In the course of revising and modernizing the series, many plots were completely re-written. "The Flickering Torch Mystery" (1943), for example, was changed from a plot involving an actual flickering torch used as a signal by a gang to a plot featuring a rock club called "The Flickering Torch." When plots were kept, their more lurid elements were eliminated; Vilnoff, the villain in "The Sinister Sign-Post", was changed from a criminal who compulsively sculpts miniature models of his own hands to a car thief without such eccentricities, and another villain, Pedro Vincenzo, who branded his victims no longer does so in the revised version of "The Mark on the Door" (1934, rev. 1967).