"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 127 - Brothers of Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

THE BROTHERS MEET

LOW fog clung to the New Jersey meadows, giving a dank pall to the
evening
air. Distant, above the level of the creeping mist, were the glimmering lights
of automobiles, streaking an endless procession across the viaduct of the
Skyway toward the Holland Tunnel and New York City.
At intervals, huge electric locomotives slithered along the embankment of
the Pennsylvania Railroad, bringing long lines of passenger cars, their
windows
merry with light. From lower ground came the occasional rumbles of steam
trains
along the Erie and the Lackawanna, their whistles wailing while their great
lights cleaved the fog.
Nature had marked those meadows as desolate stretches. For years, the
dismal wasteland had been shunned. Then man had cross-ribbed the area with
arteries of traffic: railroads and highways reaching into New York City. That,
in turn, had made the meadows strategic ground for factory sites; near to
Manhattan, with transportation at hand.
As a result, big, rambling buildings had encroached upon marshy soil once
considered valueless. Built upon filled foundations, these structures stood
like lonely haystacks upon a flattened field. Far apart, they made darkened,
grimy shapes amid the shrouding blanket of the fog.
One of those spectral masses was the plant of the Centurion Steel Co. It
consisted of blocky, clustered buildings, that tapered upward to a central
structure. Viewed from a distance, the plant resembled a squatly pyramid.
Close at hand, an observer could see spaces between the buildings. The
middle one was straight-walled, rising to a twelve-story height. Its lower
floors housed the offices of the company. Above were experimental shops and
storerooms. All were dark at night.
Grumbling men were patrolling the muggy area around the buildings. They
were company detectives, assigned to such nightly duty; and they considered
their task a mean one. Two dozen in all, they met in pairs, at each end of
their sentry stretches. There, they paused to exchange condolences.
"I'll be off this trick next Tuesday," grumbled one. "It'll suit me, too.
I still don't get the idea. Why've they got a whole crew of us? A couple of
watchmen ought to be enough."
"Guess the old man's jittery about his equipment," returned the other
dick. "They've installed a lot of new machinery lately."
"Yeah? And who's going to haul it away? Nobody!"
"Somebody might cop some parts."
The first dick snorted.
"If you ask me," he confided, "I'd say that old Marcus Omstred doesn't
need his equipment. He'll be licked before he ever gets it working.
Consolidated Metals will gobble this outfit inside of six months! They've got
a
smart man at the head of that organization."
"Sidney Thrake is smart, all right," agreed the other. "He took over two
more plants last month. This is the kind of grip he's got on Consolidated
Metals; and it's the biggest corporation in this line."