Guest of Death, December 12, 1938

This is another Blue Coal-sponsored episodes, with Agnes Moorehead as Margot Lane.

Someone is touring a prison. He learns about where the death house is. A guy takes him in to the place, and he tells him death is nothing to fear. He talks the guy into sitting in the electric chair, and then he straps the guy in and kills him.

(The words are clear, but any music is really, really messed up and warbled.)

Lamont and Margot have gone to the opera, and Lamont gets the newspaper which carries a story about the guy dying in the prison death house. The scene then shifts to police headquarters. The police are running in to dead ends everywhere, when the commissioner gets a call from the Shadow.

The Shadow tells him that another visitor had died in the death house. Lamont Cranston is going to take a tour of the prison like the other men had. Margot stays in the car. Lamont enters the death house. Lamont talks to the guy.

Lamont sits in the chair and the guy straps him in. The guy talks about how he executed some particular guy years before. He had wanted a job as the executioner, and was promised as a job, but was cheated out of the job. The guy puts a headpiece on Lamont.

He pulls the switch and thinks he's killed Lamont. An officer talks to Margot and implies Lamont is dead.

Then the scene switches to the would-be executioner's house. There's a dog howling. The guy then hears the Shadow laugh. The Shadow tells the guy he needs to confess. Lamont reveals himself to the guy. Lamont keeps telling him to confess. The guy then jumps out the window (?) and dies rather than surrender.

Lamont tells Margot that the guy didn't really killed anyone; he just basically scared them to death and they got heart attacks and died.

The (?) means I think that is what he does, but without the script, I can't be sure. Anyhow, he kills himself in some manner.

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