed, those masterful abilities were on display less and less. And upon the rare occasion that The Shadow used a disguise, he just appeared in disguise... the reader never got to see him apply it. It was only in the stories from the early years that readers enjoyed seeing The Shadow's long, tapering fingers press against his face and mold his plastic countenance into an exact duplicate of someone else. In this story, he takes the guise of Mark Tyrell so convincingly that even Tyrell himself is amazed. And he does it twice! Most impressive. It's interesting to note that Mark Tyrell identifies that Lamont Cranston is actually The Shadow in disguise. It's all in the eyes. He recognizes the eyes that burn from Cranston's countenance as being that of The Shadow. An astute reader would immediately realize that such information spells the doom of Mark Tyrell. By the final page in the story, Tyrell must die, in order to preserve the closely held secret that The Shadow often borrows Cranston's identity. No crook ever survived the ending of a pulp magazine story with that knowledge. And sure enough, he bites the dust and takes that secret to the grave. When it comes to political correctness, this story wins no awards by today's standards. Of course, back in 1934 standard were different. But I imagine that even then some readers cringed at the description of Foon Koo, Mark Tyrell's dwarfish, spider-legged Chinese lieutenant; he of the yellow face and beady eyes. And his pidgin English didn't help matters any. He relished his evil work, explaining, ""Foon Koo ready. He likee jobee. You watchee him do it." Yellow peril stories were still popular at the time of this story, if you couldn't tell. Foon Koo was in charge of the bizarre death traps hidden all through the headquarters of Mark Tyrell. Traps doors, chutes that send a person sliding to a death room in the cellar. The old house is riddled with them. And it's wonderful to watch The Shadow skillfully avoid each one. All until the last one, when he is caught and sent to what would seem to be a certain doom. How he escapes ghastly death makes for thrilling reading you won't want to miss. Most of the old gang of familiar characters is in this story. Cliff Marsland scouts the criminal underworld. There's no sign of his pal Hawkeye, but then Hawkeye had only appeared on one Shadow story by the time of this one, and wouldn't become a series regular for another few months. Harry Vincent is here; we learn he prefers to shoot a .45 caliber automatic, much like his master, The Shadow. Clyde Burke, police reporter for the New York Classic, also shows up. So do Stanley and Richards, the chauffeur and butler of Lamont Cranston, who have no idea they serve an impostor, not the real Cranston. And Doctor Rupert Sayre, personal physician to The Shadow, appears when The Shadow gets a .38 bullet in the left shoulder. And let's not forget Burbank, contact man for The Shadow, who is also commended as being a wireless expert here. As for the police, Detective Joe Cardona is a major player in the story. His boss, Police Commissioner Ralph Weston, however, only shows up in the final act for a brief appearance. The Shadow appears here in his garb of black, in his favorite disguise as Lamont Cranston, and in disguise as Mark Tyrell. No sign of any other disguises, however. It's rare in a Shadow story that The Shadow offers a criminal a chance to escape, scott free. In only a few does the crook accept and agree to change his ways. In those cases, when the lawbreaker reforms, and it's usually a small-time crook not a criminal genius, The Shadow would let him go, unscathed as long as he stuck to the straight and narrow. In this story, The Shadow offers Mark Tyrell such an chance. "Honest opportunity lies before you. Why not take it? The past will be forgotten." And Tyrell accepts! But he isn't sincere, and we know what his fate will be at story's end. The purplish liquid gets used in this story. But it's The Shadow disguised as Lamont Cranston who pulls the tiny vial from a vest pocket, rather than The Shadow removing it from beneath his cloak. He dilutes the fluid in a glass of water and gives it to revive an overcome woman. That strange concoction was fairly popular in the Shadow stories of the early 1930s, but seemed to quickly wane in popularity. Perhaps it had to do with the general crackdown on patent medicines of the time. Another brief note of interest is the appearance of The Shadow's suction cups. They appear in this story, as he attaches them to his hands and feet and climbs up a sheer wall. I always love it when those suction cups appear. They're so cool! They also were more popular in the early years, as with the purplish liquid, but they continued to be used by The Shadow well into the 1940s. As you read it, you will notice a reference to a cigarette as a "fag." For some unknown reason, Gibson only used this term for cigarette in this story and two months later in "The Chinese Disks." The slang is something I've come to expect in stories published in England; it was apparently common usage there. But its rare to see the slang in American published works. And the character who uses the term in this story isn't English, so that possibility is eliminated. Just a note of interest. Ah, how the language changes... Reading this story was a real treat for me. Plenty to keep me flipping those pages. I know you'll enjoy this great early Shadow pulp mystery. I did.