Every time Cliff Downey thought of that cablegram, his square jaw jutted, his icy gray eyes narrowed and his mouth became a grim slit in the hard granite of his face.
Downey is following a .38 automatic with his hand on the butt of a “chink” [1] bellhop — no wait, he has his hand on the butt of a .38 automatic and is following a “chink” [1] bellhop. Yikes — I guess that’s not much better! This is clearly from a different era.
As the “yellow boy” [1] (OK, enough of that — you get the idea) raises his hand to knock on the hotel room door, Downey slaps it away. He is tracking a man named Muller but must be careful as the cable warned him that competitors at The Argus Detective Firm are also on Muller’s trail. Downy has traced him over three continents to find him here in Shanghai.
Muller stole $750,000 of jewels from the Vandervorts in Chicago of the Chicago Vandervorts who are offering a $10,000 reward. He doesn’t trust the Argus gang not to let him do the legwork, slip him a shiv, and steal the jewels from him for the reward. Muller does not answer the door, though . . .
He stared into the piquant, youthful features of a girl — a slender, elfin person whose tawny yellow hair tumbled in a glorious cascade over bare and intriguing shoulder, whose hazel eyes were demurely fringed with gentian lashes, whose bee-stung lips were parted to reveal two rows of tiny, even teeth. Her boyish body was clad in a negligee that had fallen open at the throat to disclose creamy expanses of smooth girl-flesh swelling into twin firm half-globes straining beneath the soft silken restraint of a diaphanous brassiere.
The good news is, she is Muller’s daughter. She calls her father out and Downey prepares to haul him in. He asks Downey to wait until his daughter Babs goes to lunch so she doesn’t see her father perp-walked out. She goes out, presumably after covering up her firm twin half-globes. Quite the civilized gentleman, Muller tells Downey that he has the jewels, why not just let him go for his daughter’s sake — and Downey agrees.
Downey is no fool, though, and a few minutes later spies on the couple. Muller tells Babs, who is not really his daughter, to go to Downey’s hotel, slip him some cyanide and steal the jewels back. Babs braves the rain to go to Downey’s hotel. In his room, he gallantly suggests she get out of those wet clothes, and she agrees.
Shortly she reappeared clad only in a bathrobe he had handed her. His eyes drank in her beauty. The robe had slipped down over her shoulders, revealing more than a glimpse of the firm contours of her bare and jutting breasts. her unclad legs and creamy thighs peered forth boldly from the robe as she walked toward him.
Babs admits that she is actually Muller’s mistress. But a girl’s gotta have standards — him being a jewel thief is just unacceptable to her, so she wants out. You know, now that he’s busted. She asks Downey to take her back to America and shows off “her smooth body, her perfect breasts, firm and pink-tipped and provocative.” Babs hands him the drugged drink which he covertly dumps; he then pretends to fall into “deadly sleep”.
Back in Chi-town [2], Downey’s boss chews him out because he heard the Argus Firm was handing over Vandervort’s jewels for the reward at that very minute. Not so, Downey says — he had immediately pegged Babs as the Argus operative even though she was more of a Vargas operative. The tip-off was that no man would call his daughter “Babs”. Downey switched out some fake jewels to make her think she got away with the real jewels so the Argus Firm wouldn’t cut off his family jewels.
About what you would expect from a 1934 magazine called Spicy Adventure Stories.
Post-Post:
- [1] A quote, hence the quotes.
- [2] This is ironic as he was earlier in Chai-town . . . OK, Chai is a word for tea derived from the Mandarin word chá (茶). And the Chinese dialect spoken in the titular Shanghai: Mandarin. Now that’s weak tea.
- First published in Spicy Adventure Stories, July 1934.
- Also that month: Dillinger shot. I guess the cops won again.
- Also, FDR is the “1st sitting president to visit South America.” What the — is that a wheelchair joke?
- Robert Leslie Bellem was previously heard from in Blood for the Vampire Dead.
- Bellem is apparently best known for his creation of detective Dan Turner. Good article here that makes me want to read more by him.
Police Officer Harry Siegel is appropriately interrogating a low-life about a missing boy. And by “appropriately,” I mean he ties him up, pounds him in the face and threatens to cut out an eyeball if he doesn’t talk. The scumbag gives up the boy’s location — uh, upstairs. Really, you couldn’t even search the house before going all Jack Bauer on him? The pervert plans on inflicting a little off-book punishment of his own. Just before saving the taxpayers a million bucks, he tells Siegel that he will never let him forget this night.
The next day, he meets with Meredith Kane. She is another woman suspecting her husband of having an affair. She wants Siegel to get the evidence “to make him pay.” She says there is a run-down house conveniently across the street from their home where Siegel can set up his surveillance equipment.
He sees a lot of other crazy shit in the house. Finding himself locked in, he turns and sees dead Rory Bemell standing there with a knife. He says, “I didn’t deserve this, Harry.” He tells Siegel that a girl Siegel burned was innocent and now lives in pain. And a kid he kicked senseless turned out to be a witness.
This is the first episode on the disc, but the second episode to air. It makes me suspect that this was to be the premiere, but 
Tim Hathaway is knocking back the hooch. This show is so old, you could only get 3-year old scotch back then. Heyoooo, I’ll be here all weekend! I mean right here, on the couch.
Tim confronts Joanne about the mysteries and she admits that she has changed. She has also discovered that she can control objects with her mind. As proof she makes a statue topple over and shatter — pretty racy for 1951 TV, the statue was topless. She believes she is evolving to “a brand new kind of human being.” Her night table now groans under the weight of thick books on physics. Say, a woman reading science books — that is crazy!
In the Berkeley Electronic Lab, Tim begs her to come back to him. She says she is the first of a new race, a new kind of being. In a nifty scene, she goes through a door to get her coat. A few seconds later, Jim checks the door and sees that it is just a broom closet and Joanne has disappeared.
A great deal of potential was squandered in this episode. The idea of the woman evolving was a great concept. In fact, it was so great that they used it again in another 
Little Brian seems to be a bit of a firebug. When we first meet the 7-year old, he is getting quite the little campfire going in the backyard, but he ain’t camping.
At lunch, Mom throws the lighter at the Dad, blaming him for Brian’s indiscretion. Mom repeatedly protects Brian against suggestions from the others that some punishment might be in order. Quite reasonably in this crazy family, Dad breaks out the scotch at lunch. Julia opines that “Dad is like an echo. A tiny pathetic reflection of whatever mother says.” He certainly echoes her attire — both sport an odd pairing of flannel shirts covering a turtleneck.[4]
Julia tries to tell this to her family. Brian says Mom says there is no such thing as ghosts. Dad says he has heard Mom say that. Julia correctly points out that the hunky handyman always seems to be working here but, like Ralph and Alf [2], he never seems to get anything done. She concludes that he must be a ghost.
Julia is suddenly transported back to the house. Now she sees that it is a burned out shell. Brian finally burned the house down. She realizes the handyman was horrified seeing her dead body, scarred by the fire. Mom is able to convince her to accept that they are dead. Once Julia buys in, they all continue living in the sunny day on the lakefront vacation home for ever and ever.
motivation baffling. Julia (Marla Sokoloff) really carried the episode, though. She was in every scene, sometimes just providing narration. She also played a few years younger than her age, in 20+ minutes convincingly portraying anger, teen angst, indifference, insecurity, crush-love and finally acceptance of her reality. She has a great career in shows I never watch.[3]
For anyone who thought the 
One day, as he is sneaking to the fishin’ hole, he checks out behind the barn just to be sure. There is indeed a mound of fresh dirt. Well, looks like dirt on You Tube, but I’ll give Shane the benefit of the snout when he says it is just 
The next day as Shane is working on the horse, or whatever it is that you do in a barn, Jennings shows up. He tells Shane’s father that the boy has been naughty — Shane has been trespassing on his property to fish. The thing about causing him to have his arms chewed off does not come up.
The next day, when Shane goes to Jennings’ house, the old man is bobbing for soup. It is just very sad to see his face covered with food, and him have to ask Shane to feed him. On the plus side, Jennings does say it is time to do some auguring. When it jams, Jennings suggests that Shane stick his arm in there.