Title: The Caverns of Death
Air date: August 14, 1938
Plot summary: Professor Morley (presumably a geology professor) leads a group of 17 students on a tour of a cavern, the main attraction of which is a pool called "The Temple of Vulcan" for the steam that escapes from its depths. As the young men look over at the pit, which legend holds to be bottomless, the railing gives way! All the students fall in! No trace of them is found.
At the airport the next day, the guilt-stricken professor waits for the parents of the students, while Margo Lane waits for Lamont Cranston. Lamont finds the whole story of the lost students, which Margo shares with him after he arrives, odd. He decides to investigate the cave. Margo and Lamont arrive at the cave and, to their shock, meet a mumbling, semi-conscious young man who has crawled up from somewhere out of the depths. Lamont calls for a rope, but to his and Margo's horror, the rope snaps just as the young man is being hauled up, and he falls to his death.
If all of the above weren't suspicious enough, Lamont discovers that the rope was cut. Obviously, this is a case for The Shadow. The Shadow goes back to the cave, and finds a mysterious, masked criminal called The Boss, and The Boss's operation...a secret ruby mine.
Tropes:
- As You Know: Gaffney feels compelled to explicate to The Boss that the reason they're all wearing gas masks is because the mine is suffused with a gas that renders the students pliant and suggestible.
- Badass in Distress: The Shadow winds up in the secret ruby mine, without any gas mask to protect him from the mind-control gas. The Boss releases the gas, and it starts to take effect on The Shadow, and The Shadow probably would have been screwed if Gaffney had not revived and killed The Boss.
- His Name Is...: The cook is about to reveal the secrets of the underground operation to The Shadow, when he is shot mid-sentence by The Boss.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: The good news is, all the students are still alive. The bad news is, their plunge into the pool wasn't an accident, it was deliberately engineered by The Boss/Prof. Morley, who wanted the kids as slave labor.
- Not What I Signed Up For: Apparently kidnapping teenagers to serve as zombified slave miners is ok, but Gaffney draws the line when The Boss whips the students. He winds up betraying The Boss to The Shadow.
- The Reveal: Possibly the most obvious reveal ever. The mysterious faceless criminal known as The Boss is actually Prof. Morley, who is after the rubies and engineered the accident to use the kids as his slave labor force.
- A Taste of the Lash: While the gas reduces the young men to a zombie-like state, they are apparently still responsive to pain, so The Boss whips them to spur them on. This is what causes his underling, Gaffney, to rebel.
