The Shadow 060 Gypsy Vengeance

GYPSY VENGEANCE was published in the August 15, 1934 issue of The Shadow Magazine. Ah, yes, Gypsies! Flashing eyes. Flashing teeth. Flashing knives. And vengeance of the Gypsies. A vengeance that will be met by The Shadow! 

 

Valdo is a Gypsy. We first meet him when he comes to the Manhattan morgue to view the body of an unknown victim pulled from the Hudson River. Detective Joe Cardona questions him. Does he know the murdered man? No, Valdo doesn't know him. But as Valdo leaves the morgue, there is a glint in his eye. He has recognized the man as a Spaniard named Mandrez, one time servant of a banished Spanish nobleman, the Duke of Almanza. 

Mandrez was in the country trying to sell a fortune in jewels. Gems stolen from the Duke of Almanza. Did he sell them? And if so, to whom? And if not, where are they now? Several different factions seek these jewels. These and others. For there's a wave of jewel robberies going on in New York. 

There have been a recent rash of society robberies. Someone has been discovering the secrets of Manhattan's wealthy families. That someone has been passing the information on to a gang of robbers. And the robbers are breaking into those estates and plundering the treasures found there. 

Marty Lunk heads up the mob that attacks the mansions of these owners of massive jewelry. But who is feeding him the necessary information? And how is that information gathered? Suspicion falls upon Madame Lorenna, a Gypsy fortune-teller. 

Madame Lorenna is often called to parties at the wealthy estates, where she tells the fortunes of the young debutantes. They tell her their deepest secrets, including their fathers' secret collections of jewelry. All that Madame Lorenna learns, she tells to her manager Claude Jerwyn and he passes it along to Marty Lunk. Then the gang breaks into the houses and collects the gems. 

But Marty Lunk's gang aren't the only ones interested in acquiring the rare jewelry. There's also Valdo's master, Rodney Casper, who has recently arrived in New York on a South American steamship. Through Valdo, Casper controls an organization of several dozen Gypsies. They are also out to acquire the jewels of the Duke of Almanza. 

Only one man stands in between these two opposing groups. And that man is The Shadow. It will take all the courage and skill of The Shadow to find the Spanish jewels and keep them safe from the marauders seeking them. Aided, of course, by his secret agents. 

Appearing in this story are Cliff Marsland, skulking through the underworld, Harry Vincent, trusted long-time agent, Burbank, reliable contact man, and Clyde Burke, reporter for the New York Classic. Also briefly appearing are Dr. Rupert Sayre, physician to The Shadow, and Stanley, chauffeur to Lamont Cranston. Supporting law enforcement are ace-sleuth Detective Joe Cardona and Detective Sergeant Markham. 

The Shadow appears in disguise in this story as Lamont Cranston, wealthy globe-trotter. He also appears as several unnamed characters, once a quiet-faced New Yorker, another time as a tall gentlemen strolling into a hotel lobby and also as a tall, chiseled Gypsy in the Gypsy camp. 

Ever wonder how The Shadow could appear in disguise as Lamont Cranston so often without someone noticing? After all, no disguise is perfect. It's explained here that the real Cranston has many friends, but since he is gone so often, none really know him well. So he's the perfect person for The Shadow to impersonate. That plus the fact that The Shadow is a master of disguise. 

We get to see The Shadow use his rubber suction cups to climb the outside of a building in this story. He attaches them to his hands and feet to gain a high second-story window. We also later see him scale the rough stone surface of a large mansion without the aide of those flexible discs. 

As we've been told in various other Shadow tales, The Shadow is a linguist of amazing ability. He speaks Spanish, here, plus several different Gypsy dialects. And he can read lips in all those languages, too! Pretty amazing, if you ask me. 

Another of The Shadow's amazing abilities is that of reading the handwriting of a man, just by watching the upper end of the pencil as he writes. In this tale, The Shadow sees Madame Lorenna's manager writing something. His keen eyes are fixed upon the rubber tip of the pencil, as he mentally traces the words being written. 

In some stories, The Shadow keeps his unmatched girasol ring hidden, and uses it only to identify himself as The Shadow to those he trusts. But in this story, he shows it off at a party when in his Cranston disguise. "This stone is from my own collection. It is a girasol - I doubt that one could find another fire-opal that would match it in quality." The party guests gaze on in wonder, not knowing that this is the trademark gem of The Shadow. 

That unique vial of purplish liquid appears twice in this novel. First, it's used to revive Cliff Marsland when he's injured. And later, it's administered to another injured man. In both cases, it's described as being contained in a small vial, which gives a sudden surge of strength along with some dizziness. It isn't described as "purplish" in this story, though. But even though no color is indicated, we definitely recognize it from other stories. And we still wonder about the legality of its active ingredients. 

In the middle of this story, there is a lull of three weeks. We are told that three weeks have elapsed since The Shadow visited the home of Madame Lorenna. Three weeks waiting for certain events to form. But what happened during those three weeks? We aren't told. But it makes one wonder. Did The Shadow sit around the Cobalt Club for three weeks? Stay at Cranston's New Jersey estate twiddling this thumbs. If you ask me, it's more likely that he embarked upon some other adventure during this time. Perhaps solved some other case, or defeated some other mastermind. But there's no hint in the story of what happened during that interlude, so we are left to our own imagination. 

I think my favorite scene in this story is where The Shadow is climbing the outside of a stone-walled mansion, reaching a third-floor window. Below, a pack of Gypsies are preparing to storm the house. The clouds part, the moon comes out, and the black form of The Shadow is revealed clinging high up on the outside walls. The superstitious Gypsies below see him and mistake him for a vampire, and run screaming from the scene. "Vampyre! Vampyre! Nosferatu!" Ya gotta love it!