Title: Island of the Devil
Air date: January 8, 1939
Plot summary: Lamont and Margo are vacationing on a yacht, as is their wont. They're in the Caribbean, and they've picked up one Madame Renee, an old lady, whom Lamont brought on the yacht in Havana just because he found her interesting.
Meanwhile, at a brutal French prison on the "Island of the Devil" (aka Devil's Island), a prisoner named Jean Bart rots in his cell. Bart has been there for twenty years, and he has been reduced to a pitiable state. All he does is mutter two words, in fact a name: "Madame Renee."
Bart is shocked back into reality by surprising news: he has gotten a pardon! It seems he was wrongly convicted, and the French commissioner, a Mr. Randall, is on the way with the pardon in hand. Mr. Randall is getting a ride to the Island of the Devil, on Lamont Cranston's yacht, along with Madame Renee. Madame Renee does not like this at all.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Usually episodes of "The Shadow" has a happy ending where The Shadow defeated the bad guys. In this one, The Shadow subdues Madame Renee and takes her gun, but does not realize that she has a second gun hidden in her dress. Madame Renee pulls it out and shoots Jean Bart dead. So The Shadow fails to save the wrongly convicted man, but he does manage to hound Madame Renee into throwing herself off the boat to her own death.
- Crazy-Prepared: Madame Renee has enough gold on her to bribe a prison guard, and she has not one but two guns, the second being hidden in her dress. This is despite the fact that she didn't even find out about the pardon to Jean Bart, or even that Lamont's boat would actually be stopping at the island, until after the boat got underway.
- Contrived Coincidence: Madame Renee is surprised to learn that she is being taken to the prison island where the man she framed has been rotting for years. She's further surprised to learn that the messenger with the pardon is also heading to that island on the same yacht.
- Evil Is Petty: Madame Renee framed a man for a crime (just what isn't explained), and had him given a life sentence and eventually transferred to Devil's Island. Why? Because he once called her old, and that pissed her off.
- Hellhole Prison: The Island of the Devil, where the rats in the prison are as big as dogs and Jean Bart has been left to rot.
- Madness Mantra: All Jean Bart has said for years is "Madame Renee...Madame Renee...", over and over again. He is snapped back to reality and the ability to communicate when he's told he's getting a pardon.
- The Place: The Island of the Devil, which is word-for-word from the French "Île du Diable", although it's usually rendered in English as the more succinct "Devil's Island".
- Vacation Episode: One of several episodes where Lamont the rich guy takes his yacht to an exotic locale where The Shadow winds up finding a case.
