Title: The Blackball Murder
Air date: August 29, 1954
Plot summary: Dan Jackson, rich guy and yacht owner, has been blackballed from the Bay Yacht Club. This is apparently very Serious Business. Jackson boards the yacht of club treasurer Mark Anders and threatens to kill him if Anders doesn't reveal who put the black balls in the box—Jackson attributes his wife's death from pneumonia to heartbreak over getting blackballed. A terrified Anders tells Jackson that the people who blackballed him were Greg Wilson, the new "commodore" (leader of the club) and Maud Harper. Jackson pushes Anders into the water and departs.
Cut to Lamont Cranston and Margot Lane coming to the yacht club, where they have been invited to dinner by Lamont's old acquaintance Mark Anders. Anders tells Lamont all about the incident with Dan Jackson. Before Anders can even ask Lamont for help, Maud Harper comes into the club with horrifying news: she found Greg Wilson dead, strung up on his yacht. Has Dan Jackson begun his campaign of revenge? Or is there a darker, hidden plot?
Note: This episode is lost, as is almost every episode of the last six seasons of The Shadow, 1949-54. But a script survives, and is the basis for this recap.
Tropes:
- Chekhov's Gun: Anders says he's the club treasurer and as such he was in charge of the vote on Jackson's membership. That turns out to be important; Anders the treasurer was embezzling from yacht club funds.
- Death by Despair: Jackson at least believes that disappointment over being blackballed from the yacht club was what contributed to his wife's death from pneumonia.Jackson: Few people die of pneumonia these days if they have any will to live.
- Frame-Up: Lamont eventually figures out that Mark Anders is the actual killer, and slipped the name of Greg Wilson to Jackson, to frame Jackson for the murder that Anders was planning to commit.
- Narrating the Obvious: As they approach Anders' yacht, Lamont feels the need to tell Margot there's a dinghy next to it, and then she feels the need to tell him that there are two dinghies.
- Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: Discussed and subverted. As they arrive at the yacht club Margot wishes that Lamont might take her out on the water. Later they are in a rowboat straining to get to Dan Jackson's yacht to stop a murder being committed. As Lamont pulls the oars he says "Well Margot...you're getting your...boat ride on the bay."
- Plot Hole: Eventually it's revealed that Mark Anders is the actual killer and was framing Dan Jackson. So why did Anders call his friend Lamont Cranston for help?
- Serious Business: Boy, people really care about belonging to a yacht club. Subverted when the actual cause for murder turns out to be a more ordinary one, a case of embezzling from club funds.
- Slipping a Mickey: Anders slips a knockout drug into Jackson's drink, then, as Jackson is passing out, Anders tells him that he did the same to Greg Wilson before killing him.Anders: I mixed you a Mickey, you fool.
