Title: The Tomb of Terror
Air date: June 19, 1938
Plot summary: Three archaeologists are at the unveiling of a grand museum exhibit: an authentic, reassembled pharaoh's tomb, complete with mummy. They open up the sarcophagus and gaze at the corpse of the pharaoh—and the mummy's eyes glow. Within moments, all three men come staggering out of the tomb, and fall over dead. The media starts running breathless reports of a mummy's curse.
Margot Lane and Lamont Cranston discuss the bizarre case, in which all three men died of what appear to be natural causes, disease, but within moments of each other. Meanwhile, a fourth archaeologist, Stevenson, dismisses all the talk of a mummy's curse as nonsense and insists on going in to the tomb to look at the mummy, even as his colleague Kent begs him not to. Sure enough, Stevenson gazes into the glowing eyes of the mummy, and falls over dead.
Autopsies reveal something odd: while all the archaeologists seem to have died of natural causes, they all were completely lacking in white blood cells, which destroyed their immune systems. Cranston assumes foul play, so The Shadow starts investigating Kent, one of the only two archaelogists left alive.
Tropes:
- Almighty Janitor: The night watchman at the museum turns out to be a worshipper of the pharaoh. He has been in cahoots with Kent to kill the other archaeologists.
- Artistic License – Medicine: A huge dose of radiation can kill you in a couple of ways. If it's strong enough you'll just die in moments from massive tissue damage. If it's a little bit weaker it will destroy your bone marrow and immune system, leading to a slow and painful death. But what radiation can't do is cause an instant death by destroying your immune system, as happens in this episode.
- Curse of the Pharaoh: There's a story of an ancient pharaoh's curse that will kill anyone who looks on the tomb. This myth is exploited by Kent.
- Death Ray: A scientist named Faber reveals that he and Kent, while working on X-rays, wound up inventing a death beam that destroys human immune systems by killing a person's white blood cells. Kent has repackaged this technology, hiding a death ray beam in the mummy's corpse to kill his colleagues.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: When the mummy's eyes glow, any scientist looking on dies right after. It turns out the mummy's eyes glow when Kent turns on his death ray.
- Idiot Ball: The janitor demonstrates the death ray rig for The Shadow—going all the way up to looking into the mummy's glowing eyes. He dies right after, but not before realizing what an idiot he is.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: There is no mummy's curse. Kent, who is jealous of his colleagues and who wants to be promoted to director of the museum, has rigged up an X-ray death beam inside the mummy, which he's been using to kill his superiors.
- The Watson: Margo Lane is unusually slow on the uptake in this episode, saying "What do you mean" when Lamont days that the three death certificates (for three men who died at the same time and place of three different illnesses) will have to be revised.
