"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 140 - Racket Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

RACKET TOWN
by Maxwell Grant

As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," December 15, 1937.

Racketeers and mobsters take over an entire city! At point of gun they
enforce their edicts - until they meet up with the Master Avenger of Crime,
the
Shadow!


CHAPTER I

THE DEATH CRASH

THE Daylight Limited was chugging slowly through the city limits of
Parkland. One passenger viewed the city with an intense gaze, noting
numberless
grade crossings that explained the limited's slackened speed. He was a
swarthy,
stocky-built man, who was seated in a Pullman car. The porter had already
carried his bag out to the vestibule.
That passenger's name was Joe Cardona, and his destination was Parkland.
Cardona was ace inspector of the New York police force; he had come to
Parkland
on a mission that seemed strangely remote, as he eyed the passing panorama.
Fading daylight showed well-kept streets; orderly lines of automobiles
waiting at the gates of crossings. Where street lights glimmered, they
outlined
the fronts of prosperous-looking stores and theaters. At intervals, between
well-built houses, Joe spied the pleasant parks for which the town was noted.
Then came the city's center; an electric sign marked the modern Park
Hotel
amid a sky line of office buildings, the tallest a dozen stories high. Cardona
arose from his Pullman chair as the limited clanked to a stop at the ornate
stone station that served this city of sixty thousand inhabitants.
Nothing wrong with Parkland, from the surface view that Cardona had
gained. The city looked like a swell place to live, as well as being something
of a resort. But that wasn't the way it had been pictured to Joe, when
delegates from the city's chamber of commerce had pleaded with the New York
police commissioner to send his ace inspector to Parkland.
Those chaps had told of hidden crime that could not be spotted. They had
sworn that the town was racket-ridden; but with no crime-leader visible. The
city officials were free from corruption, with the police force loyal, but the
civic machinery seemed inadequate to cope with present conditions.
That was why responsible citizens wanted Cardona's services. They figured
he could find out what was wrong in Parkland. Every other man might be a
crook,
for all they knew. Perhaps Cardona could pick out some of the bad ones.
Certainly, he could reorganize the police force on a more efficient basis.