This story opens with a newspaper article detailing a murder the Sandman is about to investigate. The article is signed by Ogden Whitney, who's been drawing this feature since last issue. Ogden is good, but Bert Christman and Craig Flessel were just that much better...
I'm not surprised that Wesley Dodds was friends with the dead man, as Wesley has one of the richest backstories of early comic book heroes and knows practically everyone. Gardner Fox is starting to tinker with that backstory, though, changing Dodds from a billionaire to a millionaire. And this is the issue where he gives Wesley is his first partner. Being big on strong, equal female partners, it is hardly surprise that Dian Ware is an expert safecracker and resourceful enough to have learned or deduced the Sandman's secret identity (though it's never revealed how). Known as "The Lady in Evening Clothes," Dian even sounds like a mysteryman (or a Victorian one).
The murder weapon is a Corson repeater. I can't find any evidence that's a real thing, but I'm fine with that. I was way too specific about firearms in 1st edition Hideouts & Hoodlums and pulled back from that in 2nd ed.
Sandman still shows some willingness to act in a Chaotic manner, gassing the District Attorney when he won't cooperate and give the evidence back that Sandman already gave to him.
In a firefight with two mobsters armed with sub-machine guns, we see simultaneous initiative, with Sandman gassing them just as one of them shoots Sandman in the shoulder. We also see that Sandman has no control over who is knocked out within the area of effect of the gas, as Dian goes down too. Sandman is weakened by his injury, gradually losing consciousness, which is not a condition covered by the rules, and it takes him a week to recover (players can thank me ignoring this in the rules later!).
Trigger, the killer, is held on $1,000 bond, but for breaking and entering (the police haven't nailed him on murder yet).
When Sandman confronts Black Bill, Trigger's boss, he mentions Bill isn't as fast as he used to be (more of that backstory I enjoy so much).
Sandman is still not widely recognized on sight; District Attorney Belmont's butler doesn't recognize Sandman by costume until Dian introduces him.
Belmont has three detectives on guard duty in his house, all armed with sub-machine guns. Surely they are not there full-time, but I don't know how Belmont anticipated Sandman coming.
In a nice twist, Dian turns out to be D.A. Belmont's daughter. Unfortunately, as soon as this happens she is "domesticated" and never shows her safecracking skills again. That Wesley falls for her is evident in that he lets her take off his mask and kiss him where her father might see.
Moving on to Barry O'Neill...I'm not sure when Barry went from assisting the French police to working with French espionage, but it seems to have been a gradual transition. Of course it starts in Paris, because all adventures in France feature Paris. The Village of Vereux is misspelled as Veraux (intentionally?), while Polmere seems entirely fictional.
Barry is able to win initiative against the fake Inspector Le Grand, despite the fact that the doppelganger has a gun trained on Barry's back already; more proof that facing is of little importance for Hideouts & Hoodlums. The doppelganger must have had only a superficial resemblance to Le Grand, as he had to wear a partial face mask to conceal the rest. That the doppelganger is known as Number 37 by his fellow spies suggest that there are at least 37 spies in this spy ring.
Barry scores a direct hit with a grenade and blows up a building. Area of effect damage does not normally need a direct hit, and certainly doesn't for damaging structures. This may be only flavor text, describing how Barry rolled really well for damage.
The spies' car has a concealed radio transmitter in it, which is something good to add to the add-ons list for transport trophies.
(Sandman story read in Golden Age Sandman Archives vol. 1, the rest read at readcomiconline.to.)
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