Dick Tracy

You have I’m sure been glued to the seat of your pants since last week’s exciting chapter ended with Dick about to plough into a bridge and explode and die and be killed. How would he escape from this terrible inferno? Would he bail out and land safely on the ground? Would he steer the plane under the bridge at the last possible split second? No – he’s cleverer than that…

He cunningly lets the plane hit the bridge, burst into flames and crash down to earth before walking away unharmed from the wreckage.

Meanwhile, the Lame Plane takes flight, no doubt on some terrible mission of evil.

Dick and his cohort see the Lame Plane depart and decide to follow it in their car.

Back at Dick’s HQ, some men are interrogating this ruffian. He claims he knows nothing. Pah! Torture him – Commando Cody would’ve.

This cunning special effect gives us a clue – we’re at the secret lair of the Spider Ring, the club for villains over which the Lame One presides.

And here are the villains – a queer looking chap with no will power, a hunchback with a cat fetish and their boss, a man who is impervious to bullets and wears platform shoes.

The Lame One’s surveillance network has informed him that one of his ruffians is in Dick Tracy’s custody.

HOT NEWS… HOT NEWS…

The Lame One is partially revealed. I think it’s Jimmy Greaves.

Back at Dick’s office, the small boy has a new radio to play with and San Francisco’s oldest male stripper has arrived.

He takes his hat off – he’s bald and has a moustache. Scrub my Jimmy Greaves theory – this man is the Lame One.

The naval guy tells Dick that a million dollars worth of furs are arriving shortly and he’d like Dick’s help to stop them falling into the hands of bad guys. Dick tells him he considers fur to be an immoral trade and that he wants no part of protecting such a vile industry. Or, as he puts it, it isn’t his department’s responsibility.

We cut in quick succession from the boy listening to the radio, to a man mumbling into a microphone and finally to this piece of stock boat footage.

Sinister Gordon Tracy gets a message.

Dick Tracy gets a parcel.

He takes it to the lab and uses a machine.

It tells him that something in the box has been tampered with. He unwraps the box, takes out the rogue item and sets fire to it. This makes a secret message appear. The box was intended to the man Dick was questioning earlier and is obviously a clue about when he could expect to be busted from the big house. And they say our prisoners are pampered – in 1930s jails the inmates must’ve had access to laboratories and matches.

They take the prisoner to a new jail.

But their journey is interrupted by an escape plan.

The prisoner escapes and drives off to enjoy his new freedom.

But wait! A swerve – the goodies and the baddies have come together in a sense of mutual harmony. Or, to be more precise, it was a con – the baddies were really goodies and they’ve conspired to let him escape.

He drives to a secret hideout, unaware that he has Dick in his trunk.

They take it in turns to drop through a trap door and into a handy boat.

The hoodlum is told that the Spider Ring didn’t bust him out and he gets a stern talking to from the Sinister Gordon.

Meanwhile, Dick is all wet having swum ashore.

He waits for all but one of the baddies to leave and then heroically leaps in to have a fight.

He wins and his prize is a slot on Spider FM. He calls for help but is stopped by a man with a gun.

Dick cleverly fools his captor by repeating the entire plan with the microphone still live. So every word is heard loud and clear by… the idiot and the small boy. It’s not much but it’s close to something.