Title: The Man Who Murdered Time
Air date: January 1, 1939
Plot summary: It's New Year's Eve, and Lamont Cranston hobnobs at his club with a businessman named Stewart. Lamont invites Stewart to his New Year's party, and Stewart cheerfully accepts, but says that first he has to see a cousin of his, one Dr. Willard. Dr. Willard is a weirdo who claims to have invented a time machine, but that's not why Stewart is stopping by: he's visiting because Willard is suffering from heart disease and doesn't have long to live.
Stewart arrives at Willard's place and finds the scientist surprisingly chipper for a man who's terminally ill. It turns out that Willard has invented a time machine, and specifically, one that can place the whole world in a time loop. Willard has figured out how to avoid his looming death: he will simply live December 31 over and over again. Not only that, Willard will get to murder Stewart over and over again: Willard unjustly blames Stewart for winning the affections of their rich uncle and gaining the uncle's fortune while Willard was left in poverty.
Willard kills Stewart. Just before the clock strikes midnight and rings in 1939, the time loop kicks in and resets to 24 hours earlier. Everyone is unaware that they are repeating New Year's Eve—everyone except for Lamont Cranston, who, thanks to the mental training he received that gave him the power to cloud men's minds, also is immune to the time reset. Lamont, connecting the time loop to Stewart's comments about his weird cousin, realizes that it's up to The Shadow to save the world.
Tropes:
- "Groundhog Day" Loop:
- Willard has made a time machine that will make December 31 repeat again and again, forever. Thanks to his mental training Lamont Cranston is the only person who knows what is going on. Unlike many examples of this trope, everyone is in a truly fixed loop. Even when Lamont speaks to someone and tries to get them to understand what is going on, the person he's addressing continues to act exactly as they did the first time and say the exact same words, like a recording on repeat. Stewart still acts as if he's suffering from Willard's poison even after Lamont switched out the glasses. It takes the full application of The Shadow's will to get Stewart to snap out of it and make his escape.
- 1904 novel The Defence of Duffer's Drift is sometimes cited as the Ur-Example of the "Groundhog Day" Loop, but in that novel the repeated episodes of the battle are specifically presented as dreams. If one doesn't count that example, then this episode may be the Ur-Example.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Dr. Willard is oddly vital for a man who thinks that his death from heart disease is not only imminent but that he'll apparently die that very night. But he is coughing when Stewart arrives, indicating that he actually is very sick.
- Living on Borrowed Time: Willard has come up with a very unconventional solution to the problem of being terminally ill: engineer a "Groundhog Day" Loop so he can live forever.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Willard, who not only has condemned the rest of civilization to an endless loop so that he can cheat death, but also has done so in order to murder his rival over and over again.
- New Year Has Come: Appropriate enough for an episode that aired on New Year's Day 1939. Lamont has to go through New Year's Eve twice after the demented Dr. Willard's time loop kicks in at midnight.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Lamont realizes what has happened and deduces that through his mental training, he is immune to the time loop effect. Margo also realizes what has happened, but only because she was touching Lamont at the time of the event (they were dancing at the New Year party) and so fell under the protection of his mental umbrella. Her ripple-effect immunity only lasts while Lamont continues to have physical contact with her. Once Lamont lets go, she reverts back to "repeat December 31" mode.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Willard put poison in Stewart's sherry. The poison paralyzes Stewart and also causes him terrible pain. Just For the Evulz, Willard puts the antidote right next to Stewart's paralyzed hand, so he can see it but not reach it.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Willard is terminally ill with heart disease, which is his driving motivation to invent the machine and create the time loop.
