The Shadow travels to Moscow to foil a robbery plot that has already resulted in a number of murders in New York.
- Affably Evil: Both Froman and Noyes put a good face on, when they aren't cold-bloodedly murdering or swindling people, respectively.
- Amoral Attorney: Parker Noyes.
- Badass in Distress: The Shadow is badly shot up by the Bolsheviks in the course of the adventure. He is even captured by them, but manages to escape.
- Cliff Marsland is also captured by the Czarists in Paris. The Shadow advises him to not free himself from the Czarist's fetters so as to avoid questions from the Paris police when they arrive to investigate the gunbattle between the Bolsheviks, the Czarists, and The Shadow (since he was tied up and pretending to be unconscious, the cops wouldn't suspect he had any more part in the shootout than being an unlucky American waylaid for nefarious purposes and let him go).
- Bilingual Backfire: It doesn't work out so well for Ivan Motkin's mooks when they find out that The Shadow can speak Russian. They were discussing his impending murder right in front of him, on the assumption he didn't know the language.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Froman uses this on Marcus Holtmann to get him to divulge the location of the Romanoff Jewels.
- Cool Plane: The single-engine job that The Shadow uses to fly to Moscow.
- Cruel Mercy/Karmic Death: The Shadow offers to let Froman, Motkin and Noyes go free and alive in exchange for relieving them of the gems that have caused so much death. However, Froman and Motkin decide to fight it out in Froman's boobytrapped dungeon after letting Noyes go. As Motkin choked Froman to death, Froman tripped the trigger that blew the dungeon to kingdom come. It also collapsed the rest of the mansion, crushing Noyes to death right at the point of exiting the front door.
- Dirty Communists/Red Scare: Subverted. The main villains aren't Communists, they're Czarists hoping to finance another attempt at counterrevolution with the titular jewels. The Bolsheviks are secondary (and no less lethal) villains, but their villainy isn't ideologically driven, as much as it is driven by a desire to recover the jewels so that they might not be executed by Stalin.
- I Lied: Twice to prisoners — first Froman promises to let Holtmann go. And then gives him fatally poisoned pears. Then Motkin promises to let Henry Arnaud (actually The Shadow) go, but tells his aides to murder Arnaud!Shadow at a convenient moment. Unfortunately for them, he speaks Russian.
- Language Fluency Denial: Done, as shown above, by The Shadow to Ivan Motkin (and, since it's not established beforehand he can speak Russian, to the audience as well).
- Meaningful Name: F. O. Froman's name is an anagram of "Romanoff," giving a hint as to his actual heritage and motivations.
- Mineral MacGuffin: The titular jewels. Both the Czarists and the Bolsheviks want them, for differing reasons — the Czarists both for the legitimacy and to finance an attempt at toppling the Soviet government, the Bolsheviks for the sole reason that their lives are on the line if they can't get them back. In the end, what is believed to be the Imperial Crown jewels proves to be glass imitations, created by the Bolsheviks to bolster their legitimacy. Even so, The Shadow destroys them in the end.
- The Mole: Senov, who masquerades as a loyal Bolshevik, while actually being a deep-cover agent of the Czarists. To protect himself, he always goes masked when meeting with his cell.
- Noodle Incident: The Shadow's girasol ring was a gift from Czar Nicholas II for services that have not quite been disclosed to the reader.
- Punch-Clock Villain: David Tholbin isn't really a part of the plot (the uh, villain's plot, not the story) in any meaningful sense. He throws in his lot with Froman and Noyes due to Noyes offering him $250,000 and the opportunity to go on a cruise with the beautiful Betty Waddell, whom he wants to marry.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The entire story becomes one in the end, when it's revealed that the jewels everybody's been chasing are glass fakes. Even worse for Motkin, he knew they were fakes, but had to go through the motions of recovering them at great cost of lives to prevent the Soviet government from losing face.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Shadow gives one hell of one to Froman and Noyes and Motkin at the climax of the story.
