Hands in the Dark

A man named Reynold Barker is examining a piece of paper with a code on it. He's in a room belonging to the now-dead Theodore Galvin. As he looks at the paper, someone kills him.

Bob Galvin had lived in the house and is now there. The butler recounts how a supposed thief was found dead in a room in the house, probably dead two or three days before being discovered. Hiram Mallory is a friend of Bob's uncle. His uncle, Theodore Galvin, had died of disease elsewhere.

There is also a woman named Betty that Bob knows. Late that night Bob is going through some papers when a guy with a gun shows up in the room right behind where Bob is seated. The guy kidnaps him.

Betty talks about Bob not being like she thinks he should be. The butler says he's not the same as he was the previous night. Betty sees the Shadow in the study. She leaves to stay at a friend's house, and the man pretending to be Bob Galvin kills the butler.

Richard Harkness, architect, is confronted by two thugs who want to know of any hidden rooms in the mansion that was Galvin's. They end up killing the architect.

The Shadow knocks out the acting Inspector and checks a map that Harkness had drawn. Then the story talks about the Shadow's radio broadcasting and there's also a scene at his sanctum.

Betty gets back to the house early and ends up seeing the fake Bob and two men open the hidden room, but she's discovered in the process. She ends up imprisoned in the vault.

The Shadow rescues Betty and kills one of the crooks. There's a wild gunfight involving the Shadow in cab and a group of men attacking the stopped vehicle. The book then centers around Mallory's plans to kill the Shadow.

Chinatown makes an appearance, along with Wing Toy, a Tong leader. The trappers become the trappees, though, as the Shadow frees the real Bob Galvin. The offensive is switched to the side of the Shadow as the Shadow and Vincent get the real Galvin into his house.

Bob Maddox, the fake Bob Galvin, goes to see another man who might have information he can get. The crook kills the guy and gets the information he needs. Later, a group is in a building and they find the money that they have been looking for.

Suddenly, there's another criminal revealed, a criminal the Shadow knew about all along. The Shadow captures him and the two of them confront the one crook who escaped, Maddox. There's a furious gun battle and, in the end, all the evildoers have paid with their lives.

It's another really, really good Shadow novel.


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