Title: The Final Hour
Air date: October 31, 1954
Plot summary: Joe Martin is scheduled to be executed at midnight for the murder of a bookie, shot in the alley behind a local bar. He was convicted based on the testimony of bar patron Sam Walker, but Lamont Cranston believes that Martin didn't do it. With Martin's conviction just hours away, Lamont decides to re-investigate.
Cut to Sam Walker, nervously downing drinks at the bar where the murder took place. It soon becomes clear that Andy Barton, the barkeep pouring the drinks, was the real killer. A jittery Walker grows increasingly nervous as the minutes tick away, even as Barton tells him to keep his mouth shut. Walker gets even more nervous when The Shadow turns up.
Note: This episode is lost, as is almost every episode for the last six seasons of The Shadow, 1949-1954. But a script survives, and is the basis for this recap.
Tropes:
- Dead Man Writing: The Shadow gets very interested when Walker says he wrote an "in the event of my death" letter, telling the truth about the murder of the bookie, to protect himself against Barton. It turns out not to matter, as The Shadow gets Walker to tell the truth.
- Extremely Short Timespan: About five hours from 7 pm to midnight, as The Shadow tries to stop the execution of an innocent man.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: A clock is heard tolling 11 pm, one hour before the execution, and an increasingly agitated Sam Walker pounds his glass on the bar in time with the tolling bell.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: A villainous example. The script includes the direction "(sharp slap)" as Barton the barkeep slaps Sam Walker, who's getting jittery in the last hours before the execution.
- He Knows Too Much: The Shadow tells Sam that Andy Barton will kill him, once Joe Martin is executed for the murder that Barton committed.
- I'll Tell You When I've Had Enough!: Sam demands another drink. Barton refuses, saying he's had enough. Sam says "I'll never have enough...after this!"
- Liquid Courage: The Shadow calls Sam Walker out for this, noting "the empty glass you have drained of the last bitter dregs of the false courage of the coward!"
- Miscarriage of Justice: The Shadow is trying to prevent one, as Joe Martin is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit.
- Narrator: It was standard at this time for the narrator, after the break at the end of act I, to catch the listener up with events before act II started.
- Title Drop: The last line, as The Shadow says that Sam Walker finally told the truth because "the fear of a guilty conscience and the threat of madness were greater" [than his instinct for self-preservation] "in the final hour!".
