What happens
Lamont Cranston, a wealthy man who fights crime as the Shadow, investigates a series of deadly tenement fires that have killed dozens of people in the city. The fires all began in hallways with oil-soaked baby carriages, and the police have failed to find the pyromaniac responsible. Cranston notices that a dealer shop on the ground floor of each burned building has been connected to the blazes. His investigation leads him to the shop run by a man named Hegman, where Cranston confronts the suspects. Margot Lane, his friend and aide, waits nearby as the case unfolds. The episode is part of the Mercury Theatre on the Air series, first broadcast on June 19, 1938.
A city tenement district and a ground-floor fur dealer shop in the 1930s
Characters: Lamont Cranston, Margot Lane, Commissioner Weston, Hegman, Varelli, Ellen, Mr. Kent
Listen for: Cranston reading the thoughts of the suspect Hegman inside the shop
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.