THE DEATH TOWER was originally published in the January 1932 issue of The Shadow Magazine. This wasn't a castle tower; actually it was a forty story apartment building. And in the penthouse on the top floor resides the evil Doctor Albert Palermo, an analyst of mental disorders, specialist in psychoanalysis.
We learn of Doctor Palermo's villany in chapter one, when he murders his visitor Horace Chatham. From Chatham's body, Doctor Palermo takes a magnificent purple sapphire - a stone reputed to be cursed. But a single jewel worth a fortune!
It's Palermo's Arab servant Hassan who does the actual killing, at his masters orders. And then Hassan takes the body into the evil Doctor's laboratory where the body is vivisected and the brain is removed for Palermo's sinister experimentations.
Doctor Palermo then calmly disguises himself as the victim, Horace Chatham, and visits the uptown residence of millionaire Seth Wilkinson. There he murders Wilkinson with a long, thin-bladed knife, and steals a promisory note that contains his damaging signature. Yes, this is one bad character. Only one man can stop him: The Shadow!
Doctor Palermo lives in a virtual Gibralter, high in his fortieth floor penhouse. The Death Tower! It is a veritible death trap to anyone entering without the evil Doctor's permission. There are trap doors, sliding panels, secret rooms, exploding devices... and then there's Chong. A life-sized figure in bronze, Chong is a strange Oriental statue of a dwarfed, seated figure. Straight from the imperial palace in Peking, the statue sits with its arms crossed, and its fierce, ugly face staring straight ahead with glaring eyes. There is a sinister secret to this bronze statue. A secret that means death... death to The Shadow!
In this amazing early story in the chronicles of The Shadow, we meet Clyde Burke for the very first time. His age is described as being in his late 20's. We are told that he worked as police reporter for the Evening Clarion, but was put out of work when the Clarion was taken over by the Daily Sphere. Unemployed, he was offered work by millionaire George Clarendon.
George Clarendon, who we learn is a disguise of The Shadow, appears here in a Shadow mystery for the first time. There was a "Morris Clarendon" mentioned in the previous story, "Gangdom's Doom," but he was a Chicago district attorney not related to The Shadow. Wealthy George Clarendon hires Burke to start a clipping bureau to gather newspaper clippings and sort information. Clarendon, described as a criminologist, eventually enlists Burke as an active agent for The Shadow and introduces him to Harry Vincent.
As Clyde Burke is introduced to the ways of The Shadow, we learn a few things about how The Shadow works. Burke sees The Shadow's fading ink in action, as messages disappear before his very eyes. We see the code used by The Shadow: messages are simply written backwards. SEY SDRAWKCAB! A simple code that Harry and Clyde can easily read, but is secure because of the fading ink. If any other person were to open one of The Shadow's messages, it would have faded away before that person realized that the words were spelled backward.
We also see Clyde deposit his reports in the door slot of a dingy office in a building on Twenty-third Street. The name on the door is M. Jonas. In most Shadow stories it was "B. Jonas," but in several of the early stories the name was listed as "M." Jonas. A minor editorial glitch...
The Shadow's contact man Burbank shows up again in this early story. He's not hidden away in a darkened room controling communications between The Shadow and his agents. No, not this time. In this story, he's an active agent who takes the job of elevator operator in Doctor Palermo's building. He's described as a "jack of all trades" who is about forty years of age.
Some notes of interest. Doctor Palermo has a fiance, the astoundingly beautiful Thelda Blanchet. As nurse for well-known millionaire Roger Crowthers, she has been administering slow poison to him at Doctor Palmero's direction. Crowthers dies from poison. It's not often that Walter Gibson would write female villainy into his stories. Usually women were innocent victims. But this was early in the evolution of the magazine, and such things did occasionally happen.
Thelda Blanchet tries to vamp The Shadow disguised as George Clarendon. We see The Shadow kiss a woman! A long kiss; and then another. That was a first; and probably a last as well. I don't ever remember The Shadow kissing a woman in any other story. Not only kissing, but enjoying it as well! And using the powers of his strong personality to force her to fall in love with him! Whew, this Shadow character is one studly crimefighter!
The next Shadow novel to be published after this one would be "The Silent Seven," the story about a secret organization of seven mastercriminals and their "Faithful Fifty." In this story, we get an advance glimpse of them, when we discover that Doctor Palermo is a secret member of The Silent Seven. We learn the full story about the Silent Seven in the next month's issue.
We meet Stanley Warwick in this story. He's the pride of the New York detective bureau with an international reputation. He just came back from Italy, where he was tracking down some of the Mafia. He's out to get Palermo, and confronts him in his penthouse living room.
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. Spoiler Warning - Read the next two paragraphs at your own risk... . .
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Imagine our surprise when Doctor Palermo flashes the secret sign and reveals himself to be one of the Silent Seven, and Police Detective Stanley Warwick responds revealing himself to be one of the Faithful Fifty. Warwick is enlisted to aide Palermo in his battle against The Shadow. And imagine our additional surprise when at the end of this novel, Warwick goes free - unpunished - undiscovered! And as far as I can tell, he never showed up in any future Shadow novel to meet justice. He apparently escaped The Shadow!
Another person who goes free and unpunished is Thelda Blanchet, Doctor Palermo's fiance who has murdered for him! Yes, The Shadow actually lets her go, after turning her love toward him and against Doctor Palermo. Since she has fallen under The Shadow's spell and given him complete details on Doctor Palermo's secret death traps, The Shadow forgives her for her past actions. He sends her away, out of the state, back home. And we see no more of her. I can't believe The Shadow would let a murderer go free, even if she was a woman. But thus it is...
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. End of Spoiler
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With Burbank engaged as elevator man at Doctor Palermo's apartment building, and with Claude Fellows killed in the previous novel, there is no one to put The Shadow's agents in contact with him. No one to call. So we are told that Harry Vincent calls The Shadow directly. The phone number constantly changes, so obviously The Shadow stays on the move. But calling The Shadow directly is pretty unusual!
Also it's interesting to note that although George Clarendon is apparently a well-known society man, police Detective Stanley Warwick is unable to trace the man or find where he lives. Apparently, Clarendon never invites any of his society friends home...
Another first, in this story, is The Shadow's autogiro - that wingless aeroplane that can land nearly vertically and features a windmill of blades. It shows up at the story's conclusion, manned by an unnamed experienced pilot. We know the pilot isn't Miles Crofton, the pilot usually associated with the autogiro, because he didn't appear in The Shadow stories until his debut in "The Unseen Killer" nearly three years later. Was this another agent of The Shadow, or just some one-time hireling? We aren't told, but it gives pause for consideration...