Dick Tracy: The Mole Trivia Quiz

Answer: Steve The Tramp

A reformed Steve is seen carrying a Bible and stopping to pray in a church. He decides to relive his youth by going to an amusement park where he lands a temporary job. Tess Trueheart and Junior Tracy are at the park as well, playing bingo. Tess wins $25 only to have her purse snatched by a large eyed, spectacle wearing Duke, who hides it at the freak show where Steve is working. Tracy arrives and there follows an amusing chase through the amusement park with Duke getting sick and fainting on one of the rides.

Answer: Cotton Candy

Though it seems unlikely, Duke used the cotton candy for eyebrows and whiskers and it stayed on long enough for him to get away. Tracy (and Junior) are very forgiving of ex-con Steve, and Tracy even loans him money to buy a fruit stand.

Answer: chewing gum sample girl

The idea is for Duke to rob a store and run around a corner where Sugar is giving out gum samples. He drops the money into her sample bag and she falls to the ground acting hurt. When Duke is apprehended, he has no money and police have no proof. Unfortunately they pull off two robberies near the fruit stand where Steve and Junior are, and Junior follows her and discovers where she lives. Tracy and Junior arrive to question Sugar about the robberies.

Answer: sulphur

They take Junior and push him out of their car in front of an armored truck, holding it up. Speeding away from the scene with bags of dough, they encounter a fruit truck with Steve the Tramp inside, which overturns. Skidding through the spilled fruit, Duke loses control of the car and crashes, killing Sugar. Tracy in the meantime realizes he can move the table by jerking his body.

He gets to the window, takes the curtains in his teeth, breaks one side of the curtain rod from the wall and crashes it out the window, letting the heavy smoke out.

A passerby calls the fire department which saves Tracy from yet another death trap.

Answer: an abandoned steam boiler

Readers of the strip must have been amazed and amused when they first saw The Mole and his underground home with all modern conveniences bootlegged from the city. Duke offered him fifty bucks to hide for a few days.
"No, no, I don't think that would be quite right," Mole said. "How much do you have?"
"I've got money. I've got $2000," Duke boasted.
"Then $2000 will be the fee! Mole is most happy to let you stay here but Mole must have adequate pay."
Duke protested and tried to leave, but Mole took the money and casually tossed it into his closet, which contained a huge pile of money.

Answer: electrified steel ladder

The Mole is furious when Duke attempts to sneak out (with HIS money) and chokes him to death. "Digging in the earth has made Mole's hands very strong. Ha ha. VERY strong."
We now learn that Mole runs a hideout for criminals who inevitably try to get out with some of his money. "Like others before you, you tried it. And like others before you, you have paid the price!"
And yet, somehow, Chester Gould makes the reader LIKE The Mole, and even feel pity for him (to a certain extent) when Tracy closes in. Good story tellers can do that, and Gould is one of the best in the comic medium.

Answer: the manhole cover

The cover was upside down. When the street crew looked in the manhole, Duke's body is discovered. We now see Mole has an accomplice. The service station attendant at the next door station has a TV screen on one gas pump with a microphone built into the gas spout which connects to a TV in the Mole's tunnel.
Tracy and Pat do some police work: checking out some blue clay found on Duke's pants and taking fingerprints off the manhole cover. They discover the prints to be those of The Mole who was thought to have been murdered by his own gang years ago.

Answer: the grease pit

Remember the year is 1941. Few hydraulic car lifts were installed in a service station, and to get under the car it was driven over the pit and the service man climbed down a ladder underneath the car. There is a hinged (and hidden) door in the side of the grease pit by which they exchange food (and money).

Answer: blizzard

Their take on the storm is different:
"This is one of those early, freak blizzards, Pat. Wow! What a snow storm," Tracy comments.
Mole says," Aha! Snow! The first of the season. Oh well, it will not bother Mole!"
Chester Gould writes "Aha, Mole. That's what you think!"
The city crews are dumping the excess snow in the block around the boiler which begins melting the snow and flooding Moles tunnel. The trucks begin breaking through the tunnel and upon investigating, Tracy falls through only to become face to face with The Mole. After a fierce fight in ankle deep water, the two are separated by another cave in. Tracy is saved as he notices Mole's money flowing toward an outlet-- the grease pit.

Answer: a fencepost

Police watch as the fencepost moves and eventually The Mole surfaces. As the Mole is cuffed, we see a broken water line bringing his money to the surface through the manhole in the street with children grabbing up the bills. Mole is furious. Being just before Christmas, Tracy suggests the money is going to a better place, and not to be a meanie. This seems to confuse Mole. Later
Dick Tracy gives The Mole a wrapped present in his cell and we now see Mole open it with tears in his eyes. "Cigarettes-Fruit-Candy! This is the first time in thirty years..." he is distracted by a Christmas carol floating in the cell.
Gould brought The Mole back in 1971, but even one of his most famous criminals played second (or third) fiddle to the story of Molene, Pouch and Johnny Scorn, and faded out of the story.
He reappeared in 2011 back in his mole hole with the boiler as his entrance, this time a good guy running a home for orphaned children.