Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 218 by Maxwel l Grant

Author:Maxwel,l Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER IX

THE WHITE COLUMN

DESPAIR filled the big conference room at Oakmont's police headquarters.

"I don't like the situation at all," the police chief declared. "The whole

town is aroused. Citizens have lost confidence in the police. My detectives report that there are ugly whispers all over town. A secret vigilante organization is being formed. They call themselves the White Column. They're inviting loyal Americans of Oakmont to help them rid the town of Fifth Columnists. I'm afraid there will be bloodshed, if we don't solve this sabotage

mystery swiftly and arrest The Shadow."

The members of the Defense Committee were there, too. Peter Kirk and Ralph

Jackson sat side by side, their faces grim. The financial loss to them had been

tremendous. Worse still, they had failed to safeguard a military secret entrusted to their care by the government. The sabotage raid had succeeded in every vicious detail.

Henry Norman looked as unhappy as his two associates on the Committee. So did Lee Morley, the oil refiner.

"Is it certain that The Shadow was guilty?" Morley asked the police chief.

"Absolutely! The Shadow was seen at a window of the plant shortly after the explosions occurred. He tried to hide in Mr. Kirk's garage, and attacked

him with a chisel when Kirk tried to capture him."

A new voice spoke quietly in the conference room. Kent Allard was there.

He had arrived late. He apologized for his delay. He asked the police chief to summarize the facts that had been discovered.

Kent Allard's position on the committee made such a request an order. As a

personal representative of the President of the United States, he was charged with the duty of reporting directly to Washington. The police chief nodded respectfully.

"The factory was destroyed by thermite bombs," he declared. "They were detonated within the plant by a new method - a method set in action by a sound device outside the factory walls."

"I don't understand," Kent Allard said.

"The thermite bombs were hidden all over the plant near ventilator fans, air shafts and similar places, where the flames would spread quickly under forced draft. Chemical experts have examined one which failed to explode.

Gentlemen, that bomb was equipped with a sound-receiving device. A deadly little thing like a tuning fork."

"But how was it set off?"

"The projectile that fell from the plane was a siren bomb. Its siren continued to shriek after the projectile landed. When the sound wave reached a certain pitch, they affected the tuning forks in those thermite bombs planted inside the factory!"

The police chief drew a deep breath.

"No commercial or private ship was in the air last night within miles of the factory. It's proof that the plane was a foreign one. Either it came from a

secret field, or it flew from a foreign warship somewhere off the east coast of

the United States."

"Could there have been a treacherous collusion inside the factory?" Kent Allard asked.

"The only man who might be suspected was the new foreman, Frederick Brownson. It was from beneath his machine that the smoke first appeared. But neither he nor his two assistants could be traitors.

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