Tom Converse was the kind of man to pull a Colt from his back pocket faster than the seasoned gunslingers could draw from a hip holster. It seemed to come easy to him - like breathing in and out. But was he also the kind of man to make a whole town trigger-happy with fear? Did he hide behind a dark mask and come back for vengeance?

Was he The Shadow? Sylvia didn't think so. "I'm the only one who knows the face of the real Shadow," she said. A dappled chestnut with black points is the only cue to the identity of a town's secret horror. It could be a case of mistaken identity, but yet, again . .

This early Max Brand classic features the mysterious and ambiguous figure of The Shadow, a masked and lonely gunslinger who foreshadows great Western legends like Zorro and the Lone Ranger.