Classic Streams: Old Time Retro Radio · Dwight Allen

The Shadow: The Mark Of The Black Widow (10-27-1940)

April 6, 2026·24 min·1 clip

Taylor confesses to murdering Willoughby and Grant with black widow spiders to frame Dr. Hollister for revenge over a stolen Egyptian fortune.

Coffee gets them into the study. Dr. Grant shows Lamont and Margot the mummy cases, statues, carvings, and relics, all packed close enough to make the room feel watched. Margot hears curses in the air. Lamont jokes, because of course he does, but the doctor's talk of tombs and misfortune gives the room a nastier temperature. Then Willoughby is dead, filed away as a heart case under the eye of a strange morgue keeper. The Shadow arrives unseen, and the keeper's easy routine starts to crack. The body has gelatin on it. Under that, a small red mark. That is enough for the Shadow to call it murder. Margot wants the next step, while Lamont looks toward Taylor and Dr. Grant with a warning: the living may not stay that way. The trick stays just out of sight until Taylor gives himself away. He would rather be shot than bitten, which says plenty. The capsule held the spider, melted from human heat, and left almost nothing behind except the mark. By the end, the horror has followed Margot home into three nights of spider dreams. She still has enough nerve left for one dry little Miss Muffet joke with Lamont.

As heard by us

A brooding radio mystery where a spider, a corpse, and a clever mechanism all matter.

This Shadow mystery moves from Egyptian relics to a morgue with a steady, unshowy grip, turning a dead man and a red mark into the kind of clues that keep the whole case tightening.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a murder mystery that starts in an Egypt-filled study and ends in a morgue.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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