The Shadow 210 The Devil's Paymaster

THE DEVIL'S PAYMASTER was originally published in the November 15, 1940 issue of The Shadow Magazine. A hardened criminal claims he has reformed, and wishes to make restitution for his many crimes. This man of evil will pay back his illicit gains with the assistance of a go-between: Lamont Cranston. Yes, The Shadow will become the Devil's Paymaster! Our story opens at midnight at the home of New York Police Commissioner Ralph Weston. He awakes to the sound of a ringing telephone. But it's not his phone; it comes from a phone he's never seen before - a phone he finds secreted behind the closed door of his wardrobe closet. Although he can't understand how the phone came to be here, he answers it. A voice over the wire introduces itself as "Mr. Remorse." He claims to be a reformed criminal who wishes to undo some of the harm he caused before his retirement. He asks Commissioner Weston to suggest a person who can act as a liaison and help restore stolen money to his former victims. He wants some public-spirited person, someone whose life is above reproach. Commissioner Weston is puzzled. He's still half asleep. He doesn't know how this telephone got in his closet. He doesn't know who he's talking to. The first person he can think of who fits the requirements is his good friend Lamont Cranston. Weston suggests Mr. Remorse contact Cranston. The phone call is terminated, leaving Weston standing there dumfounded. His trusted valet professes no knowledge of the telephone. Headquarters men rush to the scene, but trace the phone wires only to find they dangle cut through. There is no way to trace the strange call. Meanwhile, at Sing Sing Prison, the warden receives a telephone call at precisely 1 AM. Again, the call comes through on a special wire to a telephone that's not the warden's. The voice of Mr. Remorse asks the same question of the warden. What prominent New York citizen would he recommend to help the reformed criminal restore stolen money to his victims? The first name that comes to the warden's mind is... Lamont Cranston. And so the calls continue. At 2 AM, the publisher of the Daily Classic is roused from his bed by a phantom telephone call. The same voice has the same question. At 3 AM, one of New York's best known preachers, Rev. Andrew Dingle, is awakened with the same request. At 4 AM, Benedict Stark, prominent industrialist and banker, is also drawn into the tangled web of Mr. Remorse's grim questionnaire. Each man recommends Lamont Cranston. The following day, Lamont Cranston enters police headquarters to meet with Commissioner Weston and the four other men who were telephoned by Mr. Remorse. He agrees to accept the strange position offered to him, in order to further the ends of justice. What those men don't know, is that this man who appears to them as Lamont Cranston is in reality The Shadow. And The Shadow is going to delve into the mystery and see what's behind this seemingly benign offer. The last man telephoned by Mr. Remorse on that fateful night was Benedict Stark. That name alone is enough to convince The Shadow to get involved. Benedict Stark and The Shadow have crossed paths before. To The Shadow, Benedict Stark is known as the Prince of Evil. Three times before, they have battled. Each time, the result was a draw. The Shadow had thwarted the evil plans of Stark, but the sinister genius himself always was able to avoid incrimination. This time will be different! Could Benedict Stark be behind these strange circumstances? Could he actually be Mr. Remorse, himself? There is something strangely sinister behind this seemingly beneficent being who calls himself Mr. Remorse. What is his true reasons for his generosity? What secret plans are taking form behind the scenes? Much of the action takes place on an island. Daniel Judson owns a large estate outside Munford, New Jersey. A very, very large estate. On the estate is a huge lake; in the center of the lake is an island; on the island is the fabulous mansion belonging to Daniel Judson. Judson is an eccentric inventor who surrounds his mansion with ferocious dogs, venomous cobras and various other death traps. Inside his fortress, he designs amazing new inventions. In his fortress laboratory, Judson designs things such as synthetic glass, synthetic rubber, and many other discoveries that would mean millions to a warlike nation. Judson knows that if he could be kidnapped and tortured into revealing some of his scientific secrets, spies could reap a handsome profit from warring powers across the Atlantic. Hence the tall stone walls, the steel shutters and the fortified mansion in the center of the lake. Daniel Judson is the man whose name is given to Lamont Cranston. Cranston is to deliver Mr. Remorse's payments of restitution. But The Shadow, in his Cranston guise, watches carefully as he visits the strange island mansion. He knows there is something else going on, other than simple repayment of lost funds. But what The Shadow doesn't know is that this is all leading up to the ultimate revenge by the Prince of Evil, Benedict Stark! Benedict Stark is out for revenge. He plans not only to capture and kill The Shadow, but to decimate his corps of agents as well. He wants to wipe out the entire team, leaving absolutely no resistance to his dreams of conquest. And at the story's climax, we find Harry Vincent, Clyde Burke, Cliff Marsland, Moe Shrevnitz and Rutledge Mann all hanging on a wall, ready to be pinned like butterflies by five deadly harpoons. And The Shadow is securely bound to a chair, forced to watch as the sharp spears slowly inch forward toward his agents! Appearing in this story are most of the characters that pulp readers had come to know over the nine previous years. Harry Vincent, one of The Shadow's most senior agents. Cliff Marsland, The Shadow's underworld contact, helps locate and investigate the small-time hoodlums working for the hidden mastermind. Reporter Clyde Burke pretends to be on vacation, while in reality he watches one of the main suspects at The Green Tree Inn in Munford. Moe Shrevnitz trails a variety of suspects in his taxi. Rutledge Mann is still recuperating from injuries sustained at the hands of Benedict Stark's men in "Murder Genius." Burbank appears, but is one of the lucky few not to be captured. And Dr. Rupert Sayre is mentioned, but doesn't actually appear. Commissioner Ralph Weston and Inspector Joe Cardona appear, as they often did, in their roles as law-enforcement officers. The Shadow appears as himself, complete with black cloak, slouch hat and black gloves. He also appears in several disguises, including his most famous disguise as Lamont Cranston, wealthy world-traveler. He also appears as a truck driver in greasy overalls and cap pulled down low. And he appears disguised as a book salesman, a rakish-looking individual, hair slickly parted and dressed in a sporty suit. And speaking of books, did you know that The Shadow has a collection of "adult" material? Yes, indeed! We're told that in another part of his sanctum is a locked, glass-fronted bookcase containing expensively bound volumes of contraband. These are "private edition" books for millionaires with perverted tastes that are smuggled into New York from abroad. Just what he's doing with this type of material is left rather vague. But in this story, he uses one of the books along with his book-salesman disguise, to gain entry to a suspect's apartment. I'm sure he uses these books "only in the line of duty." I don't even want to think about any alternative explanation. Does this sound a little unlike what Walter Gibson would write? Well it is! This story, as well as the other three pulp novels in the "Prince of Evil" series, were written by alternate author Theodore Tinsley. He was groomed as a stand-in for Gibson, in case of accident. Luckily, no such accident ever happened, but Tinsley still wrote a total of 27 Shadow novels in the years between 1936 and 1943. This was one of them. The Shadow, as envisioned by Theodore Tinsley, was a bit edgier - a bit more "pulpy." There was a dash more sex, as illustrated by the above mentioned example of the "private edition" books. The violence was a little more graphic. As The Shadow's agents hang on the wall, the lances slowly piercing their skins is described in more detail than Gibson would have done. And of course there are the underground tunnels and chambers which Tinsley loved, and would insert into any story which he could. When Theodore Tinsley wrote The Shadow, his hero received injuries more often than when Walter Gibson wrote the character. In this story, The Shadow is wounded in the shoulder from flying shrapnel. But he grits his teeth and forges onward. He's hit in the face with a strange brownish liquid that forms a poisonous gas. He coughs, staggers, but grits his teeth and forges on again. At story's end, he intentionally breaks a capsule of acid on his wrists to free him from his bonds. But it also takes his skin with it, eating down to the bone. Yep, that's Tinsley. We pick up some interesting trivia about The Shadow and his Cranston alter ego. Cranston loves roses. He's also a renowned amateur entomologist who loves butterflies. He has a personal car that looks inconspicuous but can reach speeds of over a hundred miles per hour. And The Shadow owns several garages strategically placed around Manhattan for any possible emergency. In many of the previous Shadow tales, we are shown that The Shadow has great power over animals. In 1935's "The London Crimes" he turns two fierce watchdogs into docile creatures. In 1936's "The Northwoods Mystery" he seems to speak the language of the deep forest creatures. In 1939's "Noose of Death" he tames a bucking bronco. And in 1940's "Crime at Seven Oaks" he again demonstrates his power over even large, ferocious dogs. In this story, however, he seems to have lost that ability. A snarling wolfhound guards Judson's island mansion, and the only way The Shadow can deal with it is with a bullet from a silenced gun. I tend to blame Tinsley's lack of familiarity with small details in The Shadow's background for this oversight. In one very interesting scene, we are witness to The Shadow interrogating two prisoners with his special "light and sound" techniques. The two are taken to some undisclosed location and kept in a black draped chamber. We are told that no crook ever entered that secret examination room without confessing all he knew. They are subjected to light, at first dim then growing brighter and brighter to unbearable glare. They are also subjected to sound, starting with a light buzz and gradually increasing until it is louder than a siren. But this time, something goes wrong. Someone has been in the supposedly secret room and has tampered with the controls. The Shadow can't turn off the sound. His two prisoners fall to the floor, blood flowing from their ears. He has to rescue them from the superhuman-pitched sound before they die. Benedict Stark has struck again, in an attempt to silence his underlings. Apparently this scientific torture chamber is not The Shadow's sanctum. We know that the sanctum was only invaded by outsiders twice, in all the years, and this wasn't one of those two occasions. Plus, if Benedict Stark had actually found his way into The Shadow's sanctum, he wouldn't have stopped at jamming the sound mechanism. So although the location of this strange room isn't specified, we know it is separate from The Shadow's sanctum. The Shadow does rescue the two prisoners from the supersonic sound. The last we see of them, we are told that Dr. Rupert Sayre will nurse them back to health. After that, they would be rehabilitated and "would never again have tendencies toward wrong-doing." Sounds like he's going to send them to his secret island for criminals as first mentioned in the 1936 tale "The Broken Napoleons." It seems likely that this rehabilitation colony was patterned after Doc Savage's clinic in upstate New York. Both were an attempt to find an alternative to killing the bad guys. Sometimes, it seems, they could be taught to hate crime and become productive citizens. A couple of things in this story do seem out of place. In one scene, Lamont Cranston and Clyde Burke submit samples of their fingerprints to the police. This just doesn't ring true, to me. I would think that The Shadow would try to avoid giving his fingerprints at all costs. Think of the complications it could possibly cause in the future! "Hey, you aren't Lamont Cranston... your fingerprints are those of Kent Allard!" Ooops, there goes one hard-fought secret identity down the drain. Another note that doesn't ring true, is the way in which The Shadow's agents are duped to fall into Benedict Stark's trap. They receive notes, allegedly from The Shadow, signed with the drawing of The Shadow's girasol ring. So they blithely accept the notes as genuine and follow the orders that lead them into Stark's grasp. Whatever happened to the vivid-blue writing that fades away to invisibility? And the secret codes that The Shadow uses when contacting his agents? Their absence should have tipped off the agents that something was amiss. But not in this story. Again, I attribute the oversight to the author, Theodore Tinsley. There is a purplish fluid in this story, but it's not the famous phial of purplish liquid that The Shadow often uses to restore strength and vitality in times of emergency. This time, it's a corrosive acid kept in a thin-walled glass ball about the size of a grape. A captured Shadow uses it to burn through his bonds, and gets a nasty dose of acid-maimed flesh in the process. This was the fourth and final of the "Prince of Evil" series, so it's not giving anything away to tell you that Benedict Stark finally meets his doom at the end of the tale. And a gristly doom it is, as well! If you want to read the other stories from the series in order, they are:04/15/40 The Prince of Evil 07/01/40 Murder Genius  09/15/40 The Man Who Died Twice  11/15/40 The Devil's PaymasterThis is a great ending to the series, filled with action and suspense; mystery and intrigue. It is considered by many to be some of Theodore Tinsley's best work on The Shadow magazine stories, and often falls into the top-25 Shadow stories ever. I think you'll agree, a few minor flaws not withstanding, it's a good one.