“The Living Shadow” (part three)

I meant to do this the other day, but then my nose tried to assassinate me and I wasn't able to get much of anything done. Still sneezing, but not as badly. Let's do more Shadow!

5. The Shadow On The Wall​

Sounds like he's a good climber.

We're following Cronin now, surprisingly. The prose is careful to tell us how evil he is as it describes him taking the subway across town and then going to a movie theater after having committed the murder. It really wants me to hate this guy, and it's hamfisted enough in its attempts to make me that I can't help but root for him. As he enters a shady-looking apartment building, the Shadow sneaks after him, avoiding his notice and tracking him to a specific apartment, where he sets himself up to listen outside the door.

Dunno if the Shadow interviewed Harry since the murder, or if he was already tracking Cronin on his own, but in either case he's tailing him now. The text is, of course, borderline purple as it describes the "mass of shadows" melting and disappearing into every patch of darkness he hides in and flitting soundlessly between them.

Heedless of the Shadow shadowing him, Cronin reaches that apartment and meets with a thin, sharp-nosed individual who he addresses as Croaker. Cronin tells Croaker that he has a plan to betray the rest of the gang and make off with some serious money, and he wants Croaker to help him with it. When Croaker asks why the hell he picked him for this offer, Cronin replies that it's because he knows Croaker has already been stealing from the others himself and Cronin can prove it. So, he either helps him with his own scheme, or Cronin snitches and he gets the cement shoes anyway.

Not building the most reliable partnerships here, Cronin.

As Cronin makes this ultimatum, the Shadow stealthily climbs the outside wall so he can listen better from the window. Said window is three stories off the ground, so Cronin had instructed Croaker to leave it open and give themselves a view of the street. Presumably because he's not 100% sure the police haven't tracked him here. Pretty good thinking on Cronin's part, since he has no way of knowing that he's dealing with proto-Batman instead of normal cops. So, that's the chapter's namesake! The Shadow on the wall.

Anyway, their gang has apparently had minor dealings with a local fence named Wang Fu. Cronin has determined that Fu is actually a triad member, and that most of his fencing involves moving stolen goods and cash from the gang's New York chapter to the underboss in San Francisco. They've been using non-Chinese couriers to avoid suspicion, and those couriers identify themselves to Wang Fu by showing him that antique coin. Scanlon, obviously, was one of their couriers. The reason Cronin is coming to Croaker with this information instead of keeping it to himself is because...um...

““Why didn’t you get the disk?”

”Couldn’t find it. It wasn’t on him. I let him drop when I opened the closet door, and I went through his clothes, but it wasn’t there. It must have fallen somewhere. I didn’t have time to stay all night.”

”Then we’re out of luck.”

”Maybe not, Croaker. That’s why I’m putting you wise. You’re smart enough to figure some way on getting in there to look for it.””

Trying to blackmail someone who you know is smarter than you. Amazing.

It gets even better a minute later, though:

““Why didn’t you let Scanlon get the box, Steve, and then take it from him?”

”I was afraid the chinks might be watching him after he got it. They’re a crazy bunch.”

”Maybe they’re watching him now. Maybe I’ll get nabbed.”

”Not a chance, Croaker. Your big job is to get into Room 1417 at the Metrolite, and find that disk. Wang Foo isn’t supposed to know who the messenger is until he shows up. Even if he’s a few days late, the disk will fix matters. So get on the job, and be sure to make a quick get−away after the old Chinaman gives you the box.””

Okay. So. Cronin is afraid that someone will be watching the courier after he picks up the box. Two problems with that.

1. If they have to send someone else to babysit the courier, doesn't that defeat the purpose of using an outsider as a courier in the first place?

2. If they watch the courier after he leaves with the box, doesn't that mean they'll also be watching Cronin/Croaker if they're playing the part of the courier?

Honestly, it mostly seems like Cronin has no idea what he's doing and is bullshitting answers to Croaker's questions that he never thought of himself. Which I guess is in character for a guy who thinks he can get away with cutting out his own gang, antagonizing a fucking international crime syndicate, and blackmailing someone smarter than him at the same time.

...

One thing that I guess I can appreciate for a story from this time and place, though, is that at least so far it's not hitching itself to the Yellow Peril train. The whole coin thing is a little bit orientalist in the pseudomystical way, but the framing of white and Chinese gangsters just muscling in on each other with equally ignoble motives and methods is worlds better than a lot of crime fiction from the era. So, that's something.

...

Croaker seems to have a higher WIS than Cronin along with the higher INT, and notices the Shadow's shadow being cast while Cronin is trying to explain why it needs to be Croaker rather than himself who makes the pickup. Cronin gets understandably antsy at Croaker's announcement, and quickly gets his promise to cooperate before fleeing the building. Croaker follows him out to make sure he's gone. Then, as he returns to his apartment, he hears the Shadow making a hideous laugh from inside his own bedroom. He tries to find the intruder, but just barely catches a glimpse of the Shadow as he dives out the window again.

Then...Croaker heads out to catch a cab of his own and do as Cronin asked, even though he knows someone was listening in. And even though he glimpses the shadow dropping down the side of the building again as he leaves. Chapter ends with the Shadow catching a cab of his own and either pursuing Croaker or heading off to do something else.


Generally not a great chapter. On top of everything else, the stakes of the story being "criminals stealing from other criminals" doesn't exactly pull a reader's heartstrings unless they've been made to care about some of said criminals, which this story isn't attempting to do. We're not privy to the Shadow's actual POV either, so this chapter...honestly lacked a protagonist.

Next one.

6. The Second Message​

Harry Vincent has had disturbing dreams since falling asleep in his new hotel room. Understandable, since he just heard a guy being murdered right next door to himself and (for author fiat reasons :/) is now in possession of the artifact he was killed for. He's also worried that he might have failed in his mission by misinterpreting "watch man in room next door." If the Shadow meant "watch" as in protect rather than simply observe, then that's a fission mailed. Granted, I'd lay the blame for that squarely on the shadow for not being clear with his instructions and also not arming the guy who he wants to fight off violent gangsters, but Harry's a little closer to the situation and has just been through a whirlwind of failure, self-loathing, and confusion so I guess it's understandable.

He reads the morning paper when it arrives, looking for coverage of the murder. It's in there, but only a very short blurb along with some other recent crime reports. New York in the Prohibition, there's enough murder to go around. He considers coming clean to the police, but a mixture of fear and gratitude to the Shadow makes him decide to hold off on that until his employer has okayed it. Of course, if the police end up suspecting him for whatever reason and decide to interrogate him on their own initiative, he doubts he'd be able to keep his story for, eg, why he's staying here straight, which is likely to go worse for him in the legal system then if he came forward preemptively.

As he worries over this, he looks over the other local crime reporting. It's been a very "New York in the Prohibition" sort of night, with two additional deaths by gunshot having taken place beside Scanlon's. A wealthy businessman walked in on a burglar trying to open his safe, resulting in an altercation in which the businessman was shot fatally and his secretary put in the hospital while the thief escaped with the loot. Possibly coincidence, possibly that local Triad branch getting desperate to rustle up their periodic tribute in time for the courier's arrival. The other one is NOT a coincidence; a man with a known criminal history by the name of Croaker was found shot to death in his apartment. I guess either his own gang found out what he and Cronin were up to, or Wang Fu's did. In either case, the Shadow may or may not have been responsible for leaking the info for some inscrutable reason of his own.

As Vincent is sitting around being anxious, he gets another call from a "Detective Harrison" who confirms his new room number and says he wants to go over Harry's statement from last night again, while emphasizing certain words with a familiar croak/coughing sound, before suddenly hanging up. The hidden message this time is more cryptic than the previous one: "Report to fellow's company." Hopefully, circumstances will soon make the meaning clear to Harry and the reader alike.

Or...Harry can just resolve it immediately in an unconvincing burst of insight. After purple prosing a bit about how mysterious the Shadow is and how much he wants to avoid displeasing Senpai, Harry decides to check the phone book for "Fellows Company." He only finds one "Fellows Co." business address. Um...okay then. Since his order was to "report" to that location, he decides to go to the address in person instead of calling the number. End chapter.


What age group was this written for? The opening scene with the very adult despair and suicide made me assume it was for adults or at least teens, but most of the story since then has been reading like children's lit.

Well, let's read another.

7. The Insurance Broker​

Open on Claude H. Fellows, insurance broker extraordinaire, as he goes through the contents of his workplace mailbox. Mixed in with the work letters, he gets a few that are clearly addressed to him personally. One of them in particular gets his attention, and he opens it carefully, taking pains not to damage anything.

If you want a good example of what I mean when I say this feels like children's lit, look at this passage:

“So far his actions had been very leisurely, but as he spread the paper between his chubby hands, he began to read with great rapidity. The words had been printed by hand, and they would have been meaningless to the average reader, for they were composed of jumbled letters that were unpronounceable.

A cryptogram! The code to the cryptogram likely was simple, for Claude Fellows read it without difficulty. Evidently the letter was designed to perplex anyone for whom it was not intended, yet the make−up of the words was doubtless of the variety of cipher that would not be difficult to solve in an hour’s time.

Fellows finished the document very quickly. At the bottom of it was a number − 58. He opened a drawer in the desk and brought out a card which bore numbers from 1 to 100. Every number had been crossed out, up to and including 57. He made a pencil mark through number 58, and replaced the card in the drawer.”

"A cryptogram! Exclamation mark!" It's a very kiddy description, especially coming from what mostly seems to be a third person omniscient narrator.

Anyway, Fellows decodes the message and whispers it to himself. "Laidlow murder. This was not anticipated. Will require immediate attention. Scanlon murder at Metrolite Hotel. Important. May have been observed by Harry Vincent, our new operative. He will call today. Question him. Notify me if he has information. If he has, hold him for further instructions." Laidlow being the name of the rich guy who was shot in his house by a robber. I guess he meant something to the Shadow, though I guess it could also just be that the Shadow expected the robbery but not the (seemingly incidental) murder. Anyway, Fellows is clearly a member of Shadow Ltd., and might be Harry's handler for at least the next little while. I wonder how big of an organization the Shadow runs?

Actually...maybe there isn't actually "a" Shadow at all? It could just be an organization whose field operatives all wear the costume and use the Nolan Batman Growl.

Fellows commits the instructions to memory and then incinerates the paper. When Harry Vincent eventually arrives, Fellows has his secretary bring him into the office and closes all the doors and windows. Fellows doesn't beat around the bush. As soon as he's confirmed Harry's identity, he asks for his observations about the Scanlon murder and related people and events. Harry is nervous at first, fearing a trap, but Fellows confirms that he's a fellow Shadow agent by recounting the circumstances of how Harry met the Shadow a couple nights ago. And, it turns out that Fellows coincidentally also independently came up with the name "the Shadow" for their employer, which the two kind of bond over.

-_-

Really? Just total coincidence? Not even "Mr. Shadow" or "Von Shadowstein" or another permutation like that? Let me guess, it's going to turn out that literally every one of his sidekicks independently decided to call him the Shadow, without anyone happening to arrive at Detective Darkness or Monsignor Ombra or The Goddamned Batman or anything. If so, lame.

Harry tells Fellows everything he saw and heard, and shows him the coin he picked up. Fellows writes it all down, presumably in code, and puts it in an envelope that he sends out immediately, after which he tells Harry to just wait in his office until they get a reply. Harry uses this opportunity to ask a little about Shadow Ltd., but Fellows either doesn't know much more than Harry does or pretends not to. The address he sends the letters to, for instance, is supposedly inhabited by a "Mr. Jonas," but no one actually lives there as far as he can tell. The mail slot in the door is hooked up to a chute that drops the letters into a dark (and seemingly empty) basement, where the Shadow or another of his agents presumably checks for them every so often. All further investigations by Fellows led nowhere.

Fellows then puts the Shadow's cock in his mouth and sucks frantically for a paragraph.

““I have told you this with a purpose, Vincent. The methods of the man we call The Shadow are unfathomable. He is entirely unconcerned about any methods you, I, or any one else may use in an attempt to discover his identity. To him, we are no more than children. I discovered that some time ago; I am giving you the information to save you further useless effort.””

Harry's subsequent questions are all fruitless. Upon being asked if he's seen the Shadow's face, if the Shadow is a government agent or a crime lord or a foreign spy or what, etc, Fellows just replies "I don't know." And then tells Harry that "I don't know" is an important answer in this line of work, and one Harry should be prepared to give at all times.

Which makes it sound like Fellows actually might know quite a bit more than he's letting on, of course, but Harry's not about to push it.

Several hours pass in relative silence before the return letter comes. Fellows reads it, and relays Harry his new orders. Mr. Scanlon had been waiting to pick up a box from someone named Wang Fu at a certain tea-shop at 3 PM today. There are two other men who may have tried to surreptitiously take his place, but one of them is dead now, and the other appears to have fled the city. So, now Harry is going to be posing as Scanlon and taking the box. Fellows tells him where to be and when, including the details of the cab that's been pre-arranged to bring him from a certain street corner to Mr. Fu's tea shop. He is not to exchange any words with Fu, just to show him the coin, accept the box, and then get back into the same cab, which will have waited for him. Then, he is to come back to this office and give the box to Fellows.

Man, everyone and their mother is trying to rip off the Chinese mob this week.

Harry knows better than to ask any further questions, and accepts his mission. Before setting out on it though, he happens to catch a glimpse of the letter Fellows had supposedly just read the new orders from, and sees that it's blank. Or appears to be blank, at least. Either the Shadow uses some kind of invisible ink for sensitive written instructions, or (more likely, I think) there never were any orders and Fellows himself is plotting to betray the Shadow and make off with the treasure after Harry brings it to him.

End of the chapter.


There's really not much to talk about here. The characters are bland and don't receive much development beyond the plot's immediate requirements. The only one who the writers themselves seem to care about is the Shadow, and unfortunately it's the fourteen-year-old-talking-about-their-DeviantArt-OC kind of caring.

I also still can't quite figure out what age this is intended for. Some bits of it are awfully dark for children's lit, but the rest of it is weirdly childish and naïve for something geared to adults. I've read other pulp stories from this era, and they didn't all have these flaws. Though, granted, I don't think I've read other pulp detective stories from this era, so maybe that genre specifically was more kid or teen focused at the time. That would actually make sense, considering that it was Detective Comics that printed the first Superman and Batman cartoons just a few years after this.

Yeah, maybe detective stories in general were just seen as kids' stuff at the time, that would make sense even if the suicide attempt in chapter one is kind of out of place for that.


Anyway, that's a post.