[The Shadow 32] • The Ghost of the Manor

THE GHOST OF THE MANOR was originally published in the June 15, 1933 issue of The Shadow Magazine. Just the title of this pulp story, alone, is enough to make me want to read it. It conjures up images of a tall gray old mansion looming in the dark night. And inside, heirs to a fortune sit among flickering candles awaiting the reading of the will. Any, yup, that's exactly how this story begins! The best of all The Shadow pulp mysteries were the ones from the early years, from say 1931 to 1936. So a quick check of the date on this story tells you it's probably going to be a good one. There were very few clinkers during that time period. And this one doesn't let you down. It's a great story; not perfect, but still great. Our story opens in a classic manner, right out of an old B mystery movie. The night is cloudy and windy as we first see Delthern Manor sitting darkly in a fashionable suburb of the city of Newbury. Caleb Delthern has died, and family attorney Horatio Farman is preparing to meet with the heirs at midnight. They meet in a huge reception hall lighted by flicking candle-light. For years it was rumored that ancestral ghosts had chosen this hall as their abiding place. And old Caleb Delthern's belief in the supernatural had caused him to provide for the reading of his will within this hall. If you're like me, you are already starting to feel delicious chills running up your spine. You can tell this is going to get good! About all it lacks is a storm outside, rain pelting against the windows, wind slamming the shutters and a bolt of lightning to illuminate the night sky. OK, so we don't get the storm. But everything else is in place. Let's meet the heirs of Caleb Delthern. They are five in number. Caleb Delthern had three children, now all deceased. The five present are grandchildren. Winstead Delthern, Humphrey Delthern and Jasper Delthern are sons of Caleb's eldest. Warren Barringer is the only child of Caleb's middle child, and Marcia Wardrop is the only child of Caleb's youngest. They sit around the long table in the middle of the large room, looking at the attorney Horatio Farman. And in the gallery above, looking down on the assembled group, are a pair of eyes. The burning eyes of The Shadow! As the family lawyer reads the strange terms of the will, The Shadow listens. The estate is worth approximately thirteen million dollars. It will be divided among the heirs who are present at a conference thirty days hence. The eldest of those heirs then present will receive half of the entire estate. The remaining half will be divided equally among the remaining heirs who are present at that conference. Can't you just visualize a target painted on the back of the eldest heir? Since Winstead Delthern, the eldest heir, gets the lion's share of the estate in thirty days, it would seem to provide motivation to one of the other heirs. Motivation for murder! For if he dies within the allotted thirty days, someone else will become eldest heir and will receive a full half of the fortune. Yes, as The Shadow watches and listens from above, he realizes that murder is in the offing. And most likely, multiple-murder! So, how did The Shadow get mixed up in this entire affair? Well it seems that Warren Barringer, the next-to-youngest of the heirs, has been in China for the past few years. He was notified of the death of his grandfather, and of the reading of the will. Knowing that he could not arrive in time, he authorized by cable a proxy to attend in his place. His proxy was a friend he met in Java, one Lamont Cranston. Yes, Warren Barringer becomes our proxy hero. Nearly all The Shadow mysteries of the 1930's had a proxy hero. Warren had met the real Lamont Cranston -- the world traveler and millionaire. But unbeknownst to everyone, the real Cranston was currently in Timbuktu. And taking his place at the New Jersey mansion is The Shadow, disguised as the millionaire so convincingly that not even the servants knew it wasn't their true master that they served. The lawyer, Horatio Farman, advises Cranston that the meeting is a mere formality, and that he needn't attend. So The Shadow doesn't attend... as Cranston. But as his black-cloaked self, he hides in the balcony gallery of the reception hall, watching as the motivation for murder slowly unwinds. Three days after that fateful meeting, young Warren Barringer arrives at the New York docks. He is met by Cranston's chauffeur and is driven to Cranston's New Jersey mansion. There, we get to see The Shadow in his guise as Lamont Cranston. And we get a rare glimpse into the mansion itself. That alone would make this story worthwhile reading. We get to follow along as Cranston shows Warren his huge house. We see the radio-sending station on the top floor and Cranston's famed curio room, containing rare object acquired on his trips around the world. We also get a very nice explanation of how the fake Cranston can get by with his impersonation of another man. Since The Shadow usually has no way of knowing what conversations the true Cranston has had in those overseas encounters, he explains it away in this manner: "I go and I come as I please. So much so that I often confuse events in my mind. I remember people; but time and places are often troublesome. Let me see - when did I first meet you -?" And that's how he discovers that Cranston met young Warren in Java. Apparently it's a technique that The Shadow uses often, as he meets people who the real Cranston has met around the world. People he has no information on. But he cleverly bluffs his way, convincing them that he is the real Cranston. As for the plot of the story, the murders begin. The ghost of the manor gets the blame at first. But as the deaths continue, things start to narrow down. The last heir living won't be the lucky recipient of the fortune. The last heir living will be the unlucky prime suspect in the murders! And only The Shadow can reveal the true murderer and save an innocent heir from false accusation and imprisonment. The Shadow works alone in this story. Of all his agents that we have met, the only one that appears is Rutledge Mann. Mann helps compile newspaper clippings and other information for The Shadow. We get to see him deliver the envelope to the mysterious "B. Jonas" office in the rundown building on Twenty-Third street. And then his job is done, and we see no more of Rutledge Mann. Two other familiar characters appear briefly: Stanley, Cranston's chauffeur, and Richards, Cranston's butler at the New Jersey mansion. Neither, of course, is aware that they serve an impostor. So they aren't agents of The Shadow, although the unwittingly assist him. There's no sign of Police Commissioner Ralph Weston or Detective Joe Cardona, but then that's only logical since none of the story takes place in New York. Other than one chapter at Cranston's New Jersey home, the entire story takes place in the city of Newbury. The local police make an appearance in the persons of Sidney Gorson, the Newbury police chief, and his star detective, Harold Terwiliger. (Minor spoiler here) The detective Harold Terwiliger gets bumped off by the "ghost" before the end of the story. But in a strange and bizarre way, he extracts vengeance from beyond the grave. It's pretty cool, actually. Author Walter Gibson allows the murderer to receive justice from a dead man. I won't go into more detail, or this would become a major spoiler. A couple points of interest. We get to see The Shadow wearing his famous girasol ring. He shows it to Warren Barringer when he's disguised as Cranston, and later at story's climax when he appears at The Shadow. As Cranston, he tells Warren the story of the ring's origin. "A girasol," explained Cranston. "It is a variety of fire opal; and this particular stone is unmatched in all the world. It is one of the genuine jewels of the Romanoffs." In later stories we heard a different version of the origin. In those stories, the ring was supposedly given to Kent Allard (The Shadow's true identity) by the Xinca Indians who rescued him from his crashed plane in Guatemala, and who worshipped him as a white god. It was in the 1970's when author Walter Gibson explained the discrepancy in the ring's history. It seems that the girasol stone wasn't "unmatched" after all. There were actually two matching stones -- eyes in a Xincan idol. One was stolen from the Indians and eventually found its way into the Romanoff collection, and from their ended up as a gift to The Shadow. The other stone was retained by the Xincans, until it too was given to The Shadow. This entire "origin" story can be heard, spoken by Walter Gibson himself, in a short two-minute sound clip. The recording was made during a 1977 fan convention, and is available at: www.spaceports.com/~deshadow/gibson/ . In other points of interest, Cranston's age was described as being indeterminate. Young Warren, when he meets The Shadow as Cranston in the New Jersey mansion, can "make no estimate as to Cranston's age. The man might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty." All of which, of course, just adds to the mystery of The Shadow. Who was he, really? How old was he? Was he really in the Great War? It wasn't until four years later that Gibson revealed to us that The Shadow was actually Kent Allard. We are also reminded that Prohibition is still in effect. One of the thugs in the story carries a bottle in his hip pocket, obtained from some speakeasy. Prohibition, America's fourteen-year experiment in being alcohol free, ended on December 5, 1933, about six months after this magazine hit the newsstands. Did you ever wonder if The Shadow's adventures ever overlapped? Well, in this story, they do. It's one of the rare times that we are told of another case while in the middle of another story. In this story, during the month-long wait and between murders, there is apparently a lull. And The Shadow uses that time to thwart a bank robbery in Cincinnati. It's described in the newspaper clipping that Rutledge Mann is gathering in that one scene. It's good to know that The Shadow is capable of multi-tasking. One last thing that I thought was interesting. At our story's end, The Shadow writes in his journal. This massive volume contains The Shadow's handwritten accounts of all his adventures. He finishes writing his concluding comments about the case. And beneath the final statement, he marks a mysterious symbol. What that symbol was, we aren't told. Now it seems to me that I've seen reference to that mysterious symbol mentioned in at least one other Shadow pulp novel. But for the life of me, I can't remember which one. I don't think it was ever explained. It was just one more cloaked mystery of The Shadow. What was the symbol? Perhaps a small caricature of The Shadow himself. Perhaps some strange talisman he encountered in his travels. Or perhaps, and this is my favorite conjecture, it was a Chinese symbol. The symbol of Ying Ko! But, unfortunately, this is all just conjecture, since Walter Gibson never specified. This was an enjoyable Shadow pulp novel to read. There's the old grandfather clock that strikes twelve. Secret passages in the mansion walls. Strange laughter in the night. A pretty young girl in peril. And The Shadow working in the background, hiding in... the shadows! Whew! This one has it all! It makes for a great story; one of my favorites!