The Avenger 17 - Nevlo
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Authors: Kenneth Robeson
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By Kenneth Robeson
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ISBN: 0-446-74-391-7
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CHAPTER IV: The Rooted Needles
CHAPTER V: Death Out of Marville
CHAPTER IX: Wings in the Night
CHAPTER XI: Picture of Terror!
CHAPTER XIV: Daggers of Death!
NEVLO
Dedication
It was one of the most beautiful spots in Ohio.
There was a good-sized river rushing merrily down from smooth green hills; there was a gorge, an increase in the speed of the current. There were woods and large, well-kept farms on the banks of the river.
Then there was the new power plant.
The power plant did not detract from the loveliness of the scenery too much. It was a symmetrical and well-designed structure that seemed to nestle at the foot of a tree-clad hill as if it belonged there. The dam, sprawling from its flank, made a pleasing waterfall.
The plant was just outside the little town of Marville. It was one, the newest, link in the chain of power-generating stations owned by the Grant Utilities Corp. Its name was simply Plant 4.
Marville and the surrounding Ohio section was proud of Plant 4. Naturally, the people hereabouts, and the possessing corporation, Grant Utilities, could not know that Plant 4 was destined to become a jinx on an almost international scale.
They all looked at the new, solid building and beamed like fond parents on a child prodigy.
Plant 4 had the newest and biggest and best in equipment. It would supply power to several thousand square miles, all the way north to Cleveland, replacing four or five obsolete local plants.
And everybody of local importance was out here today to do it official honor.
“Got a nice day for it, too,” said the editor of the Marville
Journal,
present with all the other celebrities.
“Yeah, swell,” said the man next to him, a Marville store-owner.
It was a nice day. The sun shone brightly, and the rushing river that was to whirl the giant turbines and light and power a large community looked like an animated string of blue diamonds.
“There’s the mayor. They’re all going inside.”
The editor of the Marville
Journal
nodded, and he and the store-owner moved in with the several dozen other notables to the cathedral-like interior of the plant.
They’re clean and bare and seemingly empty, these new power plants. There are half a dozen great generators, a flock of gargantuan switchboards, a few electric cables like ships’ hawsers, and that’s about all.
In the sunny, clean vastness of Plant 4, the local notables seemed lost. But they acted extra pompous to overbalance their physical tininess.
And no one was more pompous than Mayor Bristow. He stood near the big switchboard containing the master switch, and beside him stood Blake, president of Grant Utilities Corp.
John Blake, large, solemn-looking, middle-aged magnate, was in the corporation’s main offices in Cleveland far more than he was in Marville. But he had a home here, and he was, of course, here on the occasion of the dedication of Plant 4.
Next to Blake was the young engineer in charge, Bill Burton.
Burton, young, husky, with thick brown hair that was always rumpled and out of place, looked like a young hen viewing its first egg. This was his first executive job.
Engineer-in-charge, president of corporation owning the plant, the mayor, notables—all was as it should be. But over at one fringe of the crowd . . .
“Oh-oh!” said the editor of the Marville paper, in a low voice. “The ghost at the feast!”
Near one of the thirty-foot windows looking out over the Marville River was a tall man with black hair that had a gray streak in it, and with black, biting eyes.
The eyes viewed the crowd of notables as if pouring acid over them. The man’s mouth was twisted in a bitter, crooked line. He held his large head a bit to one side, as if studying the personages with malicious intensity. But that was not the reason. He always held his head to one side, had always carried it that way as far back as his oldest friend could remember.
“I’ll say—the ghost at the feast!” the store-owner whispered back to the editor, staring at the black-eyed man next to the lofty window. “Nevlo, himself. Funny that he’s allowed in here at such a time.”
“It would be awkward to try to keep him out,” shrugged the editor. “After all, Nevlo was chief engineer in the Marville section for the corporation for many years. He designed Plant 4, when you come right down to it. He’s responsible for all this stuff that’s about to be dedicated.”
“But he was fired a month ago,” protested the store-owner.
“So he was fired a month ago,” said the editor, shrugging again. “And he’s so sore-as-a-boil he’d like to pour emery dust in the generator bearings. But Blake still couldn’t quite bar him out of here without its looking bad. As I said, Nevlo is the man whose brain child this plant really is.”
“Wonder how young Burton feels about all this?”
“Burton is okay,” said the editor. “He’s a right guy. Nice youngster. He feels badly about Nevlo’s being canned. He didn’t want to take another man’s job. But when the president discharges a man and appoints you in his place, what is there to do but obey orders?”
“Can he fill Nevlo’s shoes?”
“Sure! He’s a good engineer— Ssh! They going to begin.”