Title: The White Legion
Air date: March 20, 1938
Plot summary: A mysterious group that calls itself "The White Legion" breaks into the office of a government bureaucrat named William Deven, and, right in front of Deven's staff, take him away. The White Legion then gives Deven a "trial" for crimes committed against them, after which they murder him.
Meanwhile, there have been threats made against assistant DA Alton Parker. It seems that Collins is about to start a murder trial against one Red Collins, who is accused of killing political boss Al Houseman, and someone doesn't want that trial to begin. Some suspect that it's the White Legion who is attempting to stop the trial. Sure enough, goons from the White Legion show up in broad daylight and kidnap Parker. Lamont Cranston, who is on the scene with Margo Lane when Parker is snatched, springs into action. He realizes that newspaper Hartney Clays, a newspaper editor who is strangely interested in the Parker case despite previously soft-pedaling the White Legion story, must be involved in the group. Soon The Shadow has traced Parker to a chapel by the waterfront, where the White Legion is holding another trial.
Notes: This is the end of the "first season" of The Shadow, although the show picked up with a "summer series" the very next week. It was also the end of Agnes Moorehead's first run as Margo Lane, although she returned when "Season Two" started in September.
Tropes:
- Black Cloak: When the White Shadow holds its Kangaroo Courts, the members appear in robes.
- Chekhov's Gun: The "All High Commander" gets his mask pulled off during the kangaroo court trial of Parker—by The Shadow, of course. This allows The Shadow to reveal the Commander's identity at the end.
- The Conspiracy: The White Legion puts up a front as a vigilante group, but all it's victims are members of the city's largest political opposition party and it turns out to be a paramilitary wing of the ruling party.
- Kangaroo Court: The White Legion holds trials for the people it kidnaps, although there's no doubt as to the verdict. One of them tells Parker that he's facing "a judgment of death" before the trial.
- I Have a Family: William Deven begs for mercy at his "trial", saying that he has a wife and child. It doesn't work.
- Never Learned to Read: The Shadow reveals that Red Collins couldn't have written the threatening letter to Houseman, because Collins can't read or write.
- Obliviously Evil: The rank and file of the White Legion don't know about the leadership's embezzlement scheme, but it's
- The Reveal: The All High Commander of the White Legion is Judge Roscoe, who is the trial judge at the Collins trial.
- Stealing from the Till: For all their secret society theatricality, it turns out The White Legion's leaders have merely been stealing money, having embezzled "ten million dollars from the city treasury."
- A Taste of the Lash: The White Legion whips William Deven a few times before they kill him, apparently For the Evulz.
- Thanking the Viewer: Orson Welles and Agnes Moorehead appeared out of character as themselves at the end of the episode, to thank the listeners and urge them to write and ask for more of The Shadow.
- Trap Door: The White Shadow kills its victims by dropping them bound and trussed through a trap door—out into the open ocean, their chapel being positioned right on the edge of the harbor. The Shadow saves Parker by catching him.
