Title: The Case of the Vanishing Killer
Air date: August 8, 1954
Plot summary: Lamont Cranston and Margot Lane have just come back from vacation when they are intercepted outside Margot's apartment by one Tommy Hamlin, whose wife Alice died two days ago. The cops think Alice killed herself, as a lethal dose of sleeping pills was found in a glass by her bed, but Tommy isn't convinced, telling Lamont that Alice was quite happy with life and her death must have been murder.
Lamont gets a key tip from Feeney the cab driver, who tells him that a drunk and disheveled person left the apartment building where the Hamlins live, not long after Alice died. The drunk dropped a matchbook from an Italian restaurant. Lamont and Margot follow that lead, discovering that the drunk was eating at the restaurant with a nightclub singer, Rose Marcel. They head for The Gilded Cage, where Rose works, and discover some mysterious connections between Rose, nightclub owner Hugo Kirk, and Tommy Hamlin himself.
Note: This episode is lost, are are almost all of the episodes for the last six seasons of The Shadow, 1949-1954. But a script survives, and is the basis for this recap.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Tommy Hamlin, who was so blackout drunk he lost an entire weekend. He gets drunk again after meeting and remembering Rose Marcel, and becoming convinced that he might have done the murder.
- Dramatic Irony: Near the end when Feeney the cab driver says The Shadow could be anyone and Lamont Cranston says who knows, The Shadow could even be in Feeney's cab.
- Going by the Matchbook: Feeney gives Lamont a matchbook from Lusardi's Restaurant, dropped by the drunk man who stumbled out of the apartment building not long after Alice died of a drug overdose upstairs.
- His Name Is...: Rose Marcel is killed by a shot from the fire escape just as she's telling Lamont who killed Alice Hamlin.
- Never Suicide: Alice Hamlin is believed to have committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Her husband Tommy believes it was murder and of course he is right.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: It turns out that it was Tommy Hamlin himself, on an all-weekend blackout drinking binge, who went to the Italian restaurant with Rose Marcel. And on the night Alice died, a drunk Tommy fled the apartment because he thought, incorrectly, that he might have done it.
