Title: Professor X
Air date: September 18, 1938
Plot Summary: A scientist, Professor Krammer, is tooling away in his lab when he is visited by his patron, Joe Martin. When Martin brusquely demands to know where his money has gone, Prof. Krammer shows him. The professor has built a disintegration chamber which, with the closing of a switch, can vaporize anything into nothingness.
Krammer has visions of his device being the first half of a Teleportation machine, once he invents the re-integrator half. Unfortunately for Krammer, he made a poor choice of patron. Joe Martin is a gangster and ex-bootlegger who immediately spots the potential of Krammer's machine as a murder box. Martin says he will take possession of the machine, and when Krammer balks, Martin kills him.
What Martin does not know is that Krammer, having just made his breakthrough, wrote to his friend and old student Lamont Cranston, inviting him to visit. Lamont and Margo arrive and find the professor's laboratory ransacked. They then discover the professor himself, dead, hidden behind some drywall. They also find, on his person, a letter from Joe Martin. So they follow that lead, going to Martin's house, where the gangster has installed the disintegration chamber and is using it as a murder machine.
Notes: Last episode of Season 1-A aka the 1938 "summer series", although in fact The Shadow had been running regularly for a full calendar year; with the start of Season 2 the show's sponsorship reverted back to Blue Coal. Also the last of 52 episodes with Orson Welles as The Shadow, and the last episode with Margot Stevenson as Margo Lane.
Tropes:
- Disintegration Chamber: Professor Krammer has invented a box that will vaporize anything that's put in it. Krammer thinks that it's just the first step of a teleportation device, to be paired with a re-integration machine, but Joe Martin has other ideas.
- Herr Doktor: Prof. Krammer has a thick German accent.
- High-Voltage Death: How Joe Martin meets his end. He accidentally grabs bare metal instead of the insulated switch, when attempting to vaporize Margo.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Martin could probably have fobbed off the nosy electrician by telling him that the disintegration device was some sort of experimental medical machine. But no, he decides to just kill the electrician instead.
- No Name Given: The electrician installing the disintegration chamber, the one Martin murders, is not named.
- Secondary Character Title: The episode is not titled after The Shadow or even after Joe Martin the antagonist, but instead after the professor, who is killed in the opening scene.
- Teleportation: Discussed Trope. Professor Krammer has grand visions of building a teleportation device, but Joe Martin decides he'd rather use it as a murder box.
- Villain Opening Scene: The first scene has Joe Martin visiting Professor Krammer, the professor demonstrating the disintegration device, then Martin killing the professor.
