Engineers -- Fiction; Grain elevators -- Design and construction -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
If you had walked to the east end of the building, here and there
balancing along a plank or dodging through gangs of laborers and around
moving timbers, you would have seen stretching from off a point not
halfway through to the ground, the annex bins, rising so steadily that
it was a matter only of a few weeks before they would be ready to
receive grain. Now another walk, this time across the building to the
north side, would show you the river house, out there on the wharf, and
the marine tower rising up through the middle with a single arc lamp on
the topmost girder throwing a mottled, checkered shadow on the wharf and
the water below.
At a little after eight o'clock, Peterson, who had been looking at the
stairway, now nearly completed, came out on the distributing floor. He
was in good spirits, for everything was going well, and Bannon had
frankly credited him, of late, with the improvement in the work of the
night shifts. He stood looking up through the upper floors of the
cupola, and he did not see Max until the timekeeper stood beside him.
"Hello, Max," he said. "We'll have the roof on here in another ten
days."
Max followed Peterson's glance upward.
"I guess that's right. It begins to look as if things was coming 'round
all right. I just come up from the office. Mr. Bannon's there. He'll be
up before long, he says. I was a-wondering if maybe I hadn't ought to go
back and tell him about Grady. He's around, you know."
"Who? Grady?"
"Yes. Him and another fellow was standing down by one of the cribbin'
piles. I was around there on the way up."
"What was they doing?"
"Nothing. Just looking on."
Peterson turned to shout at some laborers, then he pushed back his hat
and scratched his head.
"I don't know but what you'd ought to 'a' told Charlie right off. That
man Grady don't mean us no good."
"I know it, but I wasn't just sure."
"Well, I'll tell you----"
Before Peterson could finish, Max broke in:--
"That's him."
"Where?"
"That fellow over there, walking along slow. He's the one that was with
Grady."
"I'd like to know what he thinks he's doing here." Peterson started
forward, adding, "I guess I know what to say to him."
"Hold on, Pete," said Max, catching his arm. "Maybe we'd better speak to
Mr. Bannon. I'll go down and tell him, and you keep an eye on this
fellow."
Peterson reluctantly assented, and Max walked slowly away, now and then
pausing to look around at the men. But when he had nearly reached the
stairway, where he could slip behind the scaffolding about the only
scale hopper that had reached a man's height above the floor, he moved
more rapidly. He met Bannon on the stairway, and told him what he had
seen. Bannon leaned against the wall of the stairway bin, and looked
thoughtful.
"So he's come, has he?" was his only comment. "You might speak to Pete,
Max, and bring him here. I'll wait."
Max and Peterson found him looking over the work of the carpenters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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