Who was The Shadow?
That was a question that no one seemed able to answer. He was an uncanny being who was capable of being everywhere; yet who also had the peculiar ability of being nowhere. His name was scarcely more than a myth among gangsters; yet they dreaded it.
Some had claimed that they had heard his voice coming through spaceless ether, over the radio. But at the broadcasting studio, no one knew the identity of The Shadow.
He was said to have been allotted a special room, hung with curtains of heavy black velvet, along a twisting corridor. There, masked and robed, he faced the unseeing microphone.
A spy of the underworld had contrived to enter the broadcasting studio, to watch the door of the room that was supposed to be The Shadow’s. Yet no one ever entered that room!
A crook whose specialty was wire-tapping had managed to secure a position as radiotrician at the studio. But even the most astute questioning of his fellow workers had brought nothing to light. Around the studio, The Shadow was almost as much a myth as on the outside.
Only his voice was known. It might be that he broadcast by remote control, his voice coming to the studio by private wire. No one knew. Yet millions had heard the voice of The Shadow over the radio, and with it, his fear-striking laugh.
There were those who had met The Shadow. But even they had no knowledge of his identity.
The only man who felt sure that he knew The Shadow’s real personality was Claude Fellows — and he had gained his information during a period of emergency.
Fellows had entered the service of The Shadow in order to avoid financial failure. His only contact with the mysterious being was through messages which Fellows sent to an office in an old building on Twenty-third Street, east of Broadway. The office was apparently deserted. On its door appeared the name, “B. Jonas.”