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As the Shadow, Lamont Cranston (Rod La Rocque) catches 2 thieves at attorney
Randall's office, then calls the police to collect them. However when police
captain Breen (Kenneth Harlan) shows up, Cranston realizes he hasn't left an
escape route for himself, so to fool the captain (and keep his identity a
secret), he poses as Randall himself. But soon he (as Randall) is called to a
client, Delthern (John St. Polis) - who only knows Randall by repute, so
Cranston can go on with his masquerade -, who wants to make certain changes in
his will ... but before he is shot before Cranston's very eyes, and when the
cops arrive, led by of all people captain Breen, Cranston is forced to play
Randall even longer. Soon everybody starts to suspect Delthern's nephews
Winstead (Walter McGrail), Humphrey (William Kellogg), Jasper (James Blakely),
or his niece Marcia (Lynn Anders) of the murder, because of their uncle's
considerable inheritance, but for Cranston, that solution would be too simple,
so he digs a bit in the backgrounds of the family, and he finds out Jasper
has a terrible gambling habit, and he owes a racketeer, Grossett (Cy
Kendall), quite a sum of money, and Grossett is rather interested that a)
Jasper inherits his part of the inheritance, b) pays back his debts, and c)
becomes his victim for a blackmailing scheme ... and so Cranston makes up a
quite elaborate scheme to bug Grossett's office and to get a confession on
tape ... Back at the Deltherns' place, Marcia breaks up with her fiancé
Warren (John Carnivale), because she has fallen in love with Cranston (whom
everyone still believes to be attorney Randall), so Warren decides to dig up
the truth about the attorney and finds out his real identity ... which soon
makes Cranston a prime suspect in the Delthern-murder-case, with only Marcia
still believing in him. and meanwhile Grossett has found out his real
identity too and decides to kill him ... right at the same moment when
Delthern's butler Wollington (Wilson Benge) has decided to kill Cranston too
... because he is the father of Warren, and so wants his son to marry Marcia
Delthern, and it seems now only Cranston stands in the way of that. However,
Cranston is lucky enough that Grossett and Wollington accidently shoot each
other, and he comes out of the whole affair as the hero, and even the real
attorney Randall forgives him for abusing his name. At times not an
unenjoyable low budget whodunnit, with even some attempts at suspense and action (as much as the budget would allow), at other times however extremely
slow (especially some meaningless dialogue-scenes, where the actors seem to
wait for someone to give them their cues, which someone doesn't ...
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