Chapter 1: Joe Cardona, the detective, talks to a stool-pigeon and finds out someone named The Jackdaw is back in town. Cardona wants him, bad. Unfortunately for the stool pigeon, the guy he was going to watch shows up and kills him. Unfortunately for the crook, the Shadow shows up but, before he can learn anything from the crook, shots are fired and the crook falls from a window, three stories to his death.
Chapter 2: Joe Cardona explains to someone else about his stool pigeon being killed, and he thinks something big is up. Cardona thinks the Jackdaw may want to go after a diamond that will be on display. Meanwhile, Fritz, the janitor, is cleaning. (The Shadow was impersonating the real janitor)
he Shadow goes to an areas with a Hindu restaurant. Two men are talking and he enters the restaurant, but not in disguise. He listens to them talk, even though they speak partly in their own language, and he learns about the history of the diamond.
A Hindu criminal called Tippu is the one that might steal the diamond.
Chapter 3: Casslin is the man who has the diamond. He is having a party and tells his guests he will show them the diamond, and brags about his castle-like house.
Casslin shows the diamond to his guests and then goes to put it back in its safe, while a woman sees a dark face at a window. Apparently some buyer in Bombay has been trying to get Casslin to sell him the diamond for a long time.
Chapter 4: An intruder stabs a servant. The intruder is shot, and it turns out that he's a Hindu. Joe Cardona shows up a little later. He finds out that Casslin had been murdered in his treasure room. The room had three small, barred windows and a steel door that was locked with the key in the care of a servant, so there should have been no way anyone could get in, much less kill Casslin and make off with the diamond.
Chapter 5: Cardona has assembled most of the people in a room when a doctor arrives to take care of Casslin's wife. The Shadow enters the house and finds the dead Hindu, which was the crook Tippu. More detectives arrive and they check the inside of the tower while the Shadow is climbing the tower from the outside.
The Shadow watches Cardona examine the body and test the bars on the window. After Cardona leaves the Shadow examines the bars on his own and then climbs down the tower.
Chapter 6: The police commissioner shows up and Cardona fills him in on what happened. The doctor is also there and says he has treated Hindus and they usually work in pairs, so there was probably another Hindu involved in the theft.
Joe Cardona doesn't agree with the doctor's theory, though , and he thinks there was still only one Hindu involved. Cardona thinks the guy called the Jackdaw is the mastermind behind the theft and killing.
Chapter 7: Later the Shadow follows Bart, one of the people from the house, when he takes a cab to a sleazy district of town. The Shadow knows Bart is somehow involved in crime. Bart is meeting with a member of a gang.
Bart had been compelled to work for the Jackdaw when the crook found out something about Bart's past. Bart wants to quit working for the Jackdaw, but it's not that easy to just up and quit.
The Shadow listens to everything that's said, even when the crook in the room receives a phone call indicating something else is in the works.
Chapter 8: Cardona is thinking about the various things that have happened. He's totally determined to catch the Jackdaw. Cardona goes to the East Side (a very bad area), and dons a disguise to make him appear to be an old man.
Cardona then goes to a clinic run by the doctor (Doctor Dubrong) that had been at Casslin's house. The clinic has a number of people in it, virtually all being lower denizens of the area. Cardona gets in to see the doctor, not realizing that a blind man sitting next to him in the waiting room was really the Shadow in disguise.
Chapter 9: The doctor knows full well that the man in his room is really Cardona. Cardona and the doctor talk for a short while. When the doctor leaves, the Shadow examines the room and finds various clues. He even finds that, in the back of a closet, there's a hidden door that leads to an abandoned house which leads to an alley.
Chapter 10: Bart gets a phone call from a friend and leaves to go to his place, trailed by Harry Vincent. Bart meets a friend named Farrell. Farrell has a green scarlet macaw in his room.
Bart tells Farrell a doctored story of what has been happening to him and Farrell says he will help however he can.
Chapter 11: Bart has a hotel room and it has been bugged, with Harry Vincent listening in the next room. Bart's bride-to-be calls him, and then the Jackdaw calls him. Bart is going to another party, and is to give another signal to henchmen of the Jackdaw.
Bart then calls his friend Farrell to get him to go with him to the party that night. Bart figures that Farrell's presence will give him the nerve to make up his mind about giving the signal or not.
Meanwhile, Harry Vincent makes his report to a guy named Mann, and Mann takes an envelope of the report to a dilapidated building and the office of B. Jonas.
The Shadow then reads the material in the envelope. I always like the way this type of thing is described; you can really see everything happening in your mind.
Chapter 12: Cardona is having a guy named Limps Silvey watched. Cardona ends up following Limps, and the Shadow follows Cardona.
Cardona loses track of Limps, but the Shadow traces him to the secret entrance to the doctor's clinic.
Chapter 13: Bart and Farrell arrive at the party. Lamont Cranston is due to be a speaker at the party also. Farrell talks about his macaw and how smart it is, while Lamont keeps an eye on Bart.
Lamont sees the signal being given and leaves the room, changing into his guise of the Shadow.
Chapter 14: Cardona intercepts the phone call meant for Limps and he learns where the crime is going to go down. Cardona speeds to the place with two cars of detectives, but they are stopped by a downed bridge and have to take the long-way around to get to the party.
Harry Vincent is in one of the cars at the party and spots the mob and signals the Shadow. Unfortunately for Harry, a mobster spots him and is about to shoot him when the Shadow knocks the mobster out.
Chapter 15: The Shadow disguises himself as the mobster he knocked out and joins the gang outside the house. Bart signals the crooks and they break in on the party.
When the people are out of the way a little the gunfire begins as the Shadow starts to drop the mobsters. Farrell and some of the guests grab guns from the five fallen mobsters and open fire themselves, ineffectually, and Joe Cardona and his detectives arrive and begin firing also.
The rest of the mobsters are either shot or captured by the police.
Chapter 16: Days pass since the attack on the house. Cardona is still concerned about the Jackdaw. Limps Silvey has gone missing, so Cardona starts thinking again about the doctor.
Joe goes to meet with the doctor in his residence. The two talk and Cardona asks the doctor about Limps. Cardona asks the doctor for his help in getting Limps to become a stool pigeon.
Cardona spies upon the doctor's office through a peephole he had made and finds out that Limps Silvey is really the doctor in disguise. Cardona plans to keep a close watch on the doctor, expecting that another crime was in the offing.
Chapter 17: The next night Farrell and Bart have another discussion. Lamont also shows up.
Lamont says he'll visit Farrell later that night and leaves. Bart talks to Farrell about a call he received. The Shadow listens at the door as Bart says the Jackdaw wants him to help steal lots of securities.
Farrell takes a gun, apparently planning to go to the same place Bart is.
Chapter 18: The doctor shows up and pretends he's Lamont so he can get into Farrell's apartment. The doctor forces his way into the apartment, hitting Farrell's servant. The doctor kills the servant when he leaves.
Cardona shows up and so the Shadow is unable to pursue the doctor, so it's Lamont who ends up talking to Cardona. They go to Farrell's apartment and Cardona finds the servant dead.
Lamont suggests a way to find out where Bart has gone, and the macaw is able to say where. Cardona is sure the doctor is the one who killed the servant.
Chapter 19: Bart is at the house with his fiancee's father. The guy says he has half-a-million in securities in his safe. When the prospective father-in-law leaves the room, Bart opens a drawer and takes a key to the treasure room. He sets a door so it can be opened by the Jackdaw. Farrell and the doctor had both seen him, but not each other.
Yvonne, his prospective bride, catches him in the vault but, before they can really talk the door that Farrell readied opens.
Chapter 20: Yvonne starts to scream, and Bart hurls himself at the Jackdaw who plans to shoot her. He ends up being the one to get shot. Cardona arrives, and then the Shadow manages to shoot the Jackdaw in the shoulder.
It turns out the Jackdaw was Farrell. The doctor arrives, and Yvonne reunites with her father.
Chapter 21: Later, at Farrell's apartment, a group forms. Cardona is there, along with Yvonne's father, the doctor, the police commissioner, and Lamont Cranston. The doctor explains that he was trying to help Bart.
Lamont explains that Farrell was a fake, projecting his own voice to make it seem like the macaw was doing the speaking when the bird actually couldn't make a sound.
Lamont shows that a trained monkey was used to get between the tower bars and steal the diamond after the Jackdaw had killed Casslin. Cardona believes that the Shadow disguised himself as Lamont Cranston to help solve the case.
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