 | #128 "The Shadow's Rival"
Vol. 22, No. 2 Published: 06/15/37 Submitted: 12/11/36 under the same title Author: Walter Gibson Review date: Aug 28, 2009 |
THE SHADOW'S RIVAL was originally published in the June 15, 1937 issue of The Shadow Magazine. Another being emerges who equals The Shadow's hatred of crime. Can he actually outwit crooks as easily as The Shadow? The Police suspect he is actually The Shadow himself. Will all of The Shadow's achievements be credited to The Shadow's rival?
This story has a lot going for it, but ultimately it is disappointing. It's the premise of the whole story that is at fault. The premise is that there is a genius criminologist out there who can predict crimes and can sleuth out the persons who commit them. This person is even better at the job of fighting crime than is The Shadow! And any faithful reader knows that just can't be true. So the basic premise is obviously false, and that makes it pretty predictable from that point on. This alleged crimefighter isn't what he seems. He'll turn out to be a master of crime, himself, in the end. Any reader worth his salt will have figured that out just by reading the title of the story. So that makes reading the story an exercise in futility. The reader anticipates that there will be a surprise twist ending in which The Shadow's rival will turn out to be (gasp!) a crook himself. And sure enough, that's exactly what happens to the surprise of no one.
The story opens with the introduction of New York's own Public Enemy, "Chink" Rethlo. Yes, you read that right. There's a politically incorrect nickname, if I ever heard one. And if you think that's offensive, just wait till you see how he's described! But ignoring that for now, it seems that Rethlo has held up three banks at one-week intervals, bagging nearly a million dollars. The Shadow has finally tracked him down. And just as The Shadow is about to break into Rethlo's hideout and capture him, the police arrive and beat him to the punch. Usually, The Shadow is way ahead of the police. But this time, they arrived first.
This isn't the only time such a strange occurrence has happened. "Kid" Lombroy, head of a budding dope ring, had been arrested in Chinatown with the goods on him. The Shadow had planned to handle Lombroy as soon as the dopester received his next shipment, but the police handled him first. Perry Candreth, blackmailer deluxe, had been cornered while threatening a wealthy Californian. The Shadow had arranged a special trap that would later have snared Candreth, if the police hadn't gotten there first. "Goggles" Barchew, a fake peddler who specialized in warehouse robberies, had found his whole crowd surrounded by detectives. The Shadow had also started out to pick up Barchew's trail, only to find the police in charge.
Something strange was going on. Someone has been tipping off the police to criminal activity, and that someone is named Gannet Seard. The police have been keeping him a secret for months, we're told. Seard is a wealthy chap of great intellect who has taken up criminology as a hobby. And he's good at it. He's so good that he becomes The Shadow's rival.
That's not the way the police see it, of course. Commissioner Weston actually believes that Gannet Seard is The Shadow. He can't prove it, but he figures that who else would have such a keen grasp of the crime scene around New York. The Shadow - the real one - doesn't want to reveal Seard as just a bystander, but he also isn't too fond on letting Seard take credit for his own mastery of crime. So, he tried to get to the crooks before Seard can put the police on their tracks.
It's a friendly rivalry. In order to demonstrate his deductive skill, The Shadow determines to find the hiding place of Chink Rethlo's million dollars in swag. He partly succeeds, in that he recovers part of the loot... the part that can't be easily disposed of. But there's still a much larger part that isn't accounted for. Where could it be? Of course, any astute reader already knows the answer. Gannet Seard, the secret crime boss that nobody suspects... well, nobody but the reader... has that loot!
As for Gannet Seard himself, well he's already pretty much figured out who The Shadow is, in reality. He correctly assumes it's Lamont Cranston. Luckily, he keeps that knowledge to himself. Why? Well, that's kept rather vague in the story. But the reader, who had long ago figured out that Seard is a crime boss himself, knows the real reason for the secrecy. Seard plans to use that secret knowledge to trap The Shadow and do away with him.
And that leads to some pretty cool death traps, one of the strong points of this story. There's one scene when Creep Hoyran, recently escaped from an asylum and currently in the employ of some unknown criminal mastermind (gee, we wonder who?) gasses The Shadow and captures him. Then he imprisons him in an underground cell and whips away the Shadow's slouch hat, revealing his face. Sorry, no "horror face" appears beneath the hat; it's Cranston's face. Then Creep fills the room with inflammable gas, and sets it afire. How The Shadow escapes in his feeble condition is quite exciting, and makes the story worthwhile reading, if for no other reason.
I will have to admit I really liked the ending, after Seard is exposed as the master criminal that he really is. The crime genius has set things up so that there's no proof against him. He can't be prosecuted. He has outwitted The Shadow and the police alike. Yet on the last page, he meets with a just finish that I found very satisfying. It almost made up for being forces to read the entire story knowing in advance that Seard would turn out to be on crime's side.
Appearing in this story are Hawkeye, Burbank, Cliff Marsland, Burbank, Clyde Burke, Moe Shrevnitz and Harry Vincent. Harry only appears briefly. The Shadow sends him to Philadelphia to gather some information, so most of the time he isn't in the story and he doesn't see much action. Clyde Burke sends in a few reports, but that's the extent of his participation. Hawkeye and Cliff Marsland similarly see only brief mention. Moe's exposure in this story is only slightly more than the other agents.
Strangely, Moe Shrevnitz is described as "one of The Shadow's lesser agents." What's this? Moe, hackie extrordinaire, a lesser agent? I always considered Moe one of The Shadow's major agents. A most indispensable agent! I don't know what Walter Gibson was thinking in this 1937 tale. Moe had been a trusted agent of The Shadow for over three years and had appeared in dozens of stories by this time. Gibson must have been delirious!
And let's not forget Stanley. He's not actually an agent, but as Cranston's chauffeur, he should count for something. He only appears once, and doesn't get any lines to speak. But at least he's mentioned.
As for the law, Inspector Joe Cardona, Detective Sergeant Markham and Police Commissioner Ralph Weston are all on hand. Cardona has just recently been promoted from detective to inspector, as we are informed by Chink Rethlo. Actually, author Walter Gibson had given him that promotion in "The Golden Masks" some nine months earlier. So Rethlo was a little out of date, but what do you expect from someone recently escaped from the crazy bin?
A few final notes of interest. The Shadow is not known for his gadgets, unlike his contemporary Doc Savage, but he does get to use some wiretapping equipment with which he gets to listen in on a conversation between Commissioner Weston and Gannet Seard.
And speaking of Commissioner Weston, it will be remembered that during most of the 1930s, he refused to believe in The Shadow. He wouldn't acknowledge that any such person existed. He refused to allow Cardona to mention him in his reports. But in this story, things have changed. Weston is expecting a public statement from The Shadow, a sure sign that he now believes in the actuality of our black-cloaked hero.
This is a well written story, and would be fun to read if only the reader could put out of his mind the knowledge that The Shadow is the ultimate fighter of crime. If you can accept the suggestion that there might be someone else on the side of right who is better at crimefighting than The Shadow, then it would go a long way to helping you go along with the story.
Unfortunately, that premise is the pulp tale's fatal flaw. We all know that The Shadow is crimedom's ultimate nemesis, so it's pretty obvious that Gibson is trying to trick the reader. And the reader will not be tricked! Too bad... it could have been such a good story.