Title: Friend of Darkness
Air date: February 19, 1939
Guest star: Richard Widmark
Plot summary: Margo Lane has started up a charitable organization for the blind, and is giving a presentation for potential donors. She invites a blind man named Peter Blair to do a trick for the guests. Peter demonstrates that blind people's other senses compensate for their loss of sight, by showing off his sense of touch. Peter is able to feel the heartbeat of Commissioner Weston even after a three-inch-thick sheet of steel is placed on Commissioner Weston's chest.
Unfortunately for Peter, the newspaper article about this event draws the attention of a criminal named Skinner. Skinner hits on the idea of using Peter's acute sense of touch for safecracking. Of course, they still have to get hold of Peter first, so Skinner comes up with an even more exotic idea. The gang will switch out Peter's seeing eye dog Rex for another dog named Prince, and that dog, trained by Skinner, will bring Peter to them.
Tropes:
- As You Know: As usual on The Shadow. Skinner and his henchmen feel the need to tell each other that Prince the dog is jumping up and putting his paws on Peter's chest.
- Canine Companion: Seeing-eye dogs. When Prince is substituted for Rex, Prince leads Peter into the lair of the bad guys. At the end, after the bad guys have been caught, Peter says he's going to give prince to a blind friend of his.
- Complexity Addiction: Skinner gets a dog, Prince, that looks exactly the same as Rex, even though Peter is blind and it shouldn't matter at all how Prince looks as long as he and Rex are the same breed and the same size.
- Disability Superpower: Peter has an exceptionally good sense of touch, due to being blind. It gets him into trouble.
- He Knows Too Much: Skinner decides to kill Peter after one last heist. Peter, who's figured this out, refuses to go.
- Hollywood Law: When his gang asks why they don't just kidnap Peter instead of going to all the trouble of switching out guide dogs, Skinner says that kidnapping carries the death penalty. The only problem is, even if they were able to lure Peter to them with a clever trick, it still becomes kidnapping when they won't let Peter leave.
- Safecracking: Turns out that Skinner was right, being blind makes Peter a very good safecracker.
- Timmy in a Well: How do Lamont and the police catch the bad guys? Rex leads them there, of course.
