 | #058 "Chain of Death"
Vol. 10, No. 4 Published: 07/15/34 Submitted: 10/13/33 as "Crime, Inc." Author: Walter Gibson Review date: May 23, 2003 |
CHAIN OF DEATH was published in the July 15, 1934 issue of The Shadow Magazine. The insidious, secret organization known as "Crime, Incorporated" is a chain of criminal masterminds, each connected to the next. It's a true chain of death!
In this unique "chain" each member knows the names of only two other members: the person before him in the chain, and the person after him. The person before him is the one who introduced him to the chain. The person after him is the one that he brought into the group.
When any member of the chain devises a crime, he sends a coded message down the chain describing it. Any hidden member who can assist replies back up the chain, also in the code. The crime is then committed, and no clews are left behind.
The activities of Crime, Incorporated have been going on for some time, without any hint for The Shadow to find. But he finally short-circuits one crime that give him a clue. His first.
Young Howard Norwyn enters the huge Zenith Building at 9:15 PM and enters the office of his employer, George Hobston, president of an investment firm. He's there for an appointment with Hobston, but instead finds Hobston dead, the strong vault room open, papers scattered everywhere. There's been murder and robbery!
Norwyn is attacked by an unknown thug, knocked out and locked in the strong room with the revolver: the death weapon. The revolver has been wiped of fingerprints, and Howard Norwyn's prints placed upon it. He is being framed for the crime...
False evidence is being planted that will make it appear that old Hobston and Norwyn had quarreled. Hobson had apparently managed to lock Norwyn in the vault room and called the police. Norwyn, coming to his senses, had shot through the open grillwork of the locked vault door, and shot his employer in the back. Thus was the planted evidence.
The police would have surely arrested Howary Norwyn as the murderer of George Hobston, had they arrived before The Shadow. But The Shadow shows up in the nick of time. He opens the locked vault door and frees young Norwyn. Then he spirits Norwyn away to the Long Island home of Lamont Cranston. There, The Shadow keeps Norwyn in hiding from the police as he tracks down the true killer. And the source of the crime!
The source of the crime is Crime, Incorporated. We meet the head of the crime ring, a querulous old man, a wizen creature lying propped up on the pillows of his old-fashioned bed. Barton Talbor, the head of Crime, Incorporated, lies dying. His secretary, Fullis Garwald is nursing him in his last illness.
Fullis Garwald knows nothing of his employer's secret life of crime. But Garwald is no primrose, himself. He's anxious for old Talbor to die so he can search for hidden wealth before the relatives and heirs arrive. Imagine his surprise when he's told that Talbor is leaving his entire criminal empire to Garwald!
As he lays dying, Talbor describes his criminal corporation to his secretary. His great fortune has been gained through crime. By subtle crime that has gone undetected for many years. It started with Talbor and two others. The other two then added a member, each, to the organization. Another link in the chain. Each new member added another. And so on, until Crime, Incorporated currently stands at over twenty members, each a crafty master of crime in his own right.
Talbor supplied the group with a special code which each uses to contact adjacent links in the chain. Actually two codes. A circle code is simple to decipher and is intended as a blind. It is only used for trivial, unimportant messages. A block code is the true one. It will baffle the greatest cryptogram experts and is used for the true messages.
Both codes are used together, with two messages being always passed together: one in the simple circle code, and the other in the block code. The useless circle code is intended to mislead anyone who might accidentally find a message. The circle code will be easily solved, and will be some useless message. The block code will be too difficult to solve, but will be disregarded as also something of no importance.
The Shadow finds two of these coded messages in the possession of Professor Langwood Devine, another member of Crime, Incorporated. The professor is killed and the police come into possession of the two coded messages. Their top experts can't decipher the block code. This could be the clue that The Shadow needs to crack the strange chain.
Can even The Shadow solve the strange block code? And can he somehow pull together all the secret members of the group for capture? It's an early whirlwind mystery of The Shadow that promises and delivers action aplenty!
Assisting The Shadow in solving this case are his agents Rutledge Mann, Clyde Burke, Harry Vincent and Cliff Marsland. Support comes from the forces of law and order in the persons of Detective Joe Cardona and Inspector Timothy Klein. The Shadow, himself, appears disguised as Mynheer Hansel Vaart, prominent economist from the Netherlands, and as Lamont Cranston, millionaire and world-traveler. The real Cranston, we are told, is currently in Afghanistan and won't be returning for six months.
The Shadow's famous small vial appears in this story. This time, it contains an opiate rather than a stimulant. The Shadow commands Howard Norwyn to drink from it before he spirits him out of the crime scene away to Cranston's Long Island estate. Norwyn drinks, becomes light-headed, and passes out. No color is mentioned this time, so apparently it isn't the "purplish" liquid we've come to expect from other stories.
And we also get to visit the sanctum several times, including a visit to a second room of the sanctum that is rarely mentioned. It is in this other room that The Shadow stands before the polished surface of a mirror and puts on his disguises. We are told "deft fingers, pressing against cheeks and lips, were molding the countenance as one might work with clay." A face like clay...
If you like secret codes, this one's certainly for you!