TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
or
Two Miles a Minute on the Rails
By
VICTOR APPLETON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A TEMPTING OFFER
II TROUBLE STARTS
III TOM SWIFT'S FRIENDS
IV MUCH TO THINK ABOUT
V BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS
VI THE CONTRACT SIGNED
VII THE MAN WITH BIG FEET
VIII AN ENEMY IN THE DARK
IX WHERE WAS KOKU?
X A STRANGE CONVERSATION
XI TOUCH AND GO
XII THE TRY-OUT DAY ARRIVES
XIII HOPES AND FEARS
XIV SPEED
XV THE ENEMY STILL ACTIVE
XVI OFF FOR THE WEST
XVII THE WRECK OF FORTY-EIGHT
XVIII ON THE HENDRICKTON & PAS ALOS
XIX PERIL, THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
XX THE RESULT
XXI THE OPEN SWITCH
XXII A DESPERATE CHASE
XXIII MR. DAMON AT BAT
XXIV PUTTING THE ENEMY TO FLIGHT
XXV SPEED AND SUCCESS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
Chapter I
A Tempting Offer
"An electric locomotive that can make two miles a minute over a
properly ballasted roadbed might not be an impossibility," said
Mr. Barton Swift ruminatively. "It is one of those things that
are coming," and he flashed his son, Tom Swift, a knowing smile.
It had been a topic of conversation between them before the
visitor from the West had been seated before the library fire and
had sampled one of the elder Swift's good cigars.
"It is not only a future possibility," said the latter
gentleman, shrugging his shoulders. "As far as the Hendrickton
and Pas Alos Railroad Company goes, a two mile a minute gait--not
alone on a level track but through the Pas Alos Range--is an
immediate necessity. It's got to be done now, or our stock will
be selling on the curb for about two cents a share."
"You do not mean just that, do you, Mr. Bartholomew?" asked Tom
Swift earnestly, and staring at the big-little man before the
fire.
Mr. Richard Bartholomew was just that--a "big-little man." In
the railroad world, both in construction and management, he had
made an enviable name for himself.
He had actually built up the Hendrickton and Pas Alos from a
narrow-gauge, "jerkwater" road into a part of a great cross-
continent system that tapped a wonderfully rich territory on both
sides of the Pas Alos Range.
For some years the H. & P. A. had a monopoly of that territory.
Now, as Mr. Bartholomew intimated, it was threatened with such
rivalry from another railroad and other capitalists, that the
H. & P. A. was being looked upon in the financial market as a
shaky investment.
But Tom Swift repeated:
"You do not mean just that, do you, Mr. Bartholomew?"
Mr. Bartholomew, who was a little man physically, rolled around
in his chair to face the young fellow more directly. His own eyes
sparkled in the firelight. His olive face was flushed.
"That is much nearer the truth, young man," he said, somewhat
harshly because of his suppressed emotion, "than I want people at
large to suspect. As I have told your father, I came here to put
all my cards on the table; but I expect the Swift Construction
Company to take anything I may say as said in confidence."
"We quite understand that, Mr. Bartholomew," said the elder
Swift, softly. "You can speak freely. Whether we do business or
not, these walls are soundproof, and Tom and I can forget, or
remember, as we wish. Of course if we take up any work for you,
we must confide to a certain extent in our close associates and
trusted mechanics."
"Humph!" grunted the visitor, turning restlessly again in his
chair. Then he said: "I agree as the necessity of that last
statement; but I can only hope that these walls are soundproof."
"What's that?" demanded Tom, rather sharply. He was a bright
looking young fellow with an alert air and a rather humorous
smile. His father was a semi-invalid; but Tom possessed all the
mental vigor and muscular energy that a young man should have. He
had not neglected his Athletic development while he made the best
use of his mental powers.
"Believe me," said the visitor, quite as harshly as before, "I
begin to doubt the solidity of all walls. I know that I have been
watched, and spied upon, and that eavesdroppers have played hob
with our affairs.
"Of late, there has been little planned in the directors' room
of the H. & P. A. that has not seeped out and aided the enemy in
foreseeing our moves."
"The enemy?" repeated Mr. Swift, with mild surprise.
"That's it exactly! The enemy!" replied Mr. Bartholomew
shortly. "The H. & P. A. has got the fight of its life on its
hands. We had a hard enough time fighting nature and the elements
when we laid the first iron for the road a score of years ago.
Now I am facing a fight that must grow fiercer and fiercer as
time goes on until either the H. & P. A. smashes the opposition,
or the enemy smashes it."
"What enemy is this you speak of?" asked Tom, much interested.
"The proposed Hendrickton & Western. A new road, backed by new
capital, and to be officered and built by new men in the
construction and railroad game.
"Montagne Lewis--you've heard of him, I presume--is at the head
of the crowd that have bought the little old Hendrickton &
Western, lock, stock and barrel.
"They have franchises for extending the road. In the old days
the legislatures granted blanket franchises that allowed any
group of moneyed men to engage in any kind of business as side
issues to railroading. Montagne Lewis and his
crowd have got a 'plenty-big' franchise.
"They have begun laying iron. It parallels, to a certain
extent, our own line. Their surveyors were smarter than the men
who laid out the H. & P. A. I admit it. Besides, the country out
there is developed more than it was a score of years ago when I
took hold.
"All this enters into the fight between Montagne Lewis and me.
But there is something deeper," said the little man, with almost
a snarl, as he thrashed about again in his chair. "I beat
Montagne Lewis at one big game years ago. He is a man who never
forgets--and who never hesitates to play dirty politics if he has
to, to bring about his own ends.
"I know that I have been watched. I know that I was followed on
this trip East. He has private detectives on my track
continually. And worse. All the gunmen of the old and wilder West
are not dead. There's a fellow named Andy O'Malley--well, never
mind him. The game at present is to keep anybody in Lewis's
employ from getting wise to why I came to see you."
"What you say is interesting," Mr. Swift here broke in quietly.
"But I have already been puzzled by what you first said. Just why
have you come to us--to Tom and me--in reference to your railroad
difficulties?"
"And this suggestion you have made," added Tom, "about a
possible electric locomotive of a faster type than has, ever yet
been put on the rails?"
"That is it, exactly," replied Bartholomew, sitting suddenly
upright in his chair. "We want faster electric motor power than
has ever yet been invented. We have got to have it, or the
H. & P. A. might as well be scrapped and the whole territory out
there handed over to Montagne Lewis and his H. & W. That is the
sum total of the matter, gentlemen. If the Swift Construction
Company cannot help us, my railroad is going to be junk in about
three years from this beautiful evening."
His emphasis could not fail to impress both the elder and the
younger Swift. They looked at each other, and the interest
displayed upon the father's countenance was reflected upon the
features of the son.
If there was anything Tom Swift liked it was a good fight. The
clash of diverse interests was the breath of life to the young
fellow. And for some years now, always connected in some way
with the development of his inventive genius, he had been
entangled in battles both of wits and physical powers. Here was
the suggestion of something that would entail a struggle of both
brain and brawn.
"Sounds good," muttered Tom, gazing at the railroad magnate
with considerable admiration.
"Let us hear all about it," Mr. Swift said to Bartholomew.
"Whether we can help you or not, we're interested."
"All right," replied the visitor again. "Whether I was followed
East, and here to Shopton, or not doesn't much matter. I will put
my proposition up to you, and then I'll ask, if you don't want to
go into it, that you keep the business absolutely secret. I have
got to put something over on Montagne Lewis and his crowd, or
throw up the sponge. That's that!"
"Go ahead, Mr. Bartholomew," observed Tom's father,
encouragingly.
"To begin with, four hundred miles of our road is already
electrified. We have big power stations and supply heat and light
and power to several of the small cities tapped by the H. & P. A.
It is a paying proposition as it stands. But it is only paying
because we carry the freight traffic--all the freight traffic--of
that region.
"If the H. & W. breaks in on our monopoly of that, we shall
soon be so cut down that our invested capital will not earn two
per cent.--No, by glory! not one-and-a-half per cent.--and our
stock will be dished. But I have worked out a scheme, Gentlemen,
by which we can counter-balance any dig Lewis can give us in the
ribs.
"If we can extend our electrified line into and through the Pas
Alos Range our freight traffic can be handled so cheaply and so
effectively that nothing the Hendrickton & Western can do for
years to come will hurt us. Get that?"
"I get your statement, Mr. Bartholomew," said Mr. Swift. "But
it is merely a statement as yet."
"Sure. Now I will give you the particulars. We are using the
Jandel locomotives on our electrified stretch of road. You know
that patent?"
"I know something about it, Mr. Bartholomew," said the younger
inventor. "I have felt some interest in the electric locomotive,
though I have done nothing practical in the matter. But I know
the Jandel patent."
"It is about the best there is--and the most recent; but it
does not fill the bill. Not for the H. & P. A., anyway," said Mr.
Bartholomew, shortly.
"What does it lack?" asked Mr. Swift.
"Speed. It's got the power for heavy hauls. It could handle the
freight through the Pas Alos Range. But it would slow up our
traffic so that the shippers would at once turn to the
Hendrickton & Western. You understand that their rails do not
begin to engage the grades that our engineers thought necessary
when the old H. & P. A. was built."
"I get that," said Tom briskly. "You have come here, then, to
interest us in the development of a faster but quite as powerful
type of electric locomotive as the Jandel."
"Stated to the line!" exclaimed Mr. Bartholomew, smiting the
arm of his chair with his clenched fist. "That is it, young man.
You get me exactly. And now I will go on to put my proposition to
you."
"Do so, Mr. Bartholomew," murmured the old inventor, quite as
much interested as his son.
"I want you to make a study of electric motive power as applied
to track locomotives, with the idea of utilizing our power plants
and others like them, and even with the possibility in mind of
the continued use of the Jandel locomotives on our more level
stretches of road.
"But I want your investigation to result in the building of
locomotives that will make a speed of two miles a minute, or as
near that as possible, on level rails, and be powerful enough to
snake our heavy freight trains through the hills and over the
steep grades so rapidly that even two engines, a pusher and a
hauler, cannot beat the electric power."
"Some job, that, I'll say," murmured Tom Swift.
"Exactly. Some job. And it is the only thing that will save the
H. & P. A.," said Mr. Bartholomew decidedly. "I put it up to you
Swifts. I have heard of some of your marvelous inventions. Here
is something that is already invented. But it needs development."
"I see," said Mr. Swift, and nodded.
"It interests me," admitted Tom. "As I say, I have given some
thought to the electric locomotive."
"This is the age of speed," said Mr. Bartholomew earnestly.
"Rapidity in handling freight and kindred things will be the
salvation, and the only salvation, of many railroads. Tapping a
rich territory is not enough. The road that can offer the
quickest and cheapest service is the road that is going to keep
out of a receivership. Believe me, I know!"
"You should," said Mr. Swift mildly. "Your experience should
have taught you a great deal about the railroad business."
"It has. But that knowledge is worth just nothing at all
without swift power and cheap traffic. Those are the problems
today. Now, I am going to take a chance. If it doesn't work, my
road is dished in any case. So I feel that the desperate chance
is the only chance."
"What is that?" asked Tom Swift, sitting forward in his chair.
"I, for one, feel so much interested that I will do anything in
reason to find the answer to your traffic problem."
"That's the boy!" ejaculated Richard Bartholomew. "I will give
it to you in a few words. If you will experiment with the
electric locomotive idea, to develop speed and power over and
above the Jandel patent, and will give me the first call on the
use of any patents you may contrive, I will put up twenty-five
thousand dollars in cash which shall be yours whether I can make
use of a thing you invent or not."
"Any time limit in this agreement, Mr. Bartholomew?" asked Tom,
making a few notes on a scratch pad before him on the library
table.
"What do you say to three months?"
"Make it six, if you can," Tom said with continued briskness.
"It interests me. I'll do my best. And I want you to get your
money's worth."
"All right. Make it six," said Mr. Bartholomew. "But the
quicker you dig something up, the better for me. Now, that is the
first part of my proposition."
"All right, sir. And the second?"
"If you succeed in showing me that you can build and operate an
electric locomotive that will speed two miles a minute on a level
track and will get a heavy drag over the mountain grades, as I
said, as surely as two engines of the coal-burning or oil-burning
type, I will pay you a hundred thousand dollars bonus, besides
buying all the engines you can build of this new type for the
first two years. I've got to have first call; but the hundred
thousand will be yours free and clear, and the price of the
locomotives you build can be adjusted by any court of agreement
that you may suggest."
Tom Swift's face glowed. He realized that this offer was not
only generous, but that it made it worth his while dropping
everything else he had in hand and devoting his entire time and
thought for even six mouths to the proposition of developing the
electric locomotive.
He looked at his father and nodded. Mr. Swift said, calmly:
"We take you on that offer, Mr. Bartholomew. Tom has the facts
on paper, and we will hand it to Mr. Newton, our financial
manager, in the morning. If you will remain in town for twenty-
four hours, the contract can be signed."
"Suits me," declared. Richard Bartholomew, rising quickly from
his chair. "I confess I hoped you would take me up quite as
promptly as you have. I want to get back West again.
"We will see you in the office of the company at two o'clock
tomorrow," said Tom Swift confidently.
"Better than good! And now, if that trailer that I am pretty
sure Montagne Lewis sent after me does not get wise to the
subject of our talk, it may be a slick job we have done and will
do. I admit I am rather afraid of the enemy. You Swifts must keep
your plans in utter darkness."
After a little talk on more ordinary affairs, Mr. Bartholomew
took his departure. It was getting late in the evening, and Tom
Swift had an engagement. While old Rad, their colored servant,
was helping him on with his coat preparatory to Tom's leaving the
house, his father called from the library:
"Got those notes in a safe place, Tom?"
"Safest in the world, Dad," his son replied. But he did not go
into details. Tom considered the "safest place in the world" just
then was his own wallet, which was tucked into an inside pocket
of his vest "I'm going to see Mary Nestor, Father," said Tom, as
he went to the front door and opened it.
He halted a moment with the knob of the door in his hand. The
porch was deep in shadows, but he thought he had seen something
move there.
"That you, Koku?" asked Tom in an ordinary voice. Sometimes his
gigantic servant wandered about the house at night. He was a
strange person, and he had a good many thoughts in his savage
brain that even his young master did not understand.
There was no reply to Tom's question, so he walked down the
steps and out at the gate. It was not a long distance to the
Nestor house, and the air was brisk and keen, in spite of the
fact that threatening clouds masked the stars.
Two blocks from the house he came to a high wall which
separated the street from the grounds of an old dwelling. Tom
suddenly noticed that the usual street lights on this block had
been extinguished--blown out by the wind, perhaps.
Involuntarily he quickened his steps. He reached the archway in
the wall. Here was the gate dividing the private grounds from the
street. As he strode into the shadow of this place a voice
suddenly halted Tom Swift.
"Hands up! Put 'em up and don't be slow about it!" A bulky
figure loomed in the dark. Tom saw the highwayman's club poised
threateningly over his head.
Chapter II
Trouble Starts
The fact that he was stopped by a footpad smote Tom Swift's
mind as not a particularly surprising adventure. He had heard
that several of that gentry had been plying their trade about the
outskirts of the town. To a degree he was prepared for this
sudden event.
Then there flashed into Tom's mind the thought of what Mr.
Richard Bartholomew had said regarding the spy he believed had
followed him from the West. Could it be possible that some hired
thug sent by Montagne Lewis and his crooked crowd of financiers
considered that Tom Swift had obtained information from the
president of the H. & P. A. that might do his employers signal
service?
Tom Swift had fallen in with many adventures--and some quite
thrilling ones--since, as a youth, he was first introduced to the
reader in the initial volume of this series, entitled "Tom Swift
and His Motor Cycle." His first experiences as an inventor,
coached by his father, who had spent his life in the experimental
laboratory and workshop, was made possible by his purchase from
Mr. Wakefield Damon, now one of his closest friends, of a broken-
down motor cycle.
Through a series of inventions, some of them of a marvelous
kind, Tom Swift, aided by his father, had forged ahead, building
motor boats, airships, submarines, monoplanes, motion picture
cameras, searchlights, cannons, photo-telephones, war tanks. Of
late, as related in "Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters," he had
engaged in the invention of an explosive bomb carrying flame-
quenching chemicals that would, in time, revolutionize fire-
fighting in tall buildings.
The matter that Mr. Richard Bartholomew, the railroad magnate,
had brought to Tom's and his father's attention had deeply
interested the young inventor. Thought of the electric
locomotive, the development of which the railroad president
stated was the only salvation of the finances of the H. & P. A.,
had so held Tom's attention as he walked along the street that
being stopped in this sudden way was even more startling than
such an incident might ordinarily have been.
Tom was a muscular young fellow; but a club held over one's
head by a burly thug would have shaken the courage of anybody.
Dark as it was under the archway the young fellow saw that the
bulk of the man was much greater than his own.
"That's right, sonny," said the stranger, in a sneering tone.
"You got just the right idea. When I say 'Stick 'em up' I mean
it. Never take a chance. Ah--ah!"
The fellow ripped open Tom's overcoat, almost tearing the
buttons off. Another masterful jerk and his victim's jacket was
likewise parted widely. He did not lower the club for an instant.
He thrust his left hand into the V-shaped parting of the young
fellow's vest.
It was then that Tom was convinced of what the fellow was
after. He remembered the notes he had made regarding the contract
that was to be signed on the morrow between the Swift
Construction Company and President Richard Bartholomew of the
H. & P. A. Railroad. He remembered, too, the figure he thought he
had seen in the dark porch of the house as he so recently left
it.
Mr. Bartholomew had considered it very possible that he was
being spied upon. This was one of the spies--a Westerner, as his
speech betrayed. But Tom was suddenly less fearful than he had
been when first attacked.
It did not seem possible to him that Mr. Bartholomew's enemies
would allow their henchman to go too far to obtain information of
the railroad president's intentions. This fellow was merely
attempting to frighten him.
A sense of relief came to Tom Swift's assistance. He opened his
lips to speak and could the thug have seen his face more clearly
in the dark he would have been aware of the fact that the young
inventor smiled.
The fellow's groping hand entered between Tom's vest and his
shirt. The coarse fingers seized upon Tom's wallet. Nobody likes
to be robbed, no matter whether the loss is great or small. There
was not much money in the wallet, nor anything that could be
turned into money by a thief.
These facts enabled Tom, perhaps, to bear his loss with some
fortitude. The highwayman drew forth the wallet and thrust it
into his own coat pocket. He made no attempt to take anything
else from the young inventor.
"Now, beat it!" commanded the fellow. "Don't look back and
don't run or holler. Just keep moving--in the way you were headed
before. Vamoose."
More than ever was Tom assured that the man was from the West.
His speech savored of Mexican phrases and slang terms used mainly
by Western citizens. And his abrupt and masterly manner and
speech aided in this supposition. Tom Swift stayed not to utter a
word. It was true he was not so frightened as he had at first
been. But he was quite sure that this man was no person to
contend with under present conditions.
He strode away along the sidewalk toward the far corner of the
wall that surrounded this estate. Shopton had not many of such
important dwellings as this behind the wall. Its residential
section was made up for the most part of mechanics' homes and
such plain but substantial houses as his father's.
Prospering as the Swifts had during the last few years, neither
Tom nor his father had thought their plain old house too poor or
humble for a continued residence. Tom was glad to make money, but
the inventions he had made it by were vastly more important to
his mind than what he might obtain by any lavish expenditure of
his growing fortune.
This matter of the electric locomotive that had been brought to
his attention by the Western railroad magnate had instantly
interested the young inventor. The possibility of there being a
clash of interests in the matter, and the point Mr. Bartholomew
made of his enemies seeking to thwart his hope of keeping the H.
& P. A. upon a solid financial footing, were phases of the affair
that likewise concerned the young fellow's thought.
Now he was sure that Mr. Bartholomew was right. The enemies of
the H. & P. A. were determined to know all that the railroad
president was planning to do. They would naturally suspect that
his trip East to visit the Swift Construction Company was no idle
jaunt.
Tom had turned so many fortunate and important problems of
invention into certainties that the name of the Swift
Construction Company was broadly known, not alone throughout the
United States but in several foreign countries. Montagne Lewis,
whom Tom knew to be both a powerful and an unscrupulous
financier, might be sure that Mr. Bartholomew's visit to Shopton
and to the young inventor and his father was of such importance
that he would do well through his henchmen to learn the
particulars of the interview.
Tom remembered Mr. Bartholomew's mention of a name like Andy
O'Malley. This was probably the man who had done all that he
could, and that promptly, to set about the discovery of Mr.
Bartholomew's reason for visiting the Swifts.
Without doubt the man had slunk about the Swift house and had
peered into one of the library windows while the interview was
proceeding. He had observed Tom making notes on the scratch pad
and judged correctly that those notes dealt with the subject
under discussion between the visitor from the West and the
Swifts.
He had likewise seen Tom thrust the paper into his wallet and
the wallet into his inside vest pocket. Instead of dogging Mr.
Bartholomew's footsteps after that gentleman left the Swift
house, the man had waited for the appearance of Tom. When he was
sure that the young fellow was preparing to walk out, and the
direction he was to stroll, the thug had run ahead and ensconced
himself in the archway on this dark block.
All these things were plain enough. The notes Tom had taken
regarding the offer Mr. Bartholomew had made for the development
of the electric locomotive might, under some circumstances, be
very important. At least, the highwayman evidently thought them
such. But Tom had another thought about that.
One thing the young inventor was convinced about, as he strode
briskly away from the scene of the hold-up: There was going to be
trouble. It had already begun.
Chapter III
Tom Swift's Friends
Tom was still walking swiftly when he arrived in sight of Mary
Nestor's home. He was so filled with excitement both because of
the hold-up and the new scheme that Mr. Richard Bartholomew had
brought to him from the West, that he could keep neither to
himself. He just had to tell Mary!
Mary Nestor was a very pretty girl, and Tom thought she was
just about right in every particular. Although he had been about
a good deal for a young fellow and had seen girls everywhere,
none of them came up to Mary. None of them held Tom's interest
for a minute but this girl whom he had been around with for years
and whom he had always confided in.
As for the girl herself, she considered Tom Swift the very
nicest young man she had ever seen. He was her beau-ideal of
what a young man should be. And she entered enthusiastically into
the plans for everything that Tom Swift was interested in.
Mary was excited by the story Tom told her in the Nestor
sitting room. The idea of the electric locomotive she saw, of
course, was something that might add to Tom's laurels as an
inventor. But the other phase of the evening's adventure--"Tom,
dear!" she murmured with no little disturbance of mind. "That man
who stopped you! He is a thief, and a dangerous man! I hate to
think of your going home alone."
"He's got what he was after," chuckled Tom. "Is it likely he
will bother me again?"
"And you do not seem much worried about it," she cried, in
wonder.
"Not much, I confess, Mary," said Tom, and grinned.
"But if, as you suppose, that man was working for Mr.
Bartholomew's enemies
"I am convinced that he was, for he did not rob me of my watch
and chain or loose money. And he could have done so easily. I
don't mind about the old wallet. There was only five dollars in
it."
"But those notes you said you took of Mr. Bartholomew's offer?"
"Oh, yes," chuckled Tom again. "Those notes. Well, I may as
well explain to you, Mary, and not try to puzzle you any longer.
But that highwayman is sure going to be puzzled a long, long
time."
"What do you mean, Tom?"
"Those notes were jotted down in my own brand of shorthand.
Such stenographic notes would scarcely be readable by anybody
else. Ho, ho! When that bold, bad hold-up gent turns the notes
over to Montagne Lewis, or whoever his principal is, there will
be a sweet time."
"Oh, Tom! isn't that fun?" cried Mary, likewise much amused.
"I can remember everything we said there in the library," Tom
continued. "I'll see Ned tonight on my way home from here, and he
will draw a contract the first thing in the morning."
"You are a smart fellow, Tom!" said Mary, her laughter trilling
sweetly.
"Many thanks, Ma'am! Hope I prove your compliment true. This
two-mile-a-minute stunt--"
"It seems wonderful," breathed Mary.
"It sure will be wonderful if we can build a locomotive that
will do such fancy lacework as that," observed Tom eagerly. "It
will be a great stunt!"
"A wonderful invention, Tom."
"More wonderful than Mr. Bartholomew knows," agreed the young
fellow. "An electric locomotive with both great speed and great
hauling power is what more than one inventor has been aiming at
for two or three decades. Ever since Edison and Westinghouse
began their experiments, in truth."
"Is the locomotive they are using out there a very marvelous
machine?" asked the girl, with added interest.
"No more marvelous than the big electric motors that drag the
trains into New York City, for instance, through the tunnels.
Steam engines cannot be used in those tunnels for obvious, as
well as legal, reasons. They are all wonderful machines, using
third-rail power.
"But that Jandel patent that Mr. Bartholomew is using out there
on the H. & P. A. is probably the highest type of such motors. It
is up to us to beat that. Fortunately I got a pass into the
Jandel shops a few months ago and I studied at first hand the
machine Mr. Bartholomew is using."
"Isn't that great!" cried Mary.
"Well, it helps some. I at least know in a general way the
'how' of the construction of the Jandel locomotive. It is simple
enough. Too simple by far, I should say, to get both speed and
power. We'll see," and he nodded his head thoughtfully.
Tom did not stay long with the girl, for it was already late in
the evening when he had arrived at her house. As he got up to
depart Mary's anxiety for his safety revived.
"I wish you would take care now, Tom. Those men may hound you."
"What for?" chuckled the young inventor. "They have the notes
they wanted."
"But that very thing--the fact that you fooled them--will make
them more angry. Take care."
"I have a means of looking out for myself, after all," said Tom
quietly, seeing that he must relieve her mind. "I let that fellow
get away with my wallet; but I won't let him hurt me. Don't
fear."
She had opened the door. The lamplight fell across porch and
steps, and in a broad white band even to the gate and sidewalk.
There was a motor-car slowing down right before the open gate.
"Who's this?" queried Tom, puzzled.
A sharp voice suddenly was raised in an exclamatory explosion.
"Bless my breakshoes! is that Tom Swift? Just the chap I was
looking for. Bless my mileage-book! this saves me time and
money."
"Why, it's Mr. Wakefield Damon," Mary cried, with something
like relief in her tones. "You can ride home in his car, Tom."
"All right, Mary. Don't be afraid for me," replied Tom Swift,
and ran down the walk to the waiting car.
"Bless my vest buttons! Tom Swift, my heart swells when I see
you--"
"And is like to burst off the said vest buttons?" chuckled the
young fellow, stepping in beside his eccentric friend who blessed
everything inanimate in his florid speech.
"I am delighted to catch you--although, of course," and Tom
knew the gentleman's eyes twinkled, "I could have no idea that
you were over here at Mary's, Tom."
"Of course not," rejoined the young inventor calmly. "Seeing
that I only come to see her just as often as I get a chance."
"Bless my memory tablets! is that the fact?" chuckled Mr.
Damon. "Anyway, I wanted to see you so particularly that I drove
over in my car tonight--"
"Wait a minute," said Tom, hastily. "Is this important?"
"I think so, Tom."
"Let me get something else off of my mind first, then, Mr.
Damon," Tom Swift said quickly. "Drive around by Ned's house,
will you, please? Ned Newton's. After I speak a minute with him I
will be at your service.
"Surely, Tom; surely," agreed the gentleman.
The automobile had been running slowly. Mr. Damon knew the
streets of Shopton very well, and he headed around the next
corner. As the car turned, a figure bounded out of the shadow
near the house line. Two long strides, and the man was on the
running board of the car upon the side where Tom Swift sat. Again
an ugly club was raised above the young fellow's head.
"You're the smart guy!" croaked the coarse voice Tom had heard
before. "Think you can bamboozle me, do you? Up with 'em!"
"Bless my spark-plug!" gasped Mr. Wakefield Damon.
Either from nervousness or intention, he jerked the steering
wheel so that the car made a sudden leap away from the curb. The
figure of the stranger swayed.
Instantly Tom Swift struck the man's arm up higher and from
under his own coat appeared something that bulked like a pistol
in his right hand. He had intimated to Mary Nestor that he
carried something with which to defend himself from highwaymen if
he chose to. This invention, his ammonia gun, now came into play.
"Bless my failing eyesight!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, as he shot
the motor-car ahead again in a straight line.
The man who had accosted Tom so fiercely fell off the running
board and rolled into the gutter, screaming and choking from the
fumes from Tom's gun.
"Drive on!" commanded the young inventor. "If he keeps
bellowing like that the police will pick him up. I guess he will
let us alone here-after."
"Bless my short hairs and long ones!" chuckled Mr. Damon. "You
are the coolest young fellow, Tom, that I ever saw. That man must
have been a highwayman. And it is of some of those gentry that I
drove over to Shopton this evening to talk to you about."
Chapter IV
Much to Think About
Although it was now nearing ten o'clock on this eventful
evening, Tom knew that he would find Ned Newton at home. When Mr.
Damon's car stopped before the house there was a light in Ned's
room and the front door opened almost as soon as Tom rang. Mr.
Damon left the car and entered with the young inventor at his
invitation.
"What's up?" was Ned's greeting, looking at the two curiously
as he ushered them in. "I see this isn't entirely a social call,"
and he laughed as he shook the older man's hand.
"Bless my particular star!" exclaimed the latter excitedly. "Of
all the thrilling adventures that anybody ever got into, it is
this Tom Swift who cooks them up! Why, Newton! do you know that
we have been held up by a highwayman within two blocks of this
very house?"
"And that of course was Tom's fault?" suggested Ned, still
smiling.
"It wouldn't have happened if he had not been with me," said
Mr. Damon.
"I am curious," said Ned, as they seated themselves. "Who was
the footpad? What drew his attention to you two? Tell me about
it."
"Bless my suspender buckles!" exclaimed Mr. Damon. "You tell
him, Tom. I don't understand it myself, yet."
"I think I can explain. But whatever I tell you both, you must
hold in secret. Father and I have been entrusted with some
private information tonight and I am going to take you, Ned, and
Mr. Damon, into the business in a confidential way."
"Let's have it," begged Newton. "Anything to do with the
works?"
"It is," answered Tom gravely. "We are going to take up a
proposition that promises big things for the Swift Construction
Company."
"A big thing financially?"
"I'll say so. And it looks as though we were mixing into a
conspiracy that may breed trouble in more ways than one."
Tom went on to sketch briefly the situation of the Hendrickton
& Pas Alos Railroad as brought to the attention of the Swifts by
the railroad's president. First of all his two listeners were
deeply interested in the proposition Mr. Richard Bartholomew had
made the inventors. Ned Newton jotted down briefly the agreement
to be incorporated in the contract to be drawn and signed, by the
Swift Construction Company and the president of the H. & P. A.
road.
"This looks like a big thing for the company, Tom," the young
manager said with enthusiasm, while Mr. Damon listened to it all
with mouth and eyes open.
"Bless my watch-charm!" murmured the latter. "An electric
locomotive that can travel two miles a minute? Whew!"
"Sounds like a big order, Tom," added Ned, seriously.
"It is a big order. I am not at all sure it can be done,"
agreed Tom, thoughtfully. "But under the terms Mr. Bartholomew
offers it is worth trying, don't you think?"
"That twenty-five thousand dollars is as good as yours anyway,"
declared his chum with finality. "I'll see there is no loophole
in the contract and the money must be placed in escrow so that
there can be no possibility of our losing that. The promise of a
hundred thousand dollars must he made binding as well."
"I know you will look out for those details, Ned," Tom said
with a wave of his hand.
"That is what I am here for," agreed the financial manager.
"Now, what else? I fancy the building of such a locomotive looks
feasible to you and your father or you would not go into it."
"But two miles a minute!" murmured Mr. Damon again. "Bless my
prize pumpkins!"
"The idea of speed enters into it, yes," said Tom thoughtfully.
"In fact electric motor power has always been based on speed, and
on cheapness of moving all kinds of traffic.
"Look here!" he exclaimed earnestly, "what do you suppose the
first people to dabble in electrically driven vehicles were
aiming at? The motor-car? The motor boat? Trolley cars? All those
single motor sort of things? Not much they weren't!"
"Bless my glove buttons!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, dragging off his
gauntlets as he spoke. "I don't get you at all, Tom! What do you
mean?"
"I mean to say that the first experiments in the use of
electricity as a motive power were along the electrification of
the steam locomotive. Everybody realized that if a motor could be
built powerful enough and speedy enough to drag a heavy freight
or passenger train over the ordinary railroad right of way, the
cost of railroad operation would be enormously decreased.
"Coal costs money--heaps of money now. Oil costs even more. But
even with a third-rail patent, a locomotive successfully built to
do the work of the great Moguls and mountain climbers of the last
two decades, and electrically driven, will make a great
difference on the credit side of any rails road's books."
"Right-o!" exclaimed Ned. "I can see that."
"That was the object of the first experiments in electric
motive power," repeated Tom. "And it continues to be the big
problem in electricity. The Jandel locomotive is undoubtedly the
last word so far as the construction of an electric locomotive is
concerned. But it falls down in speed and power. I thought so
myself when I saw that locomotive and looked over the results of
its work. And this Mr. Bartholomew has assured father and me this
evening that it is a fact.
"It has a record of a mile a minute on a level or easy grade;
but it can't show goods when climbing a real hill. It slows up
both freight and passenger traffic on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
road. That range of hills is too much for it.
"So the Swift Construction Company is going to step in,"
concluded the young inventor eagerly. "I believe we can do it.
I've the nucleus of an idea in my head. I never had a problem put
up to me, Ned and Mr. Damon, that interested me more. So why
shouldn't I go at it? Besides, I have dad to advise me."
"That's right," agreed Ned. "Why shouldn't you? And with such a
contract as you have been offered--"
"Bless my bootsoles!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, getting up and
tramping about the room in his excitement. "I thought the trolley
cars that run between Shopton and Waterfield were about the
fastest things on rails."
"Not much. The trolley car is a narrow and prescribed manner of
using electricity for motive power. The motor runs but one car--
or one and a trailer, at most," said Tom. "As I have pointed out,
the problem is to build a machine that will transmit power enough
to draw the enormous weight of a loaded freight train, and that
over steep grades.
"A motor for each car is a costly matter. That is why trolley
car companies, no matter how many passengers their cars carry,
are so often on the verge of financial disaster. The margin of
profit is too narrow.
"But if you can get a locomotive built that will drag a hundred
cars! Ah! how does that sound?" demanded Tom. "See the
difference?"
"Bless my volts and amperes!" exclaimed Mr. Damon. "I should
say I do! Why, Tom, you make the problem as plain as plain can
be."
"In theory," supplemented Ned Newton, although he meant to
suggest no doubt of his chum's ability to solve almost any
problem.
"You've hit it," said Tom promptly. "I only have a theory so
far regarding such a locomotive. But to the inventor the theory
always must come first. You understand that, Ned?"
"I not only appreciate that fact," said his chum warmly; "but I
believe that you are the fellow to show something definite along
the line of an improved electric locomotive. But, whether you can
reach the high mark set by the president of that railroad--"
"Two miles a minute!" breathed Mr. Damon in agreement. "Bless
my wind-gauge! It doesn't seem possible!"
Tom Swift shrugged his shoulders. "It is the impossible that
inventors have to overcome. If we experimenters believed in the
impossible little would be done in this world, to advance
mechanical science at least. Every invention was impossible until
the chap who put it through built his first working model."
"That's understood, old boy," said Ned, already busily
scratching off the form of the contract he proposed to show the
company's legal advisers early in the morning.
When he had read over the notes he had made Tom O.K.'d them.
"That is about as I had the items set down myself on the sheet
that fellow stole from me."
"Wait!" exclaimed Ned, as Tom arose from his chair. "Do you
know what strikes me after your telling me about your second
hold-up?"
"What's that?" asked his chum.
"Are you sure that was the same fellow who stole your wallet?"
"Quite sure."
"Then his second attack on you proves that he got wise to the
fact that your notes were in shorthand. He had a chance to study
them while you visited with Mary Nestor."
"Like enough."
"I wonder if it doesn't prove that the fellow has somebody in
cahoots with him right here in Shopton?" ruminated Ned.
"Bless my spare tire!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, who had already
started for the door but now turned back.
"That's an idea, Ned," agreed Tom Swift. "It would seem that he
had consulted with some superior," said the young manager of the
Swift Construction Company. "This hold-up man may be from the
West; but perhaps he did not follow Bartholomew alone."
"I'd like to know who the other fellow is," said Tom
thoughtfully. "I would know the man who attacked me, both by his
bulk and his voice.
"Me, too," put in Mr. Damon. "Bless my indicator! I'd know the
scoundrel if I met him again."
"The thing to do," said Ned Newton confidently, "is to identify
the man who robbed you tonight as soon as possible and then, if
he hangs around Shopton, to mark well anybody he associates
with."
"Perhaps they will not bother me any more," said Tom, rather
carelessly.
"And perhaps they will," grumbled Mr. Damon. "Bless my self-
starter! they may try something mean again this very night. Come
on, Tom. I want to run you home. And on the way, I tell you, I've
got something to put up to you myself. It may not promise a small
fortune like this electric locomotive business; but bless my
barbed wire fence! my trouble has more than a little to do with
footpads, too."
He led the way out of the house and to the motor car again. In
a minute he had started his engine, and Tom, jumping in beside
him, was borne away toward his own home.
Chapter V
Barbed Wire Entanglements
"This gets us to your particular trouble, Mr. Damon," Tom Swift
said, while the motor car was rolling along. "You intimated that
you had something to consult me about."
"Bless my windshield! I should say I had," exclaimed the
eccentric gentleman, swinging around a corner at rather a fast
clip.
"And has it to do with highwaymen?" asked Tom, much amused.
"Some of the same gentry, Tom," declared Mr. Damon. "I haven't
any peace of my life, I really haven't!"
"Who is troubling you, sir?"
"Why, what nonsense that is, to ask that!" ejaculated the
gentleman. "If I knew who they were I wouldn't ask odds of
anybody. I'd go after them. As it is, I've left my servant with a
gun loaded with rock-salt watching for them now."
"Burglars?" exclaimed Tom, with real interest.
"Chicken-house burglars! That's the kind of burglars they are,"
growled Mr. Damon. "Two or three times they have tried to get my
prize buff Orpingtons. Last night they got me out of bed twice
fooling around the chicken house and yard. Other neighbors have
lost their hens already. I don't mean to lose mine. Want you to
help me, Tom."
"Is that all that is worrying you, Mr. Damon?" laughed the
young fellow.
"Bless my radiator! isn't that enough?"
"I know you set your clock by those buff Orpingtons," agreed
Tom.
"That's right. That ten-months cockerel, Blue Ribbon Junior,
never fails to crow at three-thirty-three to the minute. Bless my
combs and spurs; a wonderful bird!"
"But let's see how I can help you regarding the chicken
thieves," Tom said, as they sighted the lights of the Swift house
beyond the long stockade fence that surrounded the Construction
Company's premises.
"You know I have a barbed wire entanglement around the whole
yard and hen-house. I don't take any more chances than I can
help. Those prize huff Orpingtons are a great temptation to
chicken lovers--both blond and brunette," and in spite of his
anxiety, Mr. Damon could chuckle at his own joke. "Even your old
Eradicate's friend fell for chickens, you know"
"And Rad promptly cured him of the disease," laughed Tom.
"And I'm trying to cure these others. I've charged my shotgun
with rock-saltÄas he did. My servant has orders to shoot anybody
who tampers with my chicken house tonight.
"But bless my shirt!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "I'll never be able
to sleep comfortably until I know that no thief can get at my
buff Orpingtons. I want you to fix it so I can sleep in peace,
Tom."
He slowed to a stop in front of the Swift's door. Tom stared at
his eccentric friend questioningly.
"Bless my gaiters!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, "don't you see what I
want? And your head already full of this electrified locomotive
you are going to build?"
"Hush!" murmured Tom, with his hand upon his companion's arm.
"But what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to fix it so that I can turn a current of
electricity into that barbed wire chicken fence at night that
will shock any thief that touches the wires. Not kill 'em--though
they ought to be killed!" declared the eccentric man. "But shock
'em aplenty. Can't you do it for me, Tom Swift?"
"Of course it can be done," said the young fellow. "You use
electricity in your house. There is a feed cable in the street.
We will have to change your lighting switch for another. Fix it
with the Electric Supply Company. It will cost you more--"
"Bless my pocketbook! I don't care how much it costs. It will
be ample satisfaction to see just one low-down chicken thief
squirming on those wires.
Tom laughed again. He meant to help his friend; but he did not
propose to rig the wires so that anybody, even a chicken thief,
would be seriously injured by the electric current passing
through the strands.
"I'll come down to Waterfield tomorrow in the electric runabout
and fix things up for you. Get a permit from the Electric Supply
Company early in the morning. Tell them I will rig the thing
myself. They can send their inspector afterward."
"That's fine, Tom! What--Ugh! what's this? Another footpad?"
Out of the darkness beside the fence a bulky figure started.
For a moment Tom thought it was the same man who had attacked him
twice. Then the very size of this new assailant proved that
suspicion to be unfounded.
"Koku!" exclaimed Tom. "What's the matter with you, Koku?"
The huge and only half-tamed giant gained the side of the car
in seemingly a single stride. In the dark they could not see his
face, but his voice distinctly showed excitement.
"Master come good. 'Cause there be enemy. Koku find--Koku
kill!"
"Bless my magnifying glass!" ejaculated Mr. Damon. "That fellow
is the most bloodthirsty individual that I ever saw."
"All in his bringing up," chuckled Tom who knew, as the saying
is, that Koku's bark was a deal worse than his bite. "Killing and
maiming his enemies used to be Koku's principal job. But he has
his orders now. He doesn't kill anybody without consulting me
first."
"Bless my buttons!" murmured Mr. Damon. "That is certainly a
good thing too. What's the matter with him now?"
That is exactly what Tom himself wanted to know. He had dropped
a hand upon the arm of the giant as he stood beside the car.
"Who is the enemy, Koku?" he asked.
"Not know, Master. See him footmarks. Follow him footmarks. Not
find. When do find--kill!"
"That is, after first obtaining my permission," said Tom dryly.
"It is so," agreed the imperturbable Koku. "See! Show Master
footmarks. Him look in at window. See! Koku have got the wonder
lamp."
He flashed the electric torch in his hand. He left the car and
strode into the yard. Tom followed him, and Mr. Damon's curiosity
brought him along.
The giant pointed the ray of the flashlight at the ground below
the porch. Several footprints --the marks of boots at least
number twelve in size--were imbedded in the soil. Koku went
around the house to the other side, following repeated marks of
the same boots.
"How came you to find them, Koku?" asked Tom softly.
"Me look. All around stockade," and he waved a generous gesture
with his free hand including the fence about the works. "Enemy
may come. Anytime he come. Now he come."
"Bless my slippery shoes!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, who had hard
work to keep up both physically and mentally with the giant.
"What does he mean
"Koku has always had it in his head," explained Tom, "that we
built that fence about the works to keep out enemies. And, to
tell the truth, we did! But all that is over--"
"Is it?" asked Mr. Damon pointedly. "Enemy here," added Koku,
flashing the lamplight upon the footprints on the ground.
"Those bootmarks," added Mr. Damon, "are doubtless those of
that fellow who jumped upon the running board of the car."
"Humph! And who robbed me of my wallet," added Tom musingly.
"Well, it might be. And, if so, Koku is right. The enemy has
come."
"Me kill!" exclaimed the giant, stretching himself to his full
height.
"We'll consider the killing later," said Tom, who well knew his
influence with this big fellow. "You are forbidden to kill
anybody, or chase anybody away from here, until I have a talk
with them. Enemy or not--understand?"
"Me understand," said Koku in his deep voice. "Master say--me
do."
"Just the same," Tom said, aside to Mr. Damon, "there has been
somebody around here. I guess Mr. Bartholomew was right. He is
being spied upon. And now that we Swifts are going to try to do
something for him, we are likely to be spied upon too."
"Bless my statue of Nathan Hale!" murmured the eccentric
gentleman. "I believe you. And you've been already attacked twice
by some thug! You are positively in danger, Tom."
"I don't know about that. Save that the fellow who robbed me
was sore because I fooled him. Naturally he might like to get
square about those shorthand notes. He knows no more now about
Mr. Bartholomew's business with us than he did before he held me
up."
"That is a fact," agreed Mr. Damon.
"And that brings me to another warning, Mr. Damon," added Tom
earnestly, as his friend climbed into the motor car again. "Keep
all that has happened, and all that I told you and Ned about the
H. & P. A. railroad, to yourself."
"Surely! Surely!"
"If Mr. Bartholomew's rivals continue to keep their spies
hanging around the works here, we'll handle them properly. Trust
Koku for that," and Tom chuckled.
"And don't forget my barbed wire entanglements," put in Mr.
Damon, starting his engine. "I want to fix those chicken
thieves.''
"All right. I'll be over tomorrow," promised Tom Swift.
Then he stood a minute on the curb and looked after the
disappearing lights of Mr. Damon's car. The latter's problem
dovetailed, after all, into this discovery of possible marauders
lurking about the Swift premises. Koku had made no mistake in
bringing his attention to the matter of the footprints. Tom had
seen somebody dodging into the darkness outside the house when he
had come out on his way to visit Mary Nestor.
"And sure as taxes," muttered Tom, as he finally turned toward
the front door again, "the fellow who twice attacked me this
evening wore the boots the prints of which Koku found.
"Those fellows, whoever they are, whether Montagne Lewis and
his associates, or not, have bitten off several mouthfuls that
they may be unable to chew. Anyhow, before they get through they
may learn something about the Swifts that they never knew
before."
Chapter VI
The Contract Signed
Tom Swift went to bed that night without the least fear that
the man who had twice attacked him in the streets of Shopton
would be able to trouble him unless he went abroad again. Koku
was on guard.
The giant whom Tom had brought home from one of his distant
wanderings was wholly devoted to his master. Koku never had, and
he never would, become entirely civilized.
He was naturally a born tracker of men. For generations his
people had lived amid the alarms of threat and attack. He could
not be made to understand how so many "tribes," as he called
them, of civilized men could live in anything like harmony.
That somebody should prowl about the Swift house at night with
a desire to rob his young master or injure him, did not surprise
Koku in the least. He accepted the fact of the marauder's
presence as quite the expected thing.
But the man who had robbed Tom and later tried to repay him for
playing what appeared to be a practical joke on the robber, did
not trouble the Swift premises with his presence before morning.
Koku, thrusting Eradicate Sampson aside and striding to his
bedroom to report this fact, was what awoke Tom at eight o'clock.
"Hey! What you want, tromping in here for, man?" demanded old
Rad angrily. "An' totin' that spear, too. Where you t'ink yo' is?
In de jungle again? Go 'way, chile!"
Both Rad and Koku were rapidly outliving the sudden friendship
of Rad's sick days, when it was thought he might be blind for
life, and were dropping back into their old ways of bickering and
rivalry for Tom's attention.
"I report to the Master," declared the giant, in his deep
voice.
"You tell me, I tell him," Rad said pompously. "No need yo'
'sturbing Massa Tom at dis hour."
"Koku go in!" declared the giant sternly.
"Jes' stay out dere on de stair an' res' yo'self," said Rad.
Koku lost his temper with old Rad. There was a feud between
them, although deep in their hearts they really were fond of each
other. But the two were jealous of each other's services to young
Tom Swift.
Suddenly Tom heard the old negro utter a frightened squeal. The
door which had been only ajar, burst inward and banged against
the door-stop with a mighty smash.
Rad went through the big bedroom like a chocolate-colored
streak, entered Tom's bathroom, and the next moment there was the
sound of crashing glass as Eradicate Sampson went through the
lower sash of the window, headfirst, out upon the roof of the
porch!
"What do you mean by this?" shouted Tom, sitting up in bed.
Koku paused in the doorway, bulking almost to the top of the
door. His right arm was drawn back, displaying his mighty biceps,
and he poised a ten foot spear with a copper head that he had
seized from a nest of such implements which was a decoration of
the lower hall.
Had the giant ever flung that spear at poor Rad's back, half
the length of the staff might have passed through his body.
Little wonder that the colored man, having roused the giant's
rage to such a pitch, had given small consideration to the order
of his going, but had gone at once!
"You want to scare Rad out of half a year's growth?" Tom
pursued sternly, slipping out of bed and reaching for his robe
and slippers. "And he's broken that window to smithereens."
"Koku come make report, Master," said the giant.
"You go put that spear back where you found it and come up
properly," commanded the young fellow, with difficulty hiding his
amusement. "Go on now!"
He shuffled into the bathroom while the giant disappeared. He
peered out of the broken window. It was a wonder Rad had not
carried the sash with him! The broken glass was scattered all
about the roof of the porch and the old colored man lay groaning
there.
"What did you do this for, Eradicate?" demanded Tom. "You act
worse than a ten-year-old boy."
"I's done killed, Massa Tom!" groaned Rad with confidence. "I's
blood from haid to foot!"
There was a scratch on his bald crown from which a few drops of
blood flowed. But with all his terror, Eradicate had put both
arms over his head when he made his dive through the window, and
he really was very little injured.
"Come in here," repeated Tom. "Fix something over this broken
window so that I can take my bath. And then go and put something
on that scratch. Don't you know better yet, than to cross Koku
when he is excited?"
"Dat crazy ol' cannibal!" spat out Rad viciously. "I'll fix him
yet. I'll pizen his rations, dat's what I'll do."
"You wouldn't be so bad as that, Rad!"
"Well, mebbe not," said the colored man, crawling in through
the bathroom window. "It would take too much pizen, anyway, to
kill that giant. Take as much as dey has to give an el'phant to
kill it. Anyways, I's bound to fix him proper some time, yet."
These quarrels between Eradicate and Koku were intermittent.
They almost always arose, too, because of the desire of the two
servants to wait upon Tom or his father. They were very jealous
of each other, and their clashes afforded Tom and his friends a
good deal of amusement.
While the young inventor was in his bath the giant strode back
into the bedroom, out of which Rad had scurried by another door,
and proceeded to report the result of his night watch about the
premises.
He had not much to tell. In fact, after Tom had gone into the
house Koku had seen nobody lurking about at all. The fact
remained that, earlier in the evening, somebody had made a close
surveillance of the Swift house, but the mysterious marauder had
not come back.
"All right, Koku. Keep your eyes open. I expect that enemy may
return sometime. Too bad," he added to himself, "that I didn't
get a better look at him."
"Koku know him next time," declared the giant.
"Why! you didn't even see him this time," cried Tom.
"See him boots. See marks him boots make. Know him boots.
Waugh!"
"'Waugh!' yourself," returned Tom, shaking his head. "You are
altogether too sure, Koku. You couldn't tell a man from his
bootprints in the mud."
"Koku know," said the giant, just as confidently. "Wait. Him
catch--see--show Master."
"Don't you go to grabbing every stranger who comes around the
house or the works for a spy, and make me trouble. Remember now."
Koku nodded gravely and went away. When he met Rad suddenly in
the hall with Mr. Swift's breakfast tray, the giant said "boo!"
and almost cost the old colored man the loss of the tray.
"Dat big el'phant ought to be livin' in a barn," declared Rad.
"Look at dat spear he come near runnin' me t'rough wid! If he
had, yo' could ha' driv a tipcart full o' rubbish in after it.
Lawsy me!"
But an hour later when Tom and his father started for the
offices of the Swift Construction Company down the street, Rad
and Koku were sitting before an enormous breakfast in the back
kitchen and chatting together as companionably as ever.
The old inventor and his son arrived at the offices of the
Swift Construction Company not long ahead of Mr. Richard
Bartholomew. Tom had merely found time to read over the contract
that had been jointly prepared by Ned Newton and the firm's legal
advisers, before the railroad man came.
"No getting out of the provisions of that paper, Tom," Ned had
whispered, when he saw Mr. Bartholomew coming into the outer
office. "Is this your man
"Yes."
"A sharp looking little fellow," commented Ned. "But even if he
were bent on tricking us, this contract would hold him. He is
solvent and so is his road--as yet. If it has a bad name in the
market that is more because of slander by the Montagne Lewis
crowd than from any real cause. I've found that out this
morning."
"Faithful Nero!" chuckled Tom. "Aren't going to let the Swifts
get done, are you?"
"Not if I can help it," declared Ned Newton emphatically.
A clerk brought Mr. Bartholomew into the private office and he
was introduced to Newton. If he considered the financial manager
of the Swift Construction Company very young for his responsible
position, after he had read the contract he felt considerable
respect for Ned Newton.
"You've got me here, young man, hard and fast," Mr. Bartholomew
said. "If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance
of it. But I don't. You have set forth here exactly my meaning
and intent. I want your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift,
and if you give them to me I'll foot the bill as agreed."
"You've got me interested, I confess," said Tom. "By the way,
were your friends following you when you came here this morning?"
"My friends?" repeated Mr. Bartholomew, for a moment puzzled.
"The spy that you mentioned," said Tom, smiling.
"That Andy O'Malley?" exclaimed Bartholomew. "Haven't spotted
him today."
"He spotted me last night," said Tom grimly, and proceeded to
relate what had happened.
"You fooled 'em that time, young man!" exclaimed the railroad
president, with satisfaction. "I am convinced that Montagne Lewis
is behind it. Look out for these fellows when you get to work,
Mr. Swift. They will stop at nothing. I tell you that the fight
is on between the Hendrickton & Pas Alos and the Hendrickton &
Western. I have either got to break them or they will break me."
"You seem very sure that there is a conspiracy against you, Mr.
Bartholomew," said the senior Swift reflectively.
"I am sure," was the reply. "And I am likewise sure that this
scheme of electrification of my road through the Pas Alos Range is
the only salvation for my railroad."
"I should call it a big contract," Ned Newton said,
thoughtfully.
"You have said it! But it is not a visionary scheme I have in
mind. You must know--you Swifts--how successful such an
electrification through the Rockies has been made by the Chicago,
Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway."
"I've looked that up," confessed Tom, with enthusiasm. "That
was a great piece of work."
"It is. It is. But I hope for even a greater outcome of your
experiments, Mr. Swift. Of course, I do not expect to compete
with that great road. They had millions to spend, and they spent
them. Those Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotives the Chicago,
Milwaukee & St. Paul built in nineteen hundred and nineteen are
wonderful machines. They have got forty-two freight locomotives,
fifteen passenger locomotives and four switchers of that new
type.
"The Jandel patent that my road uses is, in some degree, the
equal of those Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotives. At least, our
machines equal the C., M. & St. P. on our level road. They can
reach a mile-a-minute gait. But when it comes to speed and pull
on steep grades--Ah! that is where they fail."
"You will have to get power in the hills for your stations,"
suggested Tom, thoughtfully.
"I know that. I know where the power is coming from. I gathered
those waterfalls in years ago. Lewis and his crowd can't shut me
off from them. But I have got to have a speedier and more
powerful type of electric locomotive than has ever yet been built
to protect the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad from any rivalry.
"I am looking to you Swifts to give me that. I am risking this
twenty-five thousand dollars upon your succeeding. And I am
offering you the hundred thousand dollars bonus for the right to
purchase the first successful locomotives that can be built
covered by your patents. Is it plain?"
"It is eminently satisfactory," said Mr. Swift, quietly.
"I will do my very best," agreed Tom, warmly. "There isn't a
thing the matter with the agreement," declared Ned Newton, with
confidence. "Gentlemen, sign on the dotted line."
Five minutes later the twin contracts were in force. One went
into the safe of the Swift Construction Company. The other, Mr.
Richard Bartholomew bore away with him.
Chapter VII
The Man with Big Feet
The consultation in the private office of the Swift
Construction Company after the departure of Mr. Richard
Bartholomew between the two Swifts and Ned Newton had more to do
with a vision of the future than with mere present finances.
"I expect you know just about how you are going to work on this
new invention, Tom?" suggested the financial manager, and Tom's
chum.
"Haven't the first idea," rejoined the young inventor,
promptly.
"What do you mean?" ejaculated Ned. "You talked just now as
though you knew all about electric locomotives."
"I know a good deal about those that have been built, both
under the Jandel patent and those built for the Chicago,
Milwaukee & St. Paul in the great Philadelphia shops.
"But when you ask me if I know how I am going to improve on
those patents so as to make my locomotive twice as speedy and
quite as powerful as those other locomotives--well, I've got to
tell you flat that I have not as yet got the first idea."
"Humph!" grumbled Ned. "You say it coolly enough."
"No use getting all heated up about it," returned his friend.
"I have got to consider the situation first. I must look over the
field of electrical invention as applied to motive power. I must
study things out."
"I don't just see myself," Ned Newton remarked thoughtfully,
"why there should be such a great need for the electrification of
locomotives, anyway. Those great mountain-hogs that draw most of
the mountain railroad trains are very powerful, aren't they? And
they are speedy."
"Locomotives that use coal or oil have been developed about as
far as they can be," said Mr. Swift, quietly. "A successful
electric locomotive has many advantages over the old-time
engine."
"What are those advantages?" asked the business manager,
quickly. "I confess, I do not understand the matter, Mr. Swift."
"For instance," proceeded the old gentleman, "there is the coal
question alone. Coal is rising in price. It is bulky. Using
electricity as motive power for railroads will do away with fuel
trains, tenders, coal handling, water, and all that. Of course,
Mr. Bartholomew will generate his electricity from water power--
the cheapest power on earth."
"Humph! I've got my answer right now," said Ned Newton. "If
there is no other good reason, this is sufficient."
"There are plenty of others," drawled Tom, smiling. "Good ones.
For instance, heat or cold has nothing to do with the even
running of an electric locomotive. It can bore right through a
snowbank--a thing a steam engine can't do. It runs at an even
speed. Really, grade should have nothing to do with its speed.
There is a fault somewhere in the construction of the Jandel
machine or the H. & P. A. would have little trouble with those
locomotives on its grades.
"Then, all you have to do to start an electrified locomotive is
to turn a handswitch. No stoking or water-boiling. Does away with
the fireboy. One man runs it!"
"Why!" cried Ned, "I never stopped to think of all these
things."
"No ashes to dump," went on Tom. "No flues to clean, no boilers
to inspect, and none to wear out. And they say that on the
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, at least, their freight
locomotives handle twice the load of a steam locomotive at a
greatly reduced cost."
"Sounds fine. Don't wonder Mr. Bartholomew is eager to
electrify his entire tine."
"On the side of passenger traffic," continued Tom Swift, "the
electric locomotive is smokeless, noiseless, dirtless, and
doesn't jerk the coaches in either stopping or starting. And in
addition, the electric locomotive is much easier on track and
roadbed than the old 'iron horse' driven by steam generated
either from coal or oil."
"It is a great field for your talents, Tom!" cried Ned, warmly.
"It is a big job," admitted Tom, and he said this with modesty.
"I don't know what I may be able to do--if anything. I would not
feel right in taking Mr. Bartholomew's twenty-five thousand
dollars for nothing."
"Quite right, my boy," said Mr. Swift, approvingly.
"Never mind that," said the financial manager, rather grimly.
"It was his own offer and his risk. That twenty-five thousand
comes to our account."
Tom laughed. "All business, Ned, aren't you? But there is more
than business for the Swift Construction Company in this. Our
reputation for fair dealing as well as for inventive powers is
linked up with this contract.
"I want to show the Jandel people--to say nothing of the bigger
firms--that the Swifts are to be reckoned with when it comes to
electric invention. Other roads will be electrifying their lines
as fast as it is proved that the electric-driven locomotive has
the bulge on the steam-driven.
"In the case of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos there are very steep
grades to overcome. Supposedly an electric motor-drive should
achieve the same speed on a hill as on the level. But there is
the weight of the train to be counted on.
"The H. & P. A. has a two per cent. grade in more than one
place. Mr. Bartholomew confessed as much to me last night. The
electric-driven locomotive of the powerful freight type, which
the Jandel people built for Mr. Bartholomew, can make about
sixteen miles an hour on those grades, although they can hit it
up to thirty miles an hour on level track.
"His passenger locomotives turn off a mile a minute and more,
on the level road; but they can not climb those steep grades at a
much livelier pace than the freight engines. That is why he is
talking about two-mile-a-minute locomotives. He must get a mighty
speedy locomotive, for both freight and passenger service, to
keep ahead of Montagne Lewis's rival road, the Hendrickton &
Western."
"You don't suppose it can be done, do you?" demanded Ned. "The
two-mile-a-minute locomotive, I mean, Tom."
"That is the target I am to aim for," returned his friend,
soberly. "At any rate, I hope to improve on the type of
locomotive Mr. Bartholomew is now using, so that the hundred
thousand dollars bonus will come our way as well as this first
twenty-five thousand."
"That wouldn't pay for one engine, would it?" cried Ned.
"Nor is it expected to. The bonus has nothing to do with
payment for any model, or patent, or anything of the kind. To
tell you the truth, Ned, I understand those big locomotives used
by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul cost them about one hundred
and twelve thousand dollars each."
"Whew! Some price, I'll tell the world!" murmured the youthful
financial manager of the Swift Construction Company.
When the conference was over, and Tom had been through the
workshop to overlook several little jobs that were in process of
completion by his trusted mechanics, it was lunch time. He left
word that he would not be back that day, for this new task he was
to attack was not to be approached with any haphazard thought.
Tom knew quite as well as his father knew that the idea of
improving the Jandel patent on electric locomotives was no small
thing. The Jandel people had claimed that their patent was the
very last word in electric motor-power. And Tom was quite willing
to acknowledge that in some ways this claim was true.
But in invention, especially in the field of electric
invention, what is the last word today may be ancient history
tomorrow.
It was because this field is so broad and the possibility of
improvement in every branch of electrical science so exciting,
that Tom had accepted Mr. Bartholomew's challenge with such
eagerness.
Tom went back to the house for lunch, and as he joined his
father in the dining room he remarked to Eradicate:
"I want the electric runabout brought around after lunch. I am
going to Waterfield. Tell Koku, will you, Rad?"
"Tell that crazy fellow?" demanded the old colored man
heatedly. "Why should I tell him, Massa Tom? Ain't I able to
bring dat runabout out o' de garbarge? Shore I is!"
"You can't do everything, Rad," said Tom, soberly. "That is
humanly impossible."
"But dat Koku can't do nothin' right. Dat's inhumanly possible,
Massa Tom."
"Give him a chance, Rad. I have to take Koku with me this
afternoon. You must give your attention to the house and to
father."
"Huh! Umm!" grunted Eradicate.
Rad was jealous of anybody who waited on Tom besides himself.
Yet he was proud of responsibility, too. He teetered between the
pride of being in charge at home and accompanying his young
master, and finally replied:
"Well, in course, you ain't going to be gone long, Massa Tom.
And yo' father does like to get his nap undisturbed. And he'll
want his pot o' tea afterwards. So I'll let dat irresponsible
Koku go wid yo'. But yo' got to watch him, Massa Tom. Dat giant
don't know what he's about half de time."
As Koku was not within hearing to challenge that statement,
things went all right. When Tom came out of the house after
eating, he found his very fast car waiting for him, with the
giant standing beside it at the curb.
"Get in at the back, Koku," said Tom. "I am going to take you
with me."
"Master is much wise," said Koku. "That man with big feet will
not hurt Master while Koku is with him."
To tell the truth Tom had quite forgotten the supposed spy that
had attacked him the night before. He needed Koku for a purpose
other than that of bodyguard. But he made no comment upon the
giant's remark.
They stopped at one of the gates of the works, and Tom
instructed Koku to bring out and put into the car certain boxes
and tools that he wished to take with him. Then he drove on,
taking the road to Waterfield.
This way led through farmlands and patches of woods, a rough
country in part. A mile out of the limits of Shopton the road
edged a deep valley, the sidehill sparsely wooded.
Almost at once, and where there was not a dwelling in sight,
they saw a figure tramping in the road ahead, a big man, roughly
dressed, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. Somehow, his appearance
made Tom reduce speed and he hesitated to pass the pedestrian.
The man did not hear the runabout at first; or, at least, he
did not look over his shoulder. He strode on heavily, but
rapidly. Suddenly the young inventor heard the giant behind him
emit a hissing breath.
"Master!" whispered the giant.
"What's up now?" demanded Tom, but without glancing around.
"The big feet!" exclaimed Koku.
The giant's own feet were shod with difficulty in civilized
footgear, but compared with his other physical dimensions his
feet did not seem large. The man ahead wore coarse boots which
actually looked too big for him! Koku started up in the back of
the car as the latter drew nearer to the stranger.
The man looked back at last and Tom gained a clear view of his
features--roughly carved, dark as an Indian's, and holding a grim
expression in repose that of itself was far from breeding
confidence. In a moment, too, the expression changed into one of
active emotion. The man glared at the young inventor with
unmistakable malevolence.
"Master!" hissed Koku again. "The big feet!" The fellow must
have seen Koku's face and understood the giant's expression. In a
flash he turned and leaped out of the roadway. The sidehill was
steep and broken here, but he went down the slope in great
strides and with every appearance of wishing to evade the two in
the motor-car.
The giant's savage war cry followed the fugitive. Koku leaped
from the moving car. Tom yelled:
"Stop it, Koku! You don't know that that is the man."
"The big feet!" repeated the giant. "Master see the red mud
dried on Big Feet's boots? That mud from Master's garden."
Again Koku uttered his savage cry, and in strides twice the
length of those of the running man, started on the latter's
trail.
Chapter VIII
An Enemy in the Dark
The situation offered suggestions of trouble that stung Tom to
immediate action. The impetuousness of his giant often resulted
in difficulties which the young inventor would have been glad to
escape.
Now Koku was following just the wrong path. Tom Swift knew it.
"Koku, you madman!" he shouted after the huge native. "Come
back here! Hear me? Back!"
Koku hesitated. He shot a wondering look over his shoulder, but
his long legs continued to carry him down the slope after the
dark-faced stranger.
"Come back, I say!" shouted Tom again. "Have I got to come
after you? Koku! If you don't mind what you're told I'll send you
back to your own country and you'll have to eat snakes and
lizards, as you used to. Come here!"
Whether it was because of this threat of a change of diet,
which Koku now abhorred, or the fact that he had really become
somewhat disciplined and that he fairly worshiped Tom, the giant
stopped. The man with the big shoes disappeared behind a hedge of
low trees.
"Get back up here!" ejaculated Tom sternly. "I'll never take
you away from the house with me again if you don't obey me."
"Master!" ejaculated the giant, slowly approaching. "That Big
Feet--"
"I don't care if he made those footprints in the yard last
night or not. I don't want him touched. I didn't even want him to
know that we guessed he had been sneaking about the house.
Understand?"
"Of a courseness," grumbled Koku. "Koku understand everything
Master say."
"Well, you don't act as though you did. Next time when I want
any help I may have to bring Rad with me."
"Oh, no, Master! Not that old man. He don't know how to help
Master. Koku do just what Master say."
"Like fun you do," said Tom, still apparently very angry with
the simple-minded giant. "Get back into the car and sit still, if
you can, until we get to Mr. Damon's house." Then to himself he
added: "I don't blame that fellow, whoever he is, for lighting
out. I bet he's running yet!"
He knew that Koku would say nothing regarding the incident. The
giant had wonderful powers of silence! He sometimes went days
without speaking even to Rad. And that was one of the sources of
irritation between the voluble colored man and the giant.
"'Tain't human," Rad often said, "for nobody to say nothin' as
much as dat Koku does. Why, lawsy me! if he was tongue-tied an'
speechless, an' a deaf an' dumb mute, he couldn't say nothin'
more obstreperously dan he does--no sir! 'Tain't human."
So Tom had not to warn the giant not to chatter about meeting
the stranger on the road to Waterfield. If that person with dried
red mud on his boots was the spy who had followed Mr. Richard
Bartholomew East and was engaged by Montagne Lewis to interfere
with any attempt the president of the H. & P. A. might make to
pull his railroad out of the financial quagmire into which it was
rapidly sinking, Tom would have preferred to have the spy not
suspect that he had been identified after his fiasco of the
previous evening.
For if this Western looking fellow was Andy O'Malley, whose
name had been mentioned by the railroad man, he was the person
who had robbed Tom of his wallet and had afterward attempted
reprisal upon the young inventor because the robbery had resulted
in no gain to the robber.
Of course, the fellow had been unable to read Tom's shorthand
notes of the agreement that he had discussed with Mr.
Bartholomew. Just what the nature of that agreement was, would be
a matter of interest to the spy's employer.
Having failed in this attempt to learn something which was not
his business, the spy might make other and more serious attempts
to learn the particulars of the agreement between the railroad
president and the Swifts. Tom was sorry that the fellow had now
been forewarned that his identity as the spy and footpad was
known to Tom and his friends.
Koku had made a bad mess of it. But Tom determined to say
nothing to his father regarding the discovery he had made. He did
not want to worry Mr. Swift. He meant, however, to redouble
precautions at the Swift Construction Company against any
stranger getting past the stockade gates.
Arrived at Mr. Damon's home in Waterfield, Tom got quickly to
work on the little job he had come to do for his old friend. Of
course, Tom might have sent two of his mechanics from the works
down here to electrify the barbed wire entanglements that Mr.
Damon had erected around his chicken run. But the young inventor
knew that his eccentric friend would not consider the job done
right unless Tom attended to it personally.
"Bless my cracked corn and ground bone mixture!" ejaculated the
chicken fancier. "We'll show these night-prowlers what's what, I
guess. One of my neighbors was robbed last night. And I would
have been if I hadn't set a watch while I drove over to see you,
Tom. Bless my spurs and hackles! but these thieves are getting
bold."
"We'll fix 'em," said Tom, cheerfully, while Koku brought the
tools and wire to the hen run. "After we link up your supply of
the current with this wire fence it will be an unhappy chicken
burglar who interferes with it."
"That was an unhappy fellow who got your charge of ammonia last
evening," whispered Mr. Damon. "Heard anything more of him?"
"I think I have seen him. But Koku spoiled everything by trying
to eat him up," and Tom laughingly related what had occurred on
the way from Shopton.
"Bless my boots!" said Mr. Damon. "You'd better see the police,
Tom."
"What for?"
"Why, they ought to know about such a fellow lurking about
Shopton. If he followed that Western railroad president here--"
"We'll hope that he will follow Mr. Bartholomew away again,"
chuckled Tom. "Mr. Bartholomew won't stay over today. When that
chap finds he has gone he probably will consider that there is no
use in his bothering me any further."
Whether Tom believed this statement or not, he was destined to
realize his mistake within a very short time. At least, the fact
that he was being spied upon and that the enemy meant him
anything but good, seemed proved beyond a doubt that very week.
Having done the little job for Mr. Damon, Tom allowed no other
outside matter to take up his attention. He shut himself into his
private experimental workshop and laboratory at the works each
day. He did not even come out for lunch, letting Rad bring him
down some sandwiches and a thermos bottle of cool milk.
"The young boss is milling over something new," the men said,
and grinned at each other. They were proud of Tom and faithful to
his interests.
Time was when there had been traitors in the works; but
unfaithful hands had been weeded out. There was not a man who
drew a pay envelope from the Swift Construction Company who would
not have done his best to save Tom and his father trouble. Such a
thing as a strike, or labor troubles of any kind, was not thought
of there.
So Tom knew that whatever he did, or whatever plans he drew, in
his private room, he was safely guarded. Yet he always took a
portfolio home with him at night, for after dinner he frequently
continued his work of the day. Naturally during this first week
he did not get far in any problem connected with the proposed
electric locomotive. There were, however, rough drafts and
certain schedules that had to do with the matter jotted down.
It was almost twelve at night. Tom had sat up in his own room
after his father had retired, and after the household was still.
Eradicate was in bed and snoring under the roof, Tom knew. Just
where Koku was, it would have been hard to tell. Although a fine
and penetrating rain was falling, the giant might be roaming
about the waste land surrounding the stockade of the works. The
elements had no terrors for him.
Tom locked his portfolio and stepped into his bathroom to wash
his hands before retiring. Before he snapped on the electric
light over the basin he chanced to glance through the newly set
windowpane which had replaced the one Rad had shattered in
escaping threatened impalement on Koku's spear.
Although the clouds were thick and the rain was falling, there
was a certain humid radiance upon the roof of the porch under the
bathroom window. At least, the wet roof glistened so that any
moving figure on or beyond it was visible,
"What's that?" muttered Tom, and he sank down lower than the
sill and crept slowly to the window. He merely raised himself
until his eyes were on a level with the sill.
Coming up over the edge of the porch roof was a bulky figure.
It was so dimly outlined at first that Tom could scarcely be sure
that it was that of a man.
However, it was not possible that any creature but a man would
be able to mount the lattice supporting the honeysuckle vines and
so creep out upon the porch roof. Once making secure his footing,
the enemy in the dark approached directly the bathroom window at
which Tom crouched.
Chapter IX
Where was Koku?
Tom reached up swiftly and pushed over the lever that locked
the two window sashes. In doing this he set his own patent
burglar alarm. If that lever was turned back again, or broken,
the buzzers would be set ringing all over the house, and in
Koku's room over the garage.
He did not believe that the marauder on the roof of the porch
could have seen the flash of his shirt-sleeved arm. But he took
no chance of being observed from outside by rising to his feet.
On his hands and knees he crept away from the window, and out
of the bathroom. Once there, he stood up, grabbed the portfolio,
and without coat or vest and as he was, dashed out of the
bedroom. He had been positive that nobody but himself was astir
in the big house, and he was right.
He did not punch the light button when he entered the library.
He knew where to put his hand upon an electric torch in the table
drawer, and he gained possession of this.
Then he went to the safe and twirled the knob and watched the
indicator find the four numbers which were the "open sesame" to
the burglar and fire-proof door.
He flung the portfolio into the inner compartment, closed both
doors, and twirled the combination-knob. Then Tom tiptoed to the
foot of the front stairs to listen. He could hear no sound from
above.
He did not want his father to be startled, if the enemy did
break in; and he knew that old Rad, awakened out of a sound
sleep, would be worse than useless at such a time.
After all, the giant, Koku, was his main dependence under these
circumstances. Tom crept to the outer door, opened it carefully,
and slipped out, letting the spring lock click behind him. For
the first time he realized that he was in his shirt and trousers
and wore only felt slippers on his feet.
But he was locked out now. He had no key. He must run the risk
of the fine rain and the chill of the night air.
He stepped. off the end of the porch and ran around the house.
It was to the roof of the rear porch that the marauder had
climbed. But peer as he might from down in the yard, Tom could
see no moving figure up there near the bathroom window. It was
pitch dark against the wall of the house.
He turned to glance up at the window of the sleeping room over
the garage where Koku was supposed to spend the night. But Tom
knew the giant was seldom there during the dark hours. He was as
much of a night-prowler as a wildcat or an owl.
There was no light there in any case. But Koku did not use a
light much. He could see in the dark, like a wild animal. Tom did
not want to call him. If he must have Koku's help, he would have
to climb the stairs to his bedside. The giant always aroused as
wide awake as at noonday.
But while the young inventor hesitated a sudden, but muffled,
snap--the breaking of metal--sounded. Tom knew instantly the
direction from which the sound came.
Although he could see nothing up there at the bathroom window
because of the rain and the deep shadow, he knew that the
snapping sound meant the severing of the window lock that he had
so recently closed. Some instrument had been forced under the
bottom of the lower sash and pressure enough been brought to bear
to break the thin steel lever.
On the heels of this sound came another. A muffled buzzing
somewhere in the house--again! again! And then, startlingly clear
from the room over the garage, the burglar alarm went off in
Koku's chamber.
"It's all off now!" gasped Tom, and he ran to the foot of the
honeysuckle ladder up which he knew the enemy had climbed to get
to the roof of the porch. "If he comes down I'll have him!"
muttered Tom, staring up into the mist and gloom.
"Fo' de lawsy's sake! 'Tain't mawnin', is it?" Rad's sleepy
voice was heard to announce. "No, it's da'k as--" And the voice
trailed off into silence.
"Tom! Tom!" the young fellow heard his aroused father shouting.
Tom knew that his father was in no danger. In fact Mr. Swift's
voice did not even betray apprehension. It was. to the garage Tom
looked for an explosion. But none came.
If Koku was up there the prolonged buzzing of the alarm did not
awake him. Therefore he could not be there. Tom realized that if
the burglar was to be taken the whole affair fell upon his
shoulders.
"And I've got my hands full, if it is the fellow with the big
feet that we saw on the Waterfield Road the other day," muttered
the young inventor.
Nothing stirred on the porch roof. Moment after moment slipped
by. Tom began to grow more than amazed. He was worried. What
would happen next?
His father had not cried out again. Stepping around to the end
of the roofed porch, Tom saw a light in Mr. Swift's room. Rad had
evidently gone to sleep again. It would take more than an
intermittent buzzer to rouse fully that colored man.
"When old Morpheus has a strangle hold on Rad, Gabriel's trump
would scarcely awaken him," Tom muttered.
What had become of the enemy? If it was an ordinary burglar he
would have feared the electric alarm instantly. The buzzers were
still working. But there was no sign of the man who had set them
off at the bathroom window.
Suddenly Tom heard a door slam. It was from the front of the
house. Had his father come downstairs to look around and see what
the matter was?
The young fellow started around the house on a run. He heard
heavy bootsoles spurning the gravel of the path to the front
gate. He arrived at the far corner of the house in time to see a
man dash through the gateway and run down the street,
disappearing finally into the fast-driving rain.
"Fooled me! He went in and right through and down the stairs!
Out the front door!" gasped Tom. "Did he get anything? I wonder!"
He sprang up to the front porch and tried the door. It was
locked again, of course. Should he ring the bell and get Rad or
his father down to the door?
And then, of a sudden, the principal mystery of all this affair
bit into Tom Swift's mind. The burglar had made his escape. He
could relieve his father's anxiety later. It was his own
puzzlement of mind that he first wished to ease.
Where was Koku?
Even had the giant been circling the stockade around the shops
he surely must have come up to the home premises by this time.
His keen ears could not fail to hear the buzzers. They were still
going and would go until the switch was turned.
If the giant was in his room--Tom turned suddenly and started
on a run for the rear premises. He still carried the hand-lamp
and it lit his way into the garage door and up the narrow
stairway. He shot the round beam of the lamp into Koku's room.
He had been obliged to have an iron bedstead made to order for
the giant. It stood against one wall of the room. The buzzer was
snarling like a huge bumblebee above the head of the couch.
Below it sprawled the giant, eyes tightly closed and mouth
slightly ajar. From the lips of Koku were emitted sounds worthy
of Rad Sampson in his deepest slumbers!
"Asleep?" gasped Tom, stepping cat-like into the room.
And then he was suddenly aware of a sickish, heavy odor in the
chamber. The window had been closed. But it was something more
than stale air that Tom smelled.
A folded cloth lay on the floor beside the couch. The young
fellow saw at once that it had been originally placed over the
giant's face, but had slid off. And lucky for Koku that it had
been dislodged!
"Chloroform!" muttered Tom. "He's drugged. It is no wonder he
did not hear the burglar alarm."
In any event, the incident made one deep impression on Tom's
mind. The spies who he believed were working for the Hendrickton
& Western Railroad and its owner, Montagne Lewis, were desperate
men. Tom could not believe that the fellow with the big feet was
alone in Shopton and was unaided in his attempts to find out what
Tom was doing.
This attempt to burglarize the house betrayed the caliber of
the enemy. In chloroforming Koku he had taken the risk of
murdering the giant. Only the fact that the pad of saturated
cloth had fallen off Koku's face had, perhaps, saved the man from
suffocation.
Tom did not tell the giant when he aroused what the matter with
him was. Koku was ill enough! He was wrenched by interior spasms
that seemed almost to tear his huge body to pieces.
"What done got into dat big lump o' bone an' grizzle?" demanded
Eradicate. "He looks like, he swallowed a volcano, and it just
got to wo'kin' right. My lawsy!"
"He is a sick man, all right," admitted Tom. "Looks like he
wouldn't try to stab me to deaf wid no spear no mo'," went on
Rad, inclined to approve of Koku's sufferings.
"If he died you'd be mighty sorry, old man," declared Tom,
sternly.
"Sho' would. Be a mighty hard job to bury him," was the callous
response.
Just the same, the crotchety old colored man began to hop
around in lively fashion with hot water, and later with coffee
and other stimulants; and he nursed Koku all day as though he
were a big baby.
Koku, who had never been ill before in his life, was inclined
to lay the trouble to an evil genius of some kind. Perhaps, in
spite of his half-civilized state, he was still a devil-
worshiper. At any rate, he had a vital respect for the forces of
evil.
Naturally he considered this unknown and unexpected misery he
suffered the result of malignant influences of some kind. Tom did
not want him to suspect that the man with the big feet had any
possible part in the mystery. Had Koku suspected this, and had he
got his hands on the spy, the latter could never have been
successfully used in that sort of work again. In all probability
he would have said that he had had enough.
Meanwhile Tom made a point of considering each step he took
alone thereafter with particular care. He had a bodyguard--
usually the giant after the latter had recovered--between the
works and the house. He did not bring home any more the schedules
or drawings connected with the electric locomotive that he
proposed to have built and to test inside the stockade of the
Swift Construction Company.
He even put a private detective to work on the matter of
finding a man named Andy O'Malley who might be lurking around
Shopton. He had a pretty clear description of the fellow, for he
had not only seen him once, face to face by daylight, but Tom had
written to the president of the H. & P. A. and had got from that
gentleman a clear picture in words of the spy whom Mr.
Bartholomew believed was working in the interests of Montagne
Lewis.
"If O'Malley appears in Shopton, look out. He is a bad
character. He is not only a notorious gunman, with several
warrants out for him in these parts, but he is a cruel and
desperate man in any event. The minute you mark him, have him
arrested and telegraph me. We'll get him extradited and put him
through for ten years or more right in this county." The private
investigator, however, as the weeks went by, could not find any
man who filled O'Malley's description.
Meanwhile Tom Swift had got what he called "a lead" and was
working day and night upon the invention that he believed might
make even the Jandel people respectful, if not a bit envious.
First of all Tom had arranged to have built all around inside
the stockade a track of rails heavy enough to stand the wear and
tear of the heaviest locomotive built. Meanwhile the various
parts of his locomotive were being built in several shops, but
would be shipped to the Swift Construction Company and assembled
in Tom's try-out shed.
Great secrecy was of course maintained. Aside from the fact
that the new invention had something to do with electric motive
power, nobody about the shops could say what the new industry
portended. Save, of course, the Swifts themselves, Ned Newton,
and Mr. Damon, who was the Swifts' closest friend and sometimes
had furnished additional capital for Tom's experiments.
There was a thing that Mr. Damon furnished Tom at this time
that proved in the end to be of much importance. Before Tom had
seized upon this idea of his eccentric friend, and had made
proper use of it, something happened that came near to wrecking
utterly Tom's invention and completely putting an end to Tom
himself as an inventor.
Chapter X
A Strange Conversation
Mr. Wakefield Damon frequently came to the shops, for he was
not alone very friendly with the Swifts, but he was greatly
interested in Tom's new invention.
"If it goes as good as what you did for my chicken run," he
declared, chuckling, "bless my dampers! you'll beat all the
electric locomotives in the market."
"That is easy, perhaps," said Tom smiling. "There are not many
in the market at the present time. But I don't know what mine
will be. This is going to be some job."
"Bless my flues and clinkers!" cried Mr. Damon, "you are not
losing hope, Tom Swift? Look what you did for my chicken run. And
believe me, that entanglement will give a shock that makes a man
stand right up and shake."
"Have you tried it yourself?" asked Tom.
"No. But my servant did. I saw him through the window of my
study doing some kind of a shimmy with the shovel. Thought he'd
gone crazy. Then I saw what he had done. It was early in the
morning and I hadn't turned the current off, and he had put one
hand against the wires. When he dropped the shovel as I told him
to, bless my plyers and nippers! he was all right."
"The current would not seriously hurt him," said Tom. "I was
careful about that."
"It killed two tomcats," said Mr. Damon. "I certainly was glad
of that, for those two ash-barrel cats kept the whole
neighborhood awake. Bless my claws and whiskers! how those two
cats did use to yell. But when one tried to climb the wires and
the other sprang on him, it was all over! That is, all over but
the burial party."
Mr. Damon was on the ground when the mechanical equipment and a
part of the electrical equipment of the new locomotive arrived
and was set up in the erection shed. The length of the machine
was what first impressed Ned Newton as well as Mr. Damon.
"Bless my yardstick!" exclaimed the eccentric
man, it's as long as a gossip's tongue. What a
monster it will he!"
"How long is it, Tom?" asked Ned Newton.
"When completed, and standing on its drivers and bogie truck and
trailer truck, from cow-catcher to rear bumper it will be a few
inches over ninety feet. And that is slightly longer than the
biggest electric locomotive so far built. But length does not so
much enter into the value of the machine. I would have it built
more compactly if I could."
"What is the horsepower?" asked Mr. Damon.
"I figure on forty-four hundred horsepower. The power must be
received from a three thousand-volt direct-current trolley.
There are twelve driving-wheels, as you can see. Each pair of
drivers will be driven by a twin-motor geared to the axles
through a system of flexible spring drive. Remember, I have got
to obtain both speed as well as power in this locomotive, for it
is being built to pull a passenger train--a fast cross-continent
express--to compete with the best passenger equipment in the
country."
"Bless my combination ticket!" murmured Mr. Damon. "You have
picked out some task, and no mistake, Tom Swift."
"He'll do it," cried Ned, with his usual optimism when Tom had
once started on any experimental work. "Of course he will. Just
as she stands there now, only half put together, I would be
willing to bet a farm that she is a better locomotive than the
Jandel patent."
"Three cheers!" laughed Tom. "Ned is as enthusiastic as usual.
But believe me, friends, we are not going to turn out a better
locomotive than the Jandel without both thought and work."
His friends' enthusiasm was heartening, however. No doubt of
that. He never let them into his experiment room, any more than
he allowed his workmen in there. Aside from his own father,
nobody really knew what Tom Swift was doing behind that always-
locked door.
The huge structure of the locomotive was set up on the driving
wheels and leading and trailing trucks by Tom's chief foreman and
a picked crew. Just such another locomotive had never been seen
anywhere about Shopton. Naturally the men at work on the monster
began to speak of it outside the works.
Not that they betrayed any secrets regarding the locomotive. In
fact, as yet none of them knew anything about what Tom intended
to do with the big machine. But the story soon circulated that
Tom Swift, the young inventor, was about to show all the previous
builders of electric locomotives how such machines should be
built.
It was even whispered that Tom's objective was a two-mile-a-
minute locomotive. And when this was publicly known the
information was not long in seeping to the ears of certain men
who had been keeping as close a watch as they dared on the Swift
Construction Company and the activities of Tom himself.
Ned Newton went to the bank one Friday for money for the
payroll of the working and clerical force of the Swift Company.
It was an errand he never relegated to any employee.
Ned had once worked himself in the bank, and naturally he knew
many of its employees as well as the officials. With his back to
the general waiting room, he sat at the vice president's desk
discussing some minor matter. Only a railing divided the vice
president's enclosure from the long settee on which waiting
customers of the bank were seated.
Ned knew that there were two men directly behind him,
whispering together; but he paid no attention to them until he
heard this phrase:
"It's time to explode in just five hours; then good-night to
that invention, whatever it is."
This statement might mean almost anything--or nothing.
Ordinarily Ned Newton might not have paid any consideration to
the words. But "invention" was a term that he could not over-
look. His mind then was fixed upon Tom's invention almost as
closely as the mind of the young inventor himself.
Ned turned around slowly, as though idly, indeed, and tried to
see the faces of the two men behind him. One was a small, neatly
dressed man of professional appearance. He wore a Vandyke beard
and eyeglasses. The other's face Ned could not see; but as they
both rose just then and strolled toward the door of the bank he
could observe that the fellow was big and burly.
Ned wheeled to his friend, the vice president, and asked:
"Who are those men, Mr. Stanley? Do you know them?"
The pair were just going out through the revolving door. The
vice president craned his neck for a look at them.
"Don't know the small man, Ned. But the other is named
O'Malley, I believe. Somebody introduced him here and he gets a
check cashed occasionally. Not a customer of the bank."
At that moment the name "O'Malley" did not mean anything to Ned
Newton. But he bade his friend good-bye and went out after the
two men. They had disappeared.
Rad was in the electric runabout, waiting for him. The words
spoken by O'Malley (Ned thought it must have been he who spoke of
the invention because of his deep voice) continued to disturb
Ned's thought.
"Rad," he said, as he got into the runabout, "did you ever
hear the name O'Malley?"
"Sure has," declared the colored man. "And it's a bad name and
a bad man owns it."
"Do you mean that?" exclaimed the financial manager of the
Swift Construction Company, with increasing apprehension. "Who is
he?"
"Why, Mr. Newton, don't you 'member dat man?"
"Who is he?" repeated Ned.
"Dat Andy O'Malley is de one what tried to hold up Massa Tom
dat time. O'Malley is de man what's been spyin' on Massa Tom--"
"Great grief!" exclaimed Ned, breaking in with excitement.
"I'll drive as fast as I can, Rad. There is something wrong at
the works, I do believe!"
"What's wrong, Mr. Ned?" demanded Rad. "We just come from dere,
and everyt'ing was all right."
"I just heard something that O'Malley said. I want to get back
in a hurry. I believe that scoundrel is attempting to blow up
Tom's locomotive. We've got to get to the works just as quick as
we can."
Chapter XI
Touch and Go
The mechanical equipment of the new locomotive was now complete
and Tom was establishing the electrical equipment as rapidly as
possible. He not only acted as overseer of this work, but in
overalls and jumper he was doing a good share of the work
himself.
The weight of the electrical equipment when it was finally set
up was not far from two hundred thousand pounds. Altogether, when
the oil, sand, and water tanks were filled, the great machine
would weigh two hundred and eighty-five tons--a monster indeed!
"She is going to take a lot of current to run her," said Tom to
his father, who was standing by. "When I come to arrange with the
Shopton Electric Company for power, it's a question if they can
give me all I need. And I must have plenty of current to make
sure that my motors till the bill."
"As your tests will be made in the daytime, the company should
be able to furnish the power you need," rejoined Mr. Swift. "At
night, of course, when they must furnish so much light as well as
power, it might be difficult for them to give you the proper
current."
"Forty-four hundred horsepower is a big demand," went on Tom.
"I've got to have at least a three-thousand-volt direct-current
to feed my motors. I will soon have to take up the matter with
the Electric Company."
The heavy work of setting the electrical parts of the
locomotive had been finished the day previous, and the track-
derrick was removed. Tom was engaged in adjusting the more
delicate parts of the equipment and had merely stepped down from
the cab to speak to Mr. Swift.
Now he climbed back into the interior of the great machine
which, in a general way, looked like a box car. An electric
locomotive has not much of the appearance of a steam engine. The
machinery is all boxed in and the entire floor of the locomotive
is above even the drivers.
These six pairs of driving wheels were about seventy inches in
diameter, while the diameter of the leading and following truck-
wheels was but half that number of inches.
Mr. Swift had turned away from the locomotive when Tom put his
head out of the door again.
"Do you hear that, father?" he demanded in a puzzled tone.
"Hear what, Tom?" asked the old inventor, looking up.
"That ticking sound? I declare, I'd think it was one of those
death-watch beetles had got in here. Sounds like a big watch
ticking. I can't make it out."
"Where is it? What is it?" repeated Mr. Swift. "I hear nothing
down here on the floor of the shed."
"Well, it gets me," muttered Tom, and disappeared again. In a
moment he called out: "Say, you fellows! who left his bundle of
overalls in here? Better take 'em out to be manicured. Whose are
these?"
Two or three of the mechanics working near looked up from their
tasks. Mr. Swift turned back to the door of the cab again.
"What is the matter now, Tom?" he asked, in added curiosity.
"That bundle, Dad."
Tom once more appeared and addressed the workmen: "Whose bundle
of dirty overalls is this in here? Come and take 'em away. They
shouldn't have been left here."
"Why, Mr. Tom," said the foreman who was near, "I didn't see
any soiled overalls in there when I left last evening. Any of you
fellows," he asked the group of hands, "know anything about any
overalls?"
"The bundle is here all right. Pushed back against the third
series motors. Come up here, one of you fellows
Suddenly there was a noise at the end of the shed where the
door to the offices lay. Two figures burst through from the glass
doors and charged down the lanes between the lathes and cranes.
Ned Newton led, Rad Sampson, his face a mouse-gray with fear,
followed.
"Massa Tom! Massa Tom!" shouted the colored man. "Look out fo'
de bomb! Look out fo' de bomb!"
The foreman sprang toward the high door of the locomotive where
Tom stood, staring out. The young inventor, quick as his mind
usually functioned, did not understand at all what Eradicate
meant.
"There's something wrong in there, Mr. Tom!" shouted the
foreman. "Come down, sir, and let me get up there and see what it
is."
But Mr. Barton Swift grasped the meaning of what was going on
more quickly than anybody else. Tom's father, Tom frequently
said, had spent so many years investigating chemical and
mechanical mysteries that he saw more clearly and more exactly
into and through most problems than other people.
His raised voice now cut through the rumble of machinery and
all the other noises of the shop. Even Rad Sampson's delirious
cry was dwarfed by Mr. Swift's sharp tone:
"Tom! The ticking of that watch! That means danger!"
The declaration seemed to rip away a curtain from Tom's
thoughts. Perhaps Rad's cry about "de bomb" aided the young
inventor to understand the peril that threatened.
The faint ticking sound that had begun to annoy him during the
past few minutes betrayed the nature of the threatening peril.
Tom swung back from the open doorway of the locomotive cab,
reached in to the space between the motors, and seized the bundle
of overall stuff that he had previously spied.
He knew instantly that the rapid ticking came from that bundle.
It could be nothing but a time bomb. He had heard of such things
and, indeed, had seen one before, an infernal machine which, set
like an alarm clock, would go off at a certain time. That
indicated time might be an hour hence, or might be within a few
seconds! Ned Newton, almost at the spot, shouted to Tom when the
latter reappeared with the bundle in his hands:
"Get down out of that, Tom Swift! Quick! For your life!"
But Tom was cool enough now. He saw his father's white,
strained face at one side and the young inventor could even smile
at him. Behind the foreman was set a barrel of water in which
tools were cooled and tempered.
"Stoop, McAvoy!" Tom shouted, and tossed the bundle from him.
Had the infernal machine exploded in midair Tom would not have
been surprised. But McAvoy dodged, Rad clapped his hands over his
ears, and, even Ned Newton halted like a bird-dog at point.
The bundle splashed into the barrel of water. It sank to the
bottom. There was no explosion. When a few seconds had passed the
group of excited men began to relax. The barrel was carried
carefully to a neighboring field.
"Fo' de lawsy sake!" gasped Rad, and got a full breath again.
"That was touch and go, sure enough," muttered Ned Newton.
"Those overalls sure went to the wash, Boss," declared the
foreman. "What was in 'em? And who put 'em in the cab up there?"
But Tom dropped down the ladder and went to his father. Their
hands sought each other and gripped, hard.
"Better not tell Mary about this," whispered Tom. "She's
worried enough as it is."
"Right, Tom," agreed the old inventor. "From this time on we
cannot be too careful. If there proves to be an infernal machine
in that package we may be sure that we are dealing with desperate
men. We've got to keep our eyes open."
"Wide open," added Ned.
"I'll say we have," said Tom.
Chapter XII
The Try-Out Day Arrives
It did not need Ned Newton's story of what he had overheard at
the bank to prove that an attempt had been made to blow to pieces
Tom Swift's electric locomotive before even it had been tested.
An examination of the water-soaked package in the open yard of
the shops of the Swift Construction Company, proved that there
was enough explosive in the bomb to blow the shed itself to
pieces. But the stopping of the clockwork attachment of course
made the bomb harmless.
"The main thing to be explained," Tom said, when he and his
father and Ned discussed the particulars of the affair, "is not
who did it, or what it was done for. Those are comparatively easy
questions to answer."
"Yes," agreed Ned. "O'Malley did it, or caused it to be done;
and it was an attempt to balk Mr. Bartholomew and the H, & P. A.
rather than a direct attack upon the Swift Construction Company."
"I am afraid, however," remarked Mr. Swift, "that Tom has
aroused the personal antagonism of this spy from the West. We
must not overlook that."
"I don't," replied the young inventor. "O'Malley has it in for
me. No doubt of that. But he could not be sure that I would be
hurt by the explosion he arranged for."
"True," said his father.
"The attempt was against my invention. And O'Malley was
doubtless urged to destroy the locomotive that I am building
because my success will aid Mr. Bartholomew and his railroad."
"Quite agreed," said Ned. "But--"
"But the important question," interrupted Tom, "is this: How
did the bomb get into the interior of the electric locomotive?
That is the first and most important problem. Its having been
done once warns us that it can be done again until our system of
guarding the works is changed."
"We have five watchmen on the job at night, and the gates are
never opened in the daytime to anybody for any purpose without a
pass," declared Ned. "I don't see how that fellow got in here
with the time bomb."
"Exactly. It shows that there is a fault in our system
somewhere," said Tom grimly. "We cannot surround the place at
night with an armed guard. It would cost too much. Even Koku
cannot be everywhere. And I have reason to know that he was
wandering about the stockade last night as usual."
"The fellow was pretty sharp to slip by," Ned observed.
"The stockade is no mean barrier, especially with the rows of
barbed wire at the top," said Mr. Swift.
"Barbed wire! That's it!" exclaimed Tom. It was just here that
Mr. Damon's idea for guarding his prize buff Orpingtons came into
play in Tom's scheme of things. "Barbed wire doesn't seem to keep
out spies," he added slowly. "But believe me, something else
will!"
For Tom to think of a thing was to start action without delay.
Immediately he called a gang from the shops and set them to work
stringing copper wire along the top of the stockade.
He was sure that the man who had set the time bomb in place had
got into the enclosure over the fence. If he tried the same trick
again he was very apt to have the surprise of his life!
Each night when the shops closed and the watchmen went on duty,
a current of electricity was turned into those copper wires
entwined with the barbed wire entanglement at the top of the
stockade that would certainly double up any marauder who sought
to get over the top.
However, no further attempt was made against Tom's peace of
mind and against his invention during the immediate weeks that
followed. The young inventor was so closely engaged in his work
that he scarcely left the house or the confines of the shops.
Even Mary Nestor saw very little of him.
But Mary realized fully that at such a time as this Tom must
give all his thought and energy to the task in hand. She was
proud of Tom's ability and took a deep interest in his
inventions.
"I want to see the test when you try the locomotive, Tom," she
told him, when she came to the shops the first time to look at
the monster locomotive. "What a wonderful thing it is!"
"Its wonder is yet to be proved," rejoined the young inventor.
"I believe I've got the right idea; but nothing is sure as yet."
In addition to his mechanical contrivances inside the
locomotive, Tom had to arrange for an increased supply of
electric power to drive the huge machine around the track that
was being built inside the stockade.
A regular station had to be built for receiving the electricity
in a 100,000-volt alternating current and delivering it to the
locomotive in a 3,000-volt direct current. Therefore, this
station had two functions to perform--reducing the voltage and
changing the current from alternating to direct.
The reduction of the voltage was accomplished as follows: The
100,000-volt alternating current was received through an oil
switch and was conveyed to a high-tension current distributor
made up of three lines of copper tubing, thus forming the source
of power for this station.
From the current distributor the current was conducted through
other oil switches to the transformers--entering at 100,000 volts
and emerging at 2,300 volts. Then the current was conducted from
the transformers through switches to the motor-generator sets and
became the power employed to operate them.
The motor generator consisted of one alternating current motor
driving two direct current generators. The motor Tom established
in his station was of the 60-cycle synchronous type, which means
that the current changes sixty times each second.
There were two sets, each generating a 1,500 or 2,000 volt
direct current; and the two generators being permanently
connected, delivered a combined direct current of 3,000 volts--as
high a direct voltage current, Tom knew, as had ever been adopted
for railroad work. The current voltage for ordinary street
railway work is 550 volts.
"I could run even this big machine," Tom explained to Ned
Newton, "with a much lighter current. But out there on the
Hendrickton & Pas Alos line the transforming stations deliver this
high voltage to the locomotives. I want to test mine under
similar conditions."
"This is going to be an expensive test, Tom," said Ned,
grumbling a little. "The cost-sheets are running high."
"We are aiming at a big target," returned the inventor. "You've
got to bait with something bigger than sprats to catch a whale,
Ned."
"Humph! Suppose you don't catch the whale after all?"
"Don't lose hope," returned Tom, calmly. "I am going after this
whale right, believe me! This is one of the biggest contracts--if
not the very biggest--we ever tackled."
"It looks as if the expense account would run the highest,"
admitted the financial manager.
"All right. Maybe that is so. But I'll spend the last cent I've
got to perfect this patent. I am going to beat the Jandels if it
is humanly possible to do so."
"I can only hope you will, Tom. Why, this track and the
overhead trolley equipment is going to cost a small fortune. I
had no idea when you signed that contract with Mr. Bartholomew
that so much money would have to be spent in merely the
experimental stage of the thing."
Ned Newton possessed traits of caution that could not be
gainsaid. That was one thing that made him such a successful
financial manager for the Swift Company. He watched expenditures
as closely now as he had when the business was upon a much more
limited footing.
The rails laid along the inside of the stockade made a two-mile
track, as well ballasted as any regular railroad right of way. In
addition the overhead equipment was costly.
To eliminate any possibility of the trolley wire breaking, a
strong steel cable, called a catenary, was slung just above the
trolley wire. To this catenary the trolley wire was suspended by
hangers at short intervals.
These cables were strung from brackets so that a single row of
poles could be used, save at the curves, at which cross-span
construction was used. The trolley wire itself was of the 4/0
size, and was the largest diameter copper wire ever employed for
railroad purposes.
Several weeks had now passed since the great locomotive had
been assembled in the erection shed and the cab of the locomotive
completed. It really was a monster machine, and any stranger
coming into the place and seeing it for the first time must have
marveled at the grim power suggested by the mere bulk of the
structure.
When the day of the first test arrived Tom allowed only his
most intimate friends to be present. Mary Nestor accompanied Mr.
Swift into the shops at the time appointed, and she was as
excited over the outcome of the test as Tom himself.
Ned Newton and the mechanical force of the
shops knocked off work to become spectators at the exhibition.
The only other outsider was Mr. Damon.
"Bless my alternating current!" cried the eccentric gentleman.
"I would not miss this for the world. If you tried to shut me
out, Tom, I'd climb over the stockade to get in."
"You'd better not," Tom told him, dryly. "If you tried that
you'd get a worse shock than any chicken thief will get that
tries to steal your buff Orpingtons."
Chapter XIII
Hopes and Fears
Tom climbed into the huge cab of the electric locomotive. In
fact, the cab was the most of it, for every part of the mechanism
save the drivers was covered by the eighty-odd foot structure.
From the peak of the pilot to the rear bumper the length was
ninety feet and some inches.
As Tom slid the monster out upon the yard track the small crowd
cheered. At least, the locomotive had the power to move, and to
the unknowing ones, at least, that seemed a great and wonderful
thing.
What they saw was apparently a box-car--like a mail coach, only
with more high windows--ten feet wide, its roof more than
fourteen feet from the rails, its locked pantagraph adding two
feet more to its height.
Just what was in the cab--the water and oil tanks, the steam-
heating boiler to supply heat and hot water to the train the
monster was to draw, the motors and the many other mechanical
contrivances--was hidden from the spectators.
In fact, since completing the electrical equipment of the
Hercules 0001, as Tom had named the locomotive, the young
inventor had allowed nobody inside the cab, any more than he
allowed visitors inside his private workshop. Even Mr. Swift did
not know all the results of Tom's experimental work. In a general
way the older inventor knew the trend of his son's attempts, but
the details and the results of Tom's experiments, the latter told
to nobody.
But as the huge locomotive rolled into the yard and followed
the more or less circular track inside the yard fence, it was
plain to all of the onlookers that the motive-power was there all
right! Just what speed could be coaxed from the feed-cable
overhead was another question.
Nor did Tom Swift try for much speed on this first test of the
Hercules 0001. He went around the two-mile track several times
before bringing his machine to a stop near the crowd of
onlookers. He came to the open door of the cab.
"One thing is sure, Tom!" shouted Ned. "It do move!"
"Bless my slippery skates!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "it slides
right along, Tom. You've done it, my boy--you've done it!"
"It looks good from where I stand, my son,~ said Mr. Barton
Swift.
It was Mary who suspected that Tom was not wholly satisfied--as
yet, at least--with the test of the Hercules 0001. She cried:
"Tom! is it all right?"
"Nothing is ever all right--that is, not perfect --in this old
world, I guess, Mary," returned the young inventor. "But I am not
discouraged. As Ned says, the old contraption 'do move.' How fast
she'll move is another thing."
"What time did you make?" asked Mr. Swift.
"Not above fifteen miles an hour."
"Whew!" whistled Ned dolefully. "That is a long way from--"
Tom made an instant motion and Ned's careless lips were sealed.
It was not generally known among the men the speed which Tom
hoped to obtain with his new invention.
"It is a wide shoot at the target, that is true," Tom said,
soberly. "But remember I cannot test it for speed on this short
and almost circular track. Right at the start, however, I see
that something about the power-feed must be changed."
"What is that?" asked Mary, curiously.
"I have only had rigged here one trolley wire. There must be
two attached alternately to the catenary cable. Such a form of
twin conductor trolley will permit the collection of a heavy
current through the twin contact of the pantagraph with the two
trolley wires, and should assure a sparkless collection of the
current at any speed. You noticed that when I took the sharper
curves there was an aerial exhibition. I want to do away with the
fireworks."
The fact that the Hercules 0001 was a going and apparently
powerful draught engine satisfied most of the onlookers that Tom
Swift was on the road to final and overwhelming success. The
mechanics, indeed, saw no reason why the locomotive could not be
run right out of the yard on the freight track and coupled to the
first train going West. Of course, the Hercules 0001 could not be
delivered to the Hendrickton & Pas Alos under its own power.
When the locomotive was run back into the shed and stood once
more on the erection track, Tom confessed to Mary and Ned, while
Mr. Damon and Mr. Swift were looking through the huge cab, that
he was not at all pleased with the action of the machine.
"I have the best equipment of any electric locomotive on the
rails today. I am sure of that," he said. "The Hercules Three-
Oughts-One is not as long as those electric locomotives of the
C. M. &. St. P. But that's all right. I have built mine more
compactly and, properly geared, it should have all the power of
either the Baldwin-Westinghouse or the Jandel locomotive."
"Then, Tom dear, what is wrong?" cried Mary.
"Speed. That is what troubles me. Have I got anything like the
speed I am aiming for?"
"Two miles a minute!" breathed Ned Newton. "Some speed, boy!"
"And must you have such great speed, Tom?" repeated Mary.
"That is in my contract. Not only that, but to be of much use
to the H. & P. A. this locomotive must have such speed--or mighty
near it. Of course, under ordinary conditions, two miles a minute
for a locomotive and train of heavy freights would burn up the
track--maybe melt the flanges and throw everything out of gear."
"Why try for it, then?" demanded Mary.
"It is the power suggested by the possession of such speed that
we want in the Hercules Three-Oughts-One. That two miles a minute
is a fiction of the imagination, cannot be claimed. It is
possible. It is humanly possible. It is coming."
"Then you must be the fellow to first accomplish it, Tom
Swift," Ned declared.
"Of course, if anybody can do it, you can, Tom," agreed the
girl complacently.
"Thanks--many, many thanks," laughed the young inventor. "I'd
be able to harness the sun and stars, and put a surcingle around
the moon if I came up to my friends' opinion of my ability.
"Nevertheless, two-miles-a-minute is my objective point, and I
do not believe it is visionary. Consider the motor-cycle. Ninety
miles an hour has long been possible with that, and some tests
have shown a speed of over a hundred and ten. That is not far
from my mark.
"Some Mallet locomotives of the oil-burning type have achieved
from eighty-five to ninety-five miles an hour with a heavy load
behind them. They are very powerful machines. The Mogul mountain
climbers are powerful, too, although they are not built for
speed.
"The electric Goliaths built for the C. M. & St. P., and the
Jandels, are both very speedy under certain conditions. The
former has a maximum speed of sixty-five miles and the Jandel
slightly faster."
"But that is only half what that Mr. Bartholomew demands of
your invention, Tom!" Mary cried.
"That is a fact. I must reach twice sixty miles an hour,
anyway, to meet his demand and gain that hundred thousand bonus.
But I have the advantage of a knowledge of all that has been done
before my time in the matter of electrical locomotive
construction."
"The world do move," repeated Ned. "You believe that you have
the edge on all the other inventors?"
"Along the line of this development--yes," said Tom. "I am
taking up the work where former experimenters ended theirs. Why
shouldn't I find the right combination to bring about a
two-miles-a-minute drive?"
"Oh, Tom!" cried Mary, with clasped hands, "I hope you do."
"I hope I do, too," said Tom, grimly. "At least, if trying will
bring it, success is going to come my way."
Chapter XIV
Speed
More than four months had passed since the contract had been
signed, when Tom made his first yard-test of the Hercules 0001.
For a month nothing had been seen or heard of Andy O'Malley,
whose identity as the spy, set by Montagne Lewis to cripple Tom's
attempt to help the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad, had been
determined beyond any doubt.
The private inquiry agent that Tom had engaged to find O'Malley
had been unsuccessful in his work. The spy had disappeared from
Shopton and the vicinity. Nevertheless, the inventor did not for
a moment overlook the possibility that the enemy might again
strike.
Every night the electric current was turned into the wires that
capped the stockade of the Swift Construction Company enclosure.
Koku beat a path around the enclosure at night, getting such
short sleep as he seemed to need in the forenoon.
"Dat crazy cannibal," grumbled Rad, "got it in his haid dat
he's gwine to he'p Massa Tom by walkin' out o' nights like he was
dis here Western, de great sprinter, Ma lawsy me! Koku ain't got
brains enough to fill up a hic'ry nut shell. Dat he ain't."
Nothing anybody else could do for Tom ever satisfied Rad. The
colored man fully believed that he was the only person really
necessary for Tom's success and peace of mind. In fact, Rad
thought that even Ned Newton's duties as financial manager of the
firm were scarcely of as much importance.
When he heard that Tom was going West, after a time, with the
electric locomotive, to try it out on the tracks of the
H. & P. A., Rad was quite sure that if he did not go along, the
test would not come out right.
"O' course yo'll need me, Massa Tom," he said, confidently.
"Couldn't git along widout me nohow. Yo' knows, sir, I allus has
to go 'long wid yo' to fix things."
"Don't you think father will need you here, Rad?" Tom asked the
faithful old fellow. "You're getting old--"
"Me gittin' old?" cried, the colored man. "Huh! Yo' don't know
'bout dis here chile. I don't purpose ever to git old. I been
gray-haided since befo' yo' was born; but I ain't old yit!"
Mr. Damon chanced to be present at this conversation, and he
was highly amused, yet somewhat impressed, too, by the colored
man's statement.
"Bless my own antiquity!" he exclaimed. "I agree with Rad, Tom.
It's us old fellows who know what to do when an emergency of any
kind arises. Experience teaches more than inspiration."
"Oh," said Tom, laughing, "I do not deny the value of old
friends at any stage of the game."
"Bless my roving nature! I am glad to hear you say that. For I
tell you right now, Tom, I want to be out there when you make
your final test of the locomotive."
"Do you mean that you will go West when I take out the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One?" cried Tom.
"It's just what I want to do. Bless my traveling bag, Tom! I
mean to be present at your final triumph."
"What will happen to your buff Orpingtons while you are gone?"
asked the young inventor, gravely.
"I have got my servant trained to look after those chickens,"
declared Mr. Damon. "And this invention of yours is really more
important than even my buff Orpingtons."
"Just the same," remarked Tom to his eccentric friend, when Rad
had left the room,. "I've got to fix it so that Eradicate stays
at home with father. He doesn't really know how old and broken he
is--poor fellow."
"His heart is green, Tom. That's what is the matter with Rad."
"He is a loyal old fellow. But I shall take Koku with me, not
Rad," and the young inventor spoke decidedly. "And that is going
to trouble poor Rad a lot."
The prospect of going West, however, was not the main subject
of Tom's thoughts at this time. As the weeks passed and the end
of the six months of experiment came nearer, the inventor was
more and more troubled by the principal difficulty which had from
the first confronted him. Speed.
That was the mark he had set himself. A maximum speed of two
miles a minute on a level track for the Hercules 0001. With the
speed already attained by both steam and electric locomotives in
the more recent past, this was by no means an impossible
attainment, as Tom quite well knew.
But he became convinced that the conditions under which he
labored made it impossible for him to be positive of just how
great a speed on a straight, level track his invention would
attain.
There was no electrified stretch of railroad near Shopton on
which the Hercules 0001 might be tested. The track inside the
Swift Company's enclosure did not offer the conditions the
inventor needed. He felt balked.
"I believe I have hit the right idea in my improvements on the
Jandel patents," he told Ned Newton when they were discussing the
matter. "But believing is one thing. Knowing is another!"
"Theoretically it works out all right, I suppose?" questioned
Ned.
"Quite. I can prove on paper that I've got the speed. But that
isn't enough. You can see that."
"Impossible to be sure on the trackage already built here,
Tom?"
"I haven't dared give her all she'll take," grumbled Tom. "If I
did, I fear she'd jump the rails and I'd have a wreck on my
hands."
"And maybe kill yourself!" exclaimed Ned. "You want to have a
care."
"Oh, that's all right! I've taken risks before. I don't want to
risk the safety of the locomotive, which is more important. That
machine has cost us a lot of money."
"I'll say so!" agreed Ned. "You'll have to wait till you can
get the locomotive out there on the H. & P. A. tracks before you
get a fair speed-test."
"And suppose instead of a triumph it is a fiasco?" Tom said,
doubtfully. "I tell you straight, Ned: I never was so uncertain
about the outcome of one of my inventions since I began dabbling
with motiveÄpower."
"We could build several miles of straight track in the waste
ground behind the works," Ned said, thoughtfully.
"Not a chance! There is neither time nor money for such work.
Besides, I should have to rebuild my transforming station if I
supplied longer conduit wires with current."
"You don't really consider that you have failed, do you, Tom?"
and Ned's anxiety made his voice sound very woeful indeed.
"I tell you that my belief doesn't satisfy me. I hate to go
West without being sure--positive. I want to know! I have tried
the locomotive out in the yard half a dozen times. It runs like a
fine watch. There doesn't seem to be a thing the matter with it
now. But what speed can I attain?"
"I don't see but you'll have to risk it, Tom."
"I mean to give her one more test. I'll run her out tonight
when there is nobody about but the watchmen--and you, if you want
to come. I'll arrange with the Electric Company for all the
current they can spare. By ginger! I've got to take some risk."
"By the way, Tom," said his chum, "did it ever strike you as
odd that that private detective agency never got any trace of
O'Malley?"
"Well, he's gone away. We needn't worry about him. Maybe the
detective wasn't very smart, at that."
"And yet he was here in town after you put the inquiry on foot.
I saw him in the bank. He came there occasionally. And either he,
or somebody he hired, placed that bomb in the locomotive."
"All those being facts, what of it?"
"Besides, there was that other fellow--the man with the Vandyke
beard. Might be a shyster lawyer, or something of the kind. He
wasn't spotted, either."
"To tell the truth, I didn't bother to give the Detective
Agency the description of that fellow, although you gave it to
me," and Tom laughed. "I must confess that I depend more upon my
man-trap electric wires to protect the invention than I do on the
private inquiry agent."
"It's funny, just the same. If I had another job for a
detective I should not submit it to the Blatz Agency," grumbled
Ned.
"I fancy Montagne Lewis and his crowd called off their Wild
West gunman," said Tom. "In any case, every attempt he made to
bother us turned out a fizzle. I am not, however, forgetting
precautions, my boy."
Ned Newton realized that his chum had determined to make this
night test of the electric locomotive the pivotal trial of the
whole affair. He came back to the works after dinner and was let
in by the office watchman at about nine o'clock.
"Mr. Tom here yet?" he asked the man.
"Yes, Mr. Newton. The young boss didn't go home to supper,
even. That colored man brought something down for him, and he's
in the shed yet."
"Rad is here, you mean?"
"Yes, sir. At least, he didn't go out this way, and we watchmen
have instructions to let nobody in or out by the yard gates at
night."
"I'll say Tom is being careful," thought Ned, as he stepped out
through the runway toward the erection shed.
Before he reached the entrance to the huge shed, however, Ned
chanced to look down the enclosure. There were several arc lights
burning, but even these only furnished a dim illumination for the
whole yard.
He supposed that four watchmen were tramping their several
beats along the inside of the stockade and close to the trolley-
track. But when he saw an instant gleam of light down there,
close to the ground, Ned did not believe that it was the flash of
a torch in the hand of any sentry.
"Funny," he muttered. "That's outside the fence, or I'm much
mistaken. I wonder now--"
He turned from the door of the shed, left the runway, and began
walking toward the distant point at which he had seen the
mysterious flash of light.
Chapter XV
The Enemy Still Active
Ned was dressed in a dark business suit, so he was not likely
to be observed from a distance, for it was a starless night. Half
way to the end of the great yard he began to wonder if the light
he had seen might not have been an hallucination.
He doubted very much if anybody was creeping about outside the
fence. The boards were close together, with scarcely a crack half
an inch wide anywhere. A light out there--
It flashed again. He was positive of it this time, and of its
locality as well. It could be nobody who had any honest business
about the Swift Construction Company's premises. It was not Koku,
for ordinarily the giant would not use an electric torch.
Ned did not know where any of the watchmen were who were acting
as sentinels. In fact, as it appeared later, three of them had
been called off their beats by Tom himself to help in some
necessary task inside the shed. The young inventor was getting
ready to run the huge locomotive out upon the yard-track.
Remembering vividly the attempt which had been made some weeks
before to blow up the Hercules 0001, it was only natural that Ned
should suspect that the flash of light he had seen revealed the
presence of some ill-conditioned person lurking just beyond the
fence.
A man might be crouching there prepared to hurl an explosive
bomb over the fence when the locomotive was brought around as far
as that spot. Or was the villain foolish enough to attempt to
enter the enclosure by surmounting the fence?
Ned, keeping close to the ground, crossed the rails in the
fortunate shadow of one of the posts. There he found a place
where, with his back to a pole-prop right at this curve in the
trolley system, the shadow enfolded him completely.
Had his movements been marked by the person outside the fence?
Ned waited several long and anxious minutes for some move from
out there. Then something rather unexpected occurred. For the
past ten minutes he had forgotten about the test of the Hercules
0001 which Tom had promised.
With a blast of its siren the huge electric locomotive burst
out of the shed and thundered around the track. It smote Ned
Newton's mind suddenly that the inventor was going to "take a
chance" on this evening and try to get some speed out of the huge
machine.
The electric headlight cast a broad cone of white and dazzling
light across the yard. It suddenly struck full upon the spot
where Ned Newton crouched; but the upright against which he
leaned was broad enough to hide him completely.
Looking up at the top of the stockade at that moment of
illumination, the young financial manager of the Swift
Construction Company beheld a crawling figure nearing the wire
entanglements on the summit of the fence.
The unknown man was climbing by means of a notched pole. Ned
could not see that he bore any bulky object in his hands; indeed,
he needed both of them to aid him to climb. But the man's right
hand was reaching upward, above his head.
The Hercules 0001 came roaring on. Its cone of light passed
beyond Ned's station. In a few seconds it reached the spot, and
roared on. Ned had not made a move. It seemed to him that he
could not move or speak.
The onrush of the electric locomotive all but swept the young
fellow from his feet. It had come and gone in an instant!
"He's making more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour, all
right," muttered Ned.
Then he flashed another glance up at the figure outside the
fence. The man's cap showed above the top of the boards. He
seemed to be dragging something up to him from below--something
that hung and swung around and around a few feet from the ground.
Ned was about to dart out of concealment and hail the fellow.
He was not armed, nor could he get out of the stockade near this
point. He feared what the marauder intended, and he felt that he
must frighten him away.
"Suppose that is a bomb and he means to fling it in front of
Tom's locomotive?" thought the anxious Ned.
He again saw the stranger's right hand reach up above his head.
But he had no bomb in his hand. Ned suddenly shrieked a word of
warning! It had come to him what the man was doing and what the
result of his act would be.
The wire-cutters bit on one of the copper wires. There followed
a flash of blue flame, and the man screamed. He dropped the thing
swinging below him and involuntarily grabbed at the wires with
his left hand.
He was caught, then! The crackling intermittent shocks of
electric fluid passed through his body in fiery sequence. His
limbs writhed. He mouthed horribly, and croaking gasps came from
between his wide open jaws.
The Hercules 0001 had rounded the enclosure and was coming down
upon its second lap. The cone of white radiance from the
headlight fell upon the writhing body of the victim on the wires.
The locomotive siren emitted a blast that almost deafened Ned.
The monster ground to a stop. Tom swung himself half out of the
cab window beside the controller.
"Who's that?" he yelled. Then he saw Ned below him. "Who is
that fellow?"
"No friend of yours, Tom, I believe," returned his financial
manager in a shaking voice.
"Where's Rad? Rad!" Tom shouted at the top of his voice.
"I's comm', Massa Tom," rejoined the colored man.
"Never mind coming here! Get a move on, and get to the
switchboard. Turn the current out of the fence wires.
"Yis, sir, I'll go Massa Tom," declared the old man.
"Is he a spotter, Ned?" demanded the inventor.
"He's no friend. I am going out by the gate. He's got something
there that means harm, I believe. Do you think he's killed, Tom?"
"Only ought to be. Not enough current to kill him. But he's
badly burned and--and--well! I bet he won't care to fool around
the works again."
Ned dashed away to an entrance. A watchman came running, opened
the small gate, and followed Ned into the open.
Before they arrived at the vicinity of the accident Rad had got
to the switchboard. The electricity was shut out of the stockade
wires.
Ned uttered another shout. He saw the writhing body of the
shocked man fall from the stockade. When he and the watchman got
to the spot the fellow lay upon his back, groaning and sobbing;
but Ned saw at once that he was more frightened than hurt.
"Well, you did it that time!" exclaimed the young financial
manager. "And I hope you got enough."
"You--you demons!" gasped the man. "I'll have the law on you--"
"Sure you will," cackled the watchman. "You had every right in
the world to try to cut those wires, of course, and get into the
yard of the works. Sure! The judge will believe you all right."
Ned was, meanwhile, staring closely at the fallen man. Tom had
come down from the locomotive and was close to the fence.
"Who is he?" demanded the inventor. "Not O'Malley?"
Ned stepped to the fence and whispered:
"It's the other fellow. The little chap with the Vandyke. He's
dressed like a tramp, but it's the same man."
"Is he badly hurt?" demanded Tom.
"His temper is, Boss," said the watchman callously. "And say! I
know this fellow. He works for the Blatz Detective Agency. I used
to work for those folks myself. His name is Myrick--Joe Myrick."
"Ned," said Tom sternly, "go to the office and call the police.
I'll make him tell why he was here. And I'll make the Blatz
people explain, too. Hullo! what's that?"
Ned had seized the rope he had seen in Myrick's hand, and from
a patch of weeds drew a two-gallon oil-can.
"What you got there, Ned?" repeated the young inventor.
"Whatever it is, I am going to be mighty easy with it. I think
this scoundrel was trying to get it over the fence and into the
way of the locomotive."
"You can't hang anything on me," said Myrick, suddenly. "I was
just climbing up to the top of the fence to get a squint at that
contraption you've built. You can't hang anything on me."
"He's evidently feeling better," said Tom, scornfully. "Nugent,
don't let him get away from you. Go call the police, Ned. And
take care of that can until we can find out what's in it."
Later, when the police had removed Joe Myrick and the
mysterious can had been deposited in a tub of water in the open
lot until its contents could be examined, Tom said to his chum:
"I was just working up some speed on the locomotive. The
speedometer indicated fifty-five when I saw that fellow sprawling
up there on the fence. I would not have dared go much faster in
any case."
"Why, you weren't half trying, Tom!" cried the delighted Ned.
"She did slide around easy, didn't she? Fifty-five on an almost
circular track is a good showing. I am not so scared as I was, my
boy."
"You think that on a straight track you might accomplish what
you set out to do?"
"It looks like it. At any rate, I shall risk a trial on the
H. & P. A. tracks. I'm going to take her West. Be ready on
Monday, Ned, for I shall want you with me," declared Tom Swift.
Chapter XVI
Off for the West
Of course, as Tom supposed they would, the Blatz Detective
Agency denied that Joe Myrick, their one-time operative, had been
engaged through their bureau either to spy upon the Swift
Construction Company or to injure Tom's invention of the electric
locomotive.
Nevertheless, three points were indisputable: Myrick had been
caught spying; in his possession was a can of explosive which
could be set off by concussion; and it was a fact that to Myrick
had been first entrusted the matter of hunting for Andy O'Malley
when Tom had put the search for the Westerner up to the Blatz
people.
"He played traitor both to you, Mr. Swift, and to our agency,"
declared Blatz to Tom. "I wash my hands of him. I hope the police
send him away for life!"
"He'll go to prison all right," said Tom, confidently. "But the
main point is that one of your operatives fell down on a simple
job. I wanted that Andy O'Malley traced. He's out of the way,
now, of course. If you had put an honest man to work for me,
O'Malley would be behind the bars himself."
"Some doubt of that, Mr. Swift," grumbled Blatz.
"Why?"
"Where's your evidence that this O'Malley was connected with
the attempt to blow up your locomotive the first time? Mr.
Newton's testimony would need corroboration."
"Never mind that," rejoined the young inventor, with a smile.
"I'd have him for highway robbery. I recognized him. He robbed me
of a wallet. Guess we could put O'Malley away for awhile on that
charge. And by the time he got out again my job for that Western
railroad would be completed."
"Humph! Nothing personal in your going after the fellow, then?"
queried the head of the detective agency.
"No. But I frankly confess that I am afraid of O'Malley. He is
undoubtedly in the employ of men who will pay him well if he
wrecks my invention. But there really is no personal grudge
between O'Malley and me. At least, I feel no particular enmity
against the fellow."
There was a pause.
"If you say so we will give you a couple of good men as
bodyguards on your trip West," suggested Blatz, licking his lips
hungrily.
"As good men as Myrick?" retorted Tom, rather scornfully. "No,
thank you. Just make your bill out to the Swift Construction
Company to date, and a check will be sent you the first of the
month. I will take my own precautions hereafter."
And those precautions Tom considered sufficient. When the
Hercules 0001 was towed out of the enclosure belonging to the
Swift Construction Company early on Monday morning, each door and
window of the huge cab was barred and locked. Inside the cab rode
Koku, the giant.
Koku had his orders to allow nobody to enter the Hercules 0001
until Tom or Ned Newton came to relieve him of his responsibility
as guard. The giant had a swinging cot to sleep on and sufficient
food--of a kind--to last him for a fortnight if necessary.
He was not armed, for Tom did not often trust him with weapons.
The young inventor, however, did not expect that any armed force
would attack the electric locomotive.
If Montagne Lewis desired to wreck the new invention which
might mean so much to Mr. Bartholomew and the H. & P. A., he
surely would not allow his hirelings to attack openly the
locomotive while it was en route.
On the other hand, Tom did not really believe that Andy
O'Malley would attempt any reprisal against him personally. Of
course, the Western desperado might feel himself abused by Tom,
especially in the matter of Tom's use of his ammonia pistol.
But that had happened months ago. O'Malley had undoubtedly been
hired by Mr. Bartholomew's enemies to obtain knowledge of the
contract signed between the young inventor and the railroad
president; and later it was certain that the spy had tried his
best to wreck the electric locomotive.
As for any personal assault so many weeks after O'Malley had
clashed with him Tom Swift did not expect it. With Ned in his
company on this journey to Hendrickton, the young inventor had
good reason to consider that he was perfectly safe.
Mary Nestor and Mr. Swift came to the station to see the two
young men off on Monday evening. Mary had heard about the second
attempt made to blow up the Hercules 0001 and she begged Tom to
take every precaution while he was in the West.
"You will be in the enemy's country out there, Tom dear," she
warned him. "You won't be careless?"
"I know I shall be mighty busy," he told her, laughing. "I'll
let Ned play watch-dog. And you know, his is a cautious soul,
Mary."
"I've every confidence in Ned's faithfulness," the girl said,
still with anxious tone. "But those men who are trying to ruin
Mr. Bartholomew's road will stop at nothing. I must hear from you
frequently, Tom, or I shall worry myself ill."
"Don't lose your courage, Mary," rejoined the inventor, more
gravely. "I do not think they will attack me personally again.
Remember that Koku is on the job, as well as Ned. And Mr. Damon
declares he will follow us West very shortly," and again Tom
chuckled.
"Even Mr. Damon may be a help to you, Tom," declared Mary,
warmly. "At least, he is completely devoted to you."
"So is Rad Sampson," said Tom, with a little grimace. "I
certainly had my hands full convincing him that father needed him
here at home. At that, Rad is pretty warm over the fact that I
sent Koku on with the locomotive. If anything should chance to
happen to my invention, Eradicate Sampson is going to shout 'I
told you so!' all over the shop."
Mary dabbed her eyes a little with her handkerchief, and Tom
patted her shoulder.
"Don't worry, Mary," he said more cheerfully. "There won't a
thing happen to me out there at Hendrickton. I'll keep the wires
hot with telegrams. And I'll write to both you and father, and
give you the full particulars of how we get along. You'll keep
your eye on father, Mary, won't you?"
"You may be sure of that," said the girl. "I will not leave him
entirely to the care of Rad," and she tried hard to smile again.
But it was a difficult matter.
Such a parting as this is always hard to endure. Tom wrung his
father's hand and warned him to be careful of his health. The
train came along and the two young men boarded it with their
personal luggage.
They had a flash of the two faces--that of Mr. Swift's and
Mary's blooming countenance--as the express started again, and
then the outlook from the Pullman coach showed them the fast-
receding environs of Shopton.
"We're on our way, my boy," said Tom to his chum.
"We certainly are," said Ned, thoughtfully. "I wonder what the
outcome of the trip will be? It may not be all plain sailing."
"Don't croak," rejoined the young inventor, with a grin.
"I don't see how you can appear so cheerful., Why! you don't
even know if that electric locomotive is safe. Something may have
already happened to it. The freight train might be wrecked. A
dozen things might happen."
"I am not crossing any bridges before I come to them," declared
Tom. "Besides, I propose to keep in touch with the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One in a certain way--Hullo! Here it is."
"Here what is?" demanded Ned.
The Pullman conductor at that moment came in through the
forward corridor. He had a telegram in his hand, and intoned
loudly as he approached:
"Mr. Swift! Mr. Thomas Swift! Telegram for Mr. Swift."
"That is for me, Conductor," said Tom briskly, offering his
card.
"All right, Mr. Swift. Just got it at Shopton. Operator said
you had boarded my car. This is railroad business, you'll notice.
Have you any reply, sir?"
Tom ripped open the envelope and unfolded the telegram. He held
it so that Ned could read, too. It was signed: "N. G. Smith,
Conductor, Number 48."
"What's that?" exclaimed Ned, reading the message.
"'Locomotive and crazy man in it all right at Lingo,'" repeated
Tom aloud, and chuckled.
"No, Conductor, there is no answer."
"Good!" exclaimed Ned. "You arranged to get reports en route
from the conductors handling the Hercules Three-Oughts-One?"
"Surest thing you know," replied Tom. "And I guess, from the
wording of this message, that the crew of Forty-eight have
already found out that Koku is not an ordinary guard."
"He's a great boy," smiled Ned. "Glad he is on the job."
Chapter XVII
The Wreck of Forty-Eight
The two chums sought their berths that night in high fettle.
Even Ned sloughed off his mood of apprehension which he had worn
on boarding the train at Shopton.
For, true to the arrangement Tom had made with the railroad
people, another reassuring telegram was brought to him before
bedtime. The second conductor responsible for the management of
the Western bound freight to which the Hercules 0001 was
attached, sent back a brief statement of the safety of the
electric locomotive.
Naturally the two chums would have passed the freight and got
well ahead of it before reaching Hendrickton. But Tom had
business in Chicago, and they stayed over in that city for
twenty-four hours. The freight train went around the city, of
course. But the telegrams continued to reach Tom promptly, even
at the hotel where he and Ned stopped in the city.
Occasionally the trainmen in charge of the freight mentioned
Koku. His eccentric behavior doubtless somewhat puzzled the
railroaders.
"That's all right," chuckled Ned. "Let them think Koku is
dangerous if they want to. That O'Malley person believed he was!"
"I'll say so!" replied Tom. "The way he ran when Koku started
after him that time on the Waterfield Road seemed to prove that
he didn't want to mix with Koku."
"If he--or other spies--learns that Koku is with the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One, it ought to warn them away from the
locomotive."
This was Ned's final speech before getting into his berth. He,
as well as Tom, slept quite as calmly on this first night out of
Chicago as they had before.
They knew exactly where the electric locomotive was. It was on
the same road as this train they were traveling in, and, although
on a different track, it was not many miles ahead. In fact, if
the two trains kept to schedule, the transcontinental passenger
train would pass the freight in question about five o'clock in
the morning.
It lacked half an hour of that time when the Pullman train came
suddenly to a jolting stop. Both Tom and Ned were awakened with
the rest of the passengers in their coach.
Heads were poked out between curtains all along the aisle and a
chorus of more or less excited voices demanded:
"What's the matter?"
"Nothin's the matter wid dis train, gen'lemens an' ladies,"
came in the porter's important voice. "Jest nothin' at all's
happened. It's done happened up ahead of us, das all."
"Well, what has happened ahead of us, George?" asked Ned.
"Jest another train, Boss, been splatterin' itself all ober de
right of way. We sort o' bein' held up, das all," replied the
porter.
"That's good news--for us," said Ned, preparing to climb back
into his berth. But he halted where he was when he heard his chum
ask:
"What train left the track, George?"
"A freight train, sah. Yes, sah. Number Forty-eight. She jumped
de rails, side-swiped de accommodation dat was holdin' us back,
and has jest done spread herself all over de right of way."
"My goodness!" gasped Ned.
"Hear that, Ned?" exclaimed Tom. "Scramble into your clothes,
boy. The Hercules Three-Oughts-One is hitched to Forty-eight."
"Suppose she's off the track?" murmured Ned.
"It's lucky if she isn't smashed to matchwood," groaned Tom,
and almost immediately left the Pullman coach on the run.
Ned was not far behind him. When they reached the cinder path
beside the freight train it was just sunrise. Long arms of rosy
light reached down the mountain side to linger on the tracks and
what was strewed across them. A glance assured the two young
fellows from the East that it was a bad smash indeed.
Several of the rear boxcars were slung athwart the passenger
tracks. The passenger train that had been ahead of the Pullman
train on which Tom and Ned rode, had been badly beaten in all
along its side. Scarcely a whole window was left on the inner
side of the five cars. But those cars were not derailed. It was
merely some of the freight cars that retarded the further
progress of the transcontinental flyer. A derrick car must be
brought up to lift away the debris before the fast train could
move on.
Tom and Ned walked forward along the length of the wreck.
Suddenly the anxious young inventor seized Ned's arm.
"Glory be!" he ejaculated. "It's topside up, anyway."
"The Hercules Three-Oughts-One?" gasped Ned.
"That's what it is!"
Tom quickened his pace, and his financial manager followed
close upon his heels. The forward end of Forty-eight had not left
the track and the electric locomotive stood upright upon the
rails, being near the head end of the train.
"If this wreck was intentional, and aimed at your invention,
Tom," whispered Ned Newton, "it did not result as the wreckers
expected."
Tom scouted the idea suggested by his chum. And in a few
moments they learned from a railroad employee that a broken
flange on a boxcar wheel had caused the wreck.
"So that disposes of your suspicion, Ned," said Tom,
approaching the huge electric locomotive.
"Hey, gents!" exclaimed another railroad man, one of the crew
of the wrecked freight. "Better keep away from that locomotive."
"What's the matter with it?" Ned asked, curiously.
"Got some kind of an aborigine caged up in it. You put your
hand on any part of it and he's likely to jump out and bite your
hand off, or something. Believe me, he's some savage."
Both Tom and Ned burst into laughter. The former went forward
to the door of the cab and knocked in a peculiar way. It was a
signal that the giant recognized instantly.
"Master!" Koku cried from inside the cab. "Master! Him come
in?"
"No, Koku," said Tom. "I'm not coming in. Are you all right?"
"Yes. Koku all right. Him come out?"
"No, no!" laughed Tom. "You are not at your journey's end yet,
Koku. Keep on the job a while longer."
"Sure. Koku stay here forever, if Master say so."
"Forever is a long word, Koku," said Tom, more seriously. "I'll
tell you when to open the door. I'll be at the end of the journey
to meet you."
"It all right if Master say so. But Koku no like to travel in
box," grumbled the giant.
Tom turned from the electric locomotive to see Ned staring
across the tracks at a man who was talking to several of the
train crew of the side-swiped accommodation train. That train was
about to be moved on under its own power. None of the wreckage of
the freight interfered with the progress of the accommodation.
Tom stepped to Ned's side and touched his arm. "Who is he?" the
inventor asked.
The man who had attracted Ned's attention and now held Tom's
interest as well was a solid looking man with gray hair and a
dyed mustache. He was chewing on a long and black cigar, and he
spoke to the train hands with authority.
"Well, why can't you find him?" he wanted to know in a hoarse
and arrogant voice.
"Who is he?" asked Tom again in Ned's ear.
"I've seen him somewhere. Or else I've seen somebody that looks
like him. Maybe I've seen his picture. He's somebody of
importance."
"He thinks he is," rejoined the young inventor, with some
disdain.
In answer to something one of the railroad men said the
important looking individual uttered an oath and added:
"There's nobody been killed then? He's just missing? He was
sitting in the coach ahead of me. I saw him just before the
wreck. You know O'Malley yourself. Do you mean to say you haven't
seen him, Conductor?"
"I assure you he disappeared like smoke, sir," said the
passenger conductor. "I haven't an idea what became of him."
"Humph! If you see him, send him to me, and the solid man
stepped heavily aboard the nearest coach and disappeared inside.
Tom and Ned stared at each other with wondering gaze. O'Malley!
The spy who had represented Montagne Lewis and the Hendrickton &
Western Railroad in the East.
"What do you know about that?" demanded Ned, wonderingly.
"Hold on!" exclaimed Tom. He sprang across the rails after the
conductor of the accommodation train that was just starting on.
"Let me ask you a question."
"Yes, sir?" replied the conductor
"Who was that man who just spoke to you?" "That man? Why, I
thought everybody out this way knew Montagne Lewis. That is his
name, sir--and a big man he is. Yes, sir," and the conductor,
giving the watching engineer of his train the "highball," caught
the hand-rail of the car and swung himself aboard as the train
started.
Chapter XVIII
On the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
The transcontinental was delayed three hours by the strewn
wreckage of the rear of Number Forty-eight. When she went on the
two young fellows from Shopton gazed anxiously at the Hercules
0001, which stood between two gondolas in the forward end of the
freight train.
"Just by luck nothing happened to it," muttered Ned.
"Just luck," agreed Tom Swift. "It was a shock to me to learn
that Andy O'Malley was right there on the spot when the accident
happened."
"And his employer, too," added Ned. "For we must admit that Mr.
Montagne Lewis is the man who sicked O'Malley on to you." "True."
"And they were both in the accommodation that was sideswiped by
the derailed cars of Number Forty-eight."
"That, likewise is a fact," said Tom, nodding quickly.
"But what puzzles me, as it seemed to puzzle Lewis, more than
anything else, is what became of O'Malley?"
"I guess I can see through that knot-hole," Tom rejoined.
"Yes?"
"I bet O'Malley got a squint at me--or perhaps at you--as we
walked up the track from this coach, and he lit out in a hurry.
There stood the Three-Oughts-One, and there were we. He knew we
would raise a hue and cry if we saw him in the vicinity of my
locomotive."
"I bet that's the truth, Tom."
"I know it. He didn't even have time to warn his employer. By
the way, Ned, what a brute that Montagne Lewis looks to be."
"I believe you! I remember having seen his photograph in a
magazine. Oh, he's some punkins, Tom."
"And just as wicked as they make 'em, I bet! Face just as
pleasant as a bulldog's!"
"You said it. I'm afraid of that man. I shall not have a
moment's peace until you have handed the Hercules Three-Oughts-
One over to Mr. Bartholomew and got his acceptance."
"If I do," murmured Tom.
"Of course you will, if that Lewis or his henchmen don't smash
things up. You are not afraid of the speed matter now, are you?"
demanded Ned confidently.
"I can be sure of nothing until after the tests," said Tom,
shaking his head. "Remember, Ned, that I have set out to
accomplish what was never done before--to drive a locomotive over
the rails at two miles a minute. It's a mighty big undertaking."
"Of course it will come out all right. If Koku is faithful
"That is the smallest 'if' in the category," Tom interposed,
with a laugh. "If I was as sure of all else as I am of Koku, we'd
have plain sailing before us."
Two days later Tom Swift and Ned Newton were ushered into the
private office of the president of the H. & P. A. at the
Hendrickton terminal. The two young fellows from the East had got
in the night before, had become established at the best hotel in
the rapidly growing Western municipality, and had seen something
of the town itself during the hours before midnight.
Now they were ready for business, and very important business,
too.
Mr. Richard Bartholomew sat up in his desk chair and his keen
eyes suddenly sparkled when he saw his visitors and recognized
them.
"I did not expect you so soon. Your locomotive arrived
yesterday, Mr. Swift. How are you, Mr. Newton?"
He motioned for them to take chairs. His secretary left the
room. The railroad magnate at once became confidential.
"Nothing happened on the way?" he asked, pointedly. "There was
a freight wreck, I understand?"
"And we chanced to be right at hand when that happened," said
Tom.
"So was your friend, Mr. Lewis," remarked Ned Newton.
"You don't mean to say that Montagne Lewis--"
"Was there. And Andy O'Malley," put in Tom.
Then he detailed the incident, as far as he and Ned knew the
details, to Mr. Bartholomew, who listened with close attention.
"Well, it might merely have been a coincidence," murmured the
railroad president. "But, of course, we can't be sure. Anyhow, it
is just as well if your servant, Mr. Swift, keeps close watch
still upon that locomotive."
"He will," said Tom, nodding. "He is down there in the yard
with the Hercules Three-Oughts-One, and I mean to keep Koku right
on the job."
"Good! Let's go down and look at her," Mr. Bartholomew said,
eagerly.
But first Tom wanted to go into the theoretical particulars of
his invention. And he confessed that thus far his tests of the
locomotive had not been altogether satisfactory.
"I have got to have a clear track on a stretch of your own line
here, Mr. Bartholomew, and under certain conditions, before I can
be sure as to just how much speed I can get out of the machine."
"Speed is the essential point, Mr. Swift," said the railroad
man, seriously.
"That is what I have been telling Ned," Tom rejoined. "I
believe my improvements over the Jandel patents are worthy. I
know I have a very powerful locomotive. But that is not enough."
"We have got to shoot our trains through the Pas Alos Range
faster than trains were ever shot over the grades before, or we
have failed," said Mr. Bartholomew, with decision.
"But--" began Ned; but Tom put up an arresting hand and his
financial manager ceased speaking.
"I have not forgotten the details of our contract, Mr.
Bartholomew," he said, quietly. "Two-miles-a-minute is the target
I have aimed for. Whether I have hit it or not, well, time will
show. I have got to try the locomotive out on the tracks of the
H. & P. A. in any case. The Hercules Three-Oughts-One has been
dragged a long distance, and has been through at least one wreck.
I want to see if she is all right before I test her officially."
"I'll arrange that for you," said Mr. Bartholomew, briskly,
putting away his papers. "I will go with you, too, and take a
look at the marvel."
"And a marvel it is," grumbled Ned. "Don't let him fool you,
Mr. Bartholomew. Tom never does consider what he's done as being
as great as it really is."
"Everything must be proved," Tom said, cautiously. "If it was a
financial problem, Mr. Bartholomew, believe me it would be Ned
who displayed caution. But I have seldom built anything that
could not--and has not--later been improved."
"You do not consider your electric locomotive, then, a
completed invention?" asked Mr. Bartholomew, as the three walked
down the yard.
"I have too much experience .to say it is perfect," returned
Tom. "I can scarcely believe, even, that it is going to suit you,
Mr. Bartholomew, even if the speed test is as promising as I hope
it may be."
"Humph!"
"But before I shall be willing to throw up the sponge and say
that I have failed, I shall monkey with the Hercules Three-
Oughts-One quite a little on your tracks."
"Your six months isn't up yet," said Mr. Bartholomew, more
cheerfully. "And it doesn't matter if it is. If you see any
chance of making a success of your invention, you are welcome to
try it out on the tracks of the H. & P. A. for another six
months."
"All right," Tom said, smiling. "Now, there is the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One, Mr. Bartholomew. And there is Koku looking
longingly through the window."
In fact, the giant, the moment he saw Tom, ran to unbar and
open the door of the cab on that side.
"Master! If no let Koku out, Koku go amuck -Äcrazy! No can
breathe in here! No can eat! No can sleep!"
"The poor fellow!" ejaculated Ned.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Mr. Bartholomew, curiously.
"Get out, if you want to, Koku. I'll stay by while you kick up
your heels."
No sooner had the inventor spoken than the giant leaped from
the open door of the locomotive and dashed away along the cinder
path as though he actually had to run away. Tom burst into a
laugh, as he watched the giant disappear beyond the strings of
freight cars.
"What is the matter with him?" repeated the railroad president.
"He's got the cramp all right," laughed Tom Swift. "You don't
understand, Mr. Bartholomew, what it means to that big fellow to
be housed in for so many days, and unable to kick a free limb. I
bet he runs ten miles before he stops."
"The police will arrest him," said the railroad man.
It was then Ned's turn to chuckle. "I am sorry for your
railroad police if they tackle Koku right now," he said. "He'd
lay out about a dozen ordinary men without half trying. But,
ordinarily, he is the most mild-mannered fellow who ever lived."
"He will come back, if he is let alone, as harmless as a
kitten," Tom observed. "And when I am not with the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One, and while I continue making my tests, Koku will
be on guard. You might tell your police force, Mr. Bartholomew,
to let him alone. Now come aboard and let me show you what I have
been trying to do."
They spent two hours inside the cab of the great locomotive.
Mr. Richard Bartholomew was possessed of no small degree of
mechanical education. He might not be a genius in mechanics as
Tom Swift was, but he could follow the latter's explanations
regarding the improvements in the electrical equipment of this
new type of locomotive.
"I don't know what your speed tests will show, Mr. Swift," said
the railroad president, with added enthusiasm. "But if those
parts will do what you say they have already done, you've got the
Jandels beat a mile! I'm for you, strong. Yes, sir! like your
friend, Newton, here, I believe that you have hit the right
track. You are going to triumph."
But Tom's triumph did not come at once. He knew more about the
uncertainties of mechanical contrivances than did either Mr.
Bartholomew or Ned Newton.
The very next day the Hercules 0001 was got out upon a section
of the electrified system of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railway,
and the pantagraphs of the huge locomotive for the first time
came into connection with the twin conductor trolleys which
overhung the rails.
Ned accompanied Tom as assistant. Koku was allowed by the
inventor to roam about the hills as much as he pleased during the
hours in which his master was engaged with the Hercules 0001. Tom
did not think any harm would come to Koku, and he knew that the
giant would enjoy immensely a free foot in such a wild country.
The two young fellows, dressed in working suits of overall stuff,
spent long hours in the cab of the electric locomotive. Their
try-outs had to be made for the most part on sidetracks and
freight switches, some miles outside Hendrickton, where the
invention would not be in the way of regular traffic.
Speed on level tracks had been raised in one test to over
ninety-five miles an hour and Mr. Bartholomew cheered wildly from
the cab of a huge Mallet that paced Tom's locomotive on a
parallel track. No steam locomotive had ever made such fast time.
But Tom was after something bigger than this. He wanted to show
the president of the H. & P. A. that the Hercules 0001 could drag
a load over the Pas Alos Range at a pace never before gained by
any mountain-hog.
Therefore he coaxed the electric locomotive out into the hills,
some hundred or more miles from headquarters. He had to keep in
touch with the train dispatcher's office, of course; the new
machine had often to take a sidetrack. Nor was much of this hilly
right-of-way electrified. The Jandels locomotive had been found
to be a failure on the sharp grades; so the extension of the
trolley system had been abandoned.
But there was one steep grade between Hammon and Cliff City
that had been completed. The current could be fed to the cables
over this stretch of track, and for a week Tom used this long and
steep grade just as much as he could, considering of course the
demands of the regular traffic.
The telegraph operator at Half Way (merely a name for a
station, for there was not a habitation in sight) thrust his long
upper-length out of the telegraph office window one afternoon and
waved a "highball" to the waiting electric locomotive on the
sidetrack.
"Dispatcher says you can have Track Number
Two West till the four-thirteen, westbound, is due. I'll slip the
operator at Cliff City the news and he'll be on the lookout for
you as well as me, Mr. Swift. Go to it."
Every man on the system was interested, and most of them
enthusiastic, about Tom's invention. The latter knew that he
could depend upon this operator and his mate to watch out for the
western-bound flyer that would begin its climb of the grade at
Hammon less than half an hour hence.
The electric locomotive was coaxed out across the switch. Tom
was earnestly inspecting the more delicate parts of the mechanism
while Ned (and proud he was to do it) handled the levers. Once on
the main line he moved the controller forward. The machine began
to pick up speed.
The drumming of the wheels over the rail joints became a single
note--an increasing roar of sound. The electric locomotive shot
up the grade. The arrow on the speedometer crept around the dial
and Ned's eye was more often fastened on that than it was on the
glistening twin rails which mounted the grade.
Black-green hemlock and spruce bordered the right of way on
either hand. Their shadows made the tunnel through the forest
almost dark. But Tom had not seen fit to turn on the headlight.
"How is she making out?" asked the inventor, coming to look
over his chum's shoulder.
"It's great, Tom!" breathed Ned Newton, his eyes glistening.
"She eats this grade up."
And it's within a narrow fraction of a two per cent.," said the
inventor proudly. "She takes it without a jar--Hold on! What's
that ahead?"
The locomotive had traveled ten miles or more from Half Way.
The summit of the grade was not far ahead. But the forest shut
out all view of the station at Cliff City and the structures that
stood near it.
Right across the steel ribbons on which the hercules 0001 ran,
Tom had seen something which brought the question to his lips.
Ned Newton saw it too, and he shouted aloud:
"Tree down! A log fallen, Tom!"
He did not lose completely his self-control. But he grabbed the
levers with less care than he should. He tried to yank two of
them at once, and, in doing so, he fouled the brakes!
He had shut off connection with the current. But the brake
control was jammed. The locomotive quickly came to a halt. Then,
before Tom could get to the open door, the wheels began spinning
in reverse and the great Hercules 0001 began the descent of the
steep grade, utterly unmanageable!
Chapter XIX
Peril, The Mother of Invention
Tom Swift's first thought was one of thankfulness. Thankfulness
that he did not have a drag of fifty or sixty steel gondolas or
the like to add their weight to the down-pull. The locomotive's
own weight of approximately two hundred and seventy tons was
enough.
For when the inventor pushed Ned aside and tried to handle the
controllers properly, he found them unmanageable. There was not a
chance of freeing them and getting power on the brakes. The
Hercules 0001 was hacking down the mountain side with a speed
that was momentarily increasing, and without a chance of
retarding it!
The young inventor at that moment of peril, knew no more what
to do to avert disaster than Ned Newton himself.
It flashed across his mind, however, that others beside
themselves were in peril because of this accident. The fast
express from the East that should pass Half Way at four-thirteen,
might already be climbing the hill from Hammon. Hammon, at the
foot of the grade, was twenty-five miles away. Nor was the track
straight.
If the operator at Half Way did not see the runaway locomotive
and telephone the danger to the foot of the grade, when the
Hercules 0001 came tearing down the track it might ram something
in the Hammon yard, if it did not actually collide with the
approaching westbound express.
Such an emergency as this is likely either to numb the brains
of those entangled in the peril or excite them to increased
activity. Ned Newton was apparently stunned by the catastrophe.
Tom's brain never worked more clearly.
He seized the siren lever and set it at full, so that the blast
called up continuous echoes in the forest as the locomotive
plunged down the incline. He ran to the door again, on the side
where Half Way station lay, and hung out to signal the operator
who had so recently given him right of way on this stretch of
mountain road.
"We're going to smash! We're going to smash!" groaned Ned
Newton.
Tom read these words on his chum's lips, rather than heard
them, for the roar of the descending locomotive drowned every
other sound. Tom waved an encouraging hand, but did not reply
audibly.
Meanwhile his brain was working as fast as ever it had. He had
instantly comprehended all the danger of the situation. But in
addition he appreciated the fact that such an accident as this
might happen at any time to this or any other locomotive he might
build.
Automatic brakes were all right. If there had been a good drag
of cars behind the Hercules 0001, on which the compressed air
brakes might have been set, the present manifest peril might have
been obliterated. The brakes on the cars would have stopped the
whole train.
But to halt this huge monster when alone, on the grade, was
another matter. Once the locomotive brake lever was jammed, as in
this case, there was no help for the huge machine. It had to ride
to the foot of the grade--if it did not chance to hit something
on the way!
And with this realization of both the imminent peril and the
need of averting it, to Tom's active brain came the germ of an
idea that he determined to put into force, if he lived through
this accident, on each and every electric locomotive that he
might in the future build.
This monster, flying faster and faster down the mountain side,
was a menace to everything in its track. There might be almost
anything in the way of rolling stock on the section between Half
Way and Hammon at the foot of the grade. If this thunderbolt of
wood and steel collided with any other train, with the force and
weight gathered by its plunge down the mountain, it would drive
through such obstruction like a projectile from Tom's own big
cannon.
Tom realized this fact. He knew that whatever object the
Hercules 0001 might strike, that object would be shattered and
scattered all about the right of way. What might happen to the
runaway was another matter. But the inventor believed that the
electric locomotive would be less injured than anything with
which it came into collision.
At any rate, thought of the peril to himself and his invention
had secondary consideration in Tom Swift's mind. It was what the
monster which he could not control might do to other rolling
stock of the H. & P. A. that rasped the young fellow's mind.
The grade above Half Way had few curves. Tom soon caught the
first glimpse of the station. Would the operator hear the roar of
the descending runaway and understand what had happened?
He leaned far out from the open doorway and waved his cap
madly. He began to shout a warning, although he saw not a soul
about the station and knew very well that his voice was
completely drowned by the voice of the siren and the drumming of
the great wheels.
Suddenly the tousled head of the operator popped out of his
window. He saw the coming locomotive, the drivers smoking!
To be a good railroad man one has to have his wits about him.
To be a good operator at a backwoods station one has to have two
sets of wits--one set to tell what to do in an emergency, the
other to listen and apprehend the voice of the sounder.
This Half Way man was good. He knew better than to try the
telegraph instrument. He grabbed the telephone receiver and
jiggled the hook up and down on the standard while the Hercules
0001 roared past the station.
It did not need Tom's frantically waving cap to warn him what
had happened. And he remembered clearly the fact of the expected
westbound flyer.
"Hammon? Get me? This is Half Way. That derned electric hog has
sprung something and is coming down, lickity-split!
"Yes! Clear your yard! Where's Number Twenty-eight? Good! Side
her, or she'll be ditched. Get me?"
The voice at the other end of the wire exploded into indignant
vituperation. Then silence. The Half Way operator had done his
best--his all. He ran out upon the platform. The electric
locomotive had disappeared behind the woods, but the roar of its
wheels and the shrill voice of its siren echoed back along the
line.
The sound faded into insignificance. The operator went back
into his hut and stayed close by the telephone instrument for the
next ten minutes to learn the worst.
If the operator's nerves were tense, what about those of Tom
Swift and his chum? Ned staggered to the door and clung to Tom's
arm. He shrilled into the latter's ear:
"Shall we jump?"
"I don't see any soft spots," returned Tom, grimly. "There
aren't any life nets along this line."
Ned Newton was frightened, and with good reason. But if his
chum was equally terrified he did not show it. He continued to
lean from the open door to peer down the grade as the Hercules
0001 drove on.
Around curve after curve they flew. It entered Ned's tortured
mind that if his chum had wanted speed, he was getting it now! He
realized that two miles a minute was a mere bagatelle to the pace
now accomplished by the runaway locomotive.
Chapter XX
The Result
As Ned Newton, fumbling at the controls when he saw the fallen
tree across the tracks, had jammed the brakes, the station master
at Hammon, at the bottom of this long grade on the Hendrickton &
Pas Alos, had stepped out to the blackboard in the barnlike
waiting room and scrawled with a bit of chalk:
"No. 28--Westbound--due 3:38 is is 15 m. late."
The fact, thus given to the general public or to such of it as
might be interested, averted what would have been a terrible
catastrophe.
The fast express was late. When the babbling voice of the Half
Way operator over the telephone warned Hammon of the coming of
the runaway electric locomotive, there was time to shift switches
at the head of the yard so that, when Number Twenty-eight came
roaring in, she was shunted on to a far track and flagged for a
stop before she hit the bumper.
Thirty seconds later, from the west, the Hercules 0001 roared
down the grade and shot into the cleared west track in a halo of
smoke and dust. Speed! No runaway had ever traveled faster and
kept the rails. The story of the incident was embalmed in
railroad history, and no history is so full of vivid incident as
that of the rail.
When the first relay of excited railroad men reached the
electric locomotive after it had stopped on the long level, even
Ned Newton had pulled himself together and could look out upon
the world with some measure of calmness. Tom Swift was making
certain notes and draughting a curious little diagram upon a page
of his notebook.
"What happened to you, Mr. Swift?" was the demand of the first
arrival.
"Oh, my foot slipped," said the young inventor, and they got
nothing more out of him than that.
But to Ned, after the crowd had gone, the inventor said:
"Ned, my boy, they used to say that necessity was the mother of
invention. Therefore a loaf of bread was considered the maternal
parent of the locomotive. I've got one that will beat that."
"Whew!" gasped Ned. "How can you? I haven't got my breath back
yet."
"It is peril that is the mother of invention," Tom went on,
still jotting down his notes. "Believe me! that jolt gave me a
new idea--an important idea. Suppose that operator at Half Way
had been out back somewhere, and had not seen or heard us flash
by?"
"Well, suppose he had? What's the answer?" sighed Ned.
"Like enough we would have rammed something down here."
"And I hardly understand even now why we didn't do just that,"
muttered his chum, with a shake of his head.
"Wake up, Ned! It's all over," laughed Tom. "While it was
happening I admit I was guessing just as hard as you were about
the finish. But--"
"Your recovery is better," grumbled his friend. "I'm scared
yet."
"And it might happen again--"
"No--not--ever!" exclaimed Ned. "I shall never touch those
controllers again. I'll drive your airscout, or your fastest
automobile, or anything like that. But me and this electric
locomotive have parted company for good. Yes, sir!"
"All right. It wasn't your fault. It might happen to any motor-
engineer. And the very fact that it can happen has given me my
idea. I tell you that danger is the mother of invention."
"As far as I am concerned, it can be father and grandparents
into the bargain," Ned declared, with a smile.
"Wake up!" cried his friend again. "I have got a dandy idea. I
wouldn't have missed that trip for anything
"You are crazy," interrupted Ned. "Suppose we had bumped
something?"
"But we didn't bump anything, except my brain tank. An idea
bumped it, I tell you. I am going to eliminate any such peril as
that here-after."
"You mean you are going to make it impossible for this
locomotive ever to slide down such a hill again if the brakes
won't work? Humph! Meanwhile I will go out and make the nearest
water-fall begin to run upward."
"Don't scoff. I do not mean just what you mean."
"I bet you don't!"
"But although I cannot be sure that a locomotive will never
again fall downhill," said Tom patiently, "I'm going to fix it so
that warning need not be given by some operator along the line.
The engineer must be able to send warning of his accident, both
up and down the road."
"Huh? How are you going to do that?" demanded Ned.
"Wireless telephone. I may make some improvements on the
present models; but it is practicable. It has been used on
submarines and cruisers, and lately its practicability has been
proved in the forestry service.
"Every one of these electric locomotives I turn out will be
supplied with wireless sets. The expense of making certain
telegraph offices along the line into receiving stations will be
small. I am going to take that up with Mr. Bartholomew at once.
And I am going to fix these brake controls so that nobody need
ball them up again."
If, out of such a desperate adventure, Tom could bring to
fruition really worthwhile improvements in relation to his
invention, Ned acknowledged the value of the incident. Just the
same, he had a personal objection to having any part in a similar
experience.
He was brave, but he could not forget danger. Tom seemed to
throw the effect of that terrible ride off his mind almost
instantly. Ned dreamed of it at night!
However, from that time things seemed to go with a rush. Mr.
Bartholomew approved of the young inventor's suggestion regarding
the use of the wireless telephone as a method of averting a
certain quality of danger in the use of the proposed monster
locomotive. The railroad man was convinced that Tom's ideas were
finally to culminate in success, and he was ready to spend money,
much money, in pushing on the work.
It was not long before a private test of the Hercules 0001 up
the grade from Hammon to Cliff City showed Mr. Bartholomew that
the speed he had required in his contract was attainable. With a
drag fully as heavy as any two locomotives had been able to get
over the same sector, the new locomotive alone marked a forty-
five mile an hour pace.
This attainment was kept quiet; not even the train crew knew
what the monster had done when they reached the summit of the
mountain. But Mr. Bartholomew, who rode with Tom and Ned in the
cab, had held his own watch on the test and compared it every
minute with the speedometer.
"I am satisfied that you are going to do more than I had really
hoped, Mr. Swift," the railroad president said at the end of the
run. "Already you could drive this locomotive at a two-mile-a-
minute clip on level rails, I am sure. Keep at it! Nobody will be
more delighted than I shall be if you pull down that hundred
thousand dollars' bonus."
"That's a fine way to talk, sir," cried Ned, with enthusiasm.
"I mean every word of it, Mr. Newton. The money is his as soon
as he makes good."
Both Tom and his financial manager left the president's office
in a satisfied state of mind.
"Great news to send home, Tom," remarked Ned, when they were
alone.
"Righto, Ned. My father will be glad to hear it."
"And what about Mary?" And Ned poked his chum in the ribs.
"I guess she'll he glad too," Tom replied, his face reddening.
That night Tom sent word to Mary and also a telegram, in code,
to his father, saying the prospects were now bright for a quick
finish of the task that had brought him West.
Chapter XXI
The Open Switch
Meanwhile the work of electrifying another division of the
Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad had been pushed to completion. As
Mr. Bartholomew had in the first place stated, the road
controlled water rights in the hills which would supply any
number of electric power stations, and his enemies could not shut
his road off from these waterfalls.
Tom had not warned his faithful servant, the giant Koku, to
watch out for Andy O'Malley in particular; the inventor knew that
the giant would be as cautious about any stranger as could be
wished. But personally Tom was amazed that either O'Malley or
some other henchman of the president of the Hendrickton & Western
did not make an attempt to injure the electric locomotive.
"Perhaps Mr. Bartholomew's police are really of some good,"
said Ned Newton, when his chum mentioned his surprise on this
point. "Has Koku seen nobody lurking about at night?"
"He certainly has not seen the man he calls 'Big Feet,'"
chuckled Tom. "If he had spotted O'Malley, there certainly would
have been an explosion."
"Tell you what," Ned said reflectively, "the longer Lewis keeps
off you, the more suspicious I should be."
"You think he is a bad citizen, do you?"
"And then some, as the boys say out here," replied Ned. "I
wouldn't trust that man any farther than I would a nest of
hornets or a shedding rattlesnake."
"I am inclined to believe, with you, Ned, that Lewis is
hatching up something and is keeping mighty whist about it. I
sounded Mr. Bartholomew on the idea and he, too, is puzzled."
"I guess he knows that hombre," grumbled Ned.
"Mr. Bartholomew admits that several roads have sent
representatives to make inquiries about my locomotive. They have
got wind of it, and, after all, most railroads work in unison.
What means progress for one is progress for all."
"That same rule does not seem to apply in the case of the
H. & P. A. and the H. & W.," remarked Ned.
"No. They are out and out rivals. And Lewis and his gang have
done this road dirt--no two ways about that. But when I am
convinced that my locomotive has got all the speed and power
contracted for, Mr. Bartholomew wants to invite a bunch of his
brother railroaders to see the tests--to ride in the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One, in fact."
"How about it? You going to agree? Suppose they have some
inventive sharp along who will be able to steal some of your
mechanical contrivances--in his head, I mean," and Ned seemed
quite suddenly anxious.
"I had thought of that. But before the test I shall send my
blueprints to Washington. Our patent attorney there has already
filed tentative plans and applied for certain patents that I
consider completed. Don't fret. I'll make it impossible for
anybody to steal our patents legally."
"Yes! But illegally?"
"That we cannot help in any case, and you know it," Tom said.
"If some road tries to build anything like the Hercules Three-
Oughts-One for the first two years without arranging with the
Swift Construction Company, you know that that railroad can be
made to suffer in the courts, and you are the boy, Ned, to put
them over the jumps for it."
"Sure," grumbled his chum. "It's always up to me to save the
day."
"Exactly," chuckled Tom. "And in your character of life saver,
do look out for anybody who looks suspicious hanging about the
Hercules Three-Oughts-One. I'll take care of rival inventors. You
and Koku keep your eyes peeled for the H. & W. spies. Especially
for that Andy O'Malley. I feel that he will again show up. Maybe
by 'the pricking of my thumb' as Macbeth's witch used to remark."
Every day save Sunday the electric locomotive had some kind of
try-out. On a level track Tom was sure of his monster invention's
qualities; but in the hills, at a distance from the Hendrickton
terminal, it was another matter.
The grades were steep; but the road was well ballasted. There
was plenty of power. He saw the Jandel locomotives hurry back and
forth with the local trains and realized that this rival
invention was by no means to be despised.
It was at about this time, too, that Mr. Damon appeared in
Hendrickton. Early one forenoon, when Tom and Ned were preparing
to take the Hercules 0001 out of the yard, and Koku was going to
his lodgings to get a little sleep, Tom's eccentric friend came
across the tracks, waving his cane at Tom.
"Bless my frogs and switch-targets!" he ejaculated, "I've
walked a mile from that station to get here. Where are you going
with that big contraption? How does it work? Does it make all the
speed you want, Tom Swift? Bless my rails and sleepers!'
"We're going about a hundred miles out on the road to a good,
stiff grade," Tom told him, having shaken hands in welcome. "If
you want to, get aboard."
"They haven't blown you up yet, or otherwise wrecked the
locomotive," remarked Mr. Damon, grinning broadly. "I'll have to
write right back to your father--and to a certain young lady who
shows a remarkable interest in your welfare--that you are all
right."
"They should already be sure of that," laughed Tom. "Ned and I
have kept the post-office department and the telegraph company
very busy."
"They are waiting for my report," announced Mr. Damon, with
confidence. "And I am waiting for yours. Tell me, Tom: Is the
locomotive a success
"It's going to be," declared the inventor, with decision.
"Bless my trolley wires!" cried Mr. Damon, "I am glad to hear
that. Then you will surely pull down the extra hundred thousand
dollars?"
"I believe I shall fulfill every clause of the contract Mr.
Bartholomew and I signed," said Tom.
"Then it's more than a success!" cried his friend. "You have
invented another marvel, Tom Swift!"
"Marvel or not," rejoined Tom, "I believe that the Hercules
Three-Oughts-One will top anything so far built in the way of
electric locomotives."
"Hurrah!" cried Mr. Damon. "Bless my controller! But your
father and Mary Nestor will be glad to hear that!"
Mr. Damon was quite as much interested in this invention as he
always was in anything the young inventor worked upon. When he
had once seen the Hercules 0001 work on an up-grade he was doubly
enthusiastic. To his sanguine mind the locomotive was already
completed. He could see no possibility of failure.
Tom, however, had to prove to his own satisfaction the success
of every detail of his invention before he was willing to tell
Mr. Bartholomew that he was ready for a public test. Mr. Damon,
nor even Ned, could scarcely see the reason for Tom's caution.
Tom's favorite try-out grade was between Hammon and Cliff City.
He could obtain a right of way order from the train dispatcher on
that grade, sometimes of an hour's duration. He often snaked a
load of gondolas or cattle cars up the grade, relieving both the
puller and pusher steam locomotive. By this time the H. & P. A.
system had stopped using the Jandel machines on any grades. They
had proved their lack of power for such work
"But the Hercules Three-Oughts-One shows at every test that it
has the kick," Mr. Damon cried.
In his enthusiasm he was out every day with Tom and Ned. And
sometimes Koku remained in the cab during the trial runs as well.
On one such occasion Tom had drawn a heavy train over the
mountain, taking it down the grade beyond Cliff City to Panboro
in the farther valley. This was over a newly built stretch of the
electrified road. The power station charged the trolley cables
with an abundance of current, and the Hercules 0001 made a
splendid trip.
"Bless my cuff-links!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, his rosy face one
beaming smile. "You couldn't expect to do better than this. You
save one locomotive on the haul, and you beat the schedule ten
minutes, so that you had to lay by to get right of way into the
yard here. Why linger longer, Tom?"
"I agree with Mr. Damon," Ned said. "It seems to work
perfectly. And you have, I believe, established your required
speed."
"Can't be too perfect," said the young inventor, smiling. "But
I will tell Mr. Bartholomew when we get back that he can set his
time for the big test whenever he pleases. I have already sent
our patent attorney in Washington the final blueprints. Now, if
nothing happens--"
"Bless my stickpin!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "What can happen now
that the locomotive is practically perfect?"
That question was answered in one way, and a most startling
way, within the hour. Tom got right of way back over the mountain
and pushed the electric locomotive up-grade at almost top speed.
He drew no train on this occasion, and the speed made by the
Hercules 0001 was really remarkable.
They topped the rise at Cliff City and got orders from the
dispatcher to proceed on the time of Number Eighty-seven, which
chanced to be late. With that release Tom might have made the
entire distance of a hundred and ten miles to Hendrickton had it
not been for the accident--the unexpected something that so often
happens in the railroad business.
Tom was a careful driver; the chatter of Ned and Mr. Damon did
not take the inventor's mind off his business for one instant. He
was quite alert at his window, looking ahead, as Koku was at the
open doorway of the cab.
Not a mile outside of Cliff City, and on this eastbound side of
the right of way, was a long siding and a shipping point for
timber. It was sometimes a busy point; but at this time of year
there were no lumbermen about and no activities in the adjacent
forest.
The Hercules 0001 came spinning along from the Cliff City
yards, and Tom Swift gave scarcely a glance to the joint of the
switch ahead. He had been over it so many times of late, and knew
that it was always locked. The railroad did not even keep a man
here at this season.
Suddenly Koku emitted a wild yell. He startled everybody else
in the cab, as he flung his huge body more than half out of the
doorway and prepared to jump--or so it seemed.
Ned shrieked a warning to the big fellow. Mr. Damon began to
bless everything in sight. But it was Tom, quite as excited as
his friends, who understood what Koku shouted:
"Big Feet! Big Feet! I see um Big Feet, Master!"
The next moment he threw himself from the rapidly moving
locomotive. He might have been killed easily enough. But
fortunately he landed feet first in the drift beside the rails,
and remained upright as he slid down into the ditch.
Tom, glancing ahead again, saw the flash of a man in a checked
Mackinaw running up through the open wood and away from the right
of way. He could not be sure of Andy O'Malley's figure at that
distance; but he could be pretty confident of Koku's
identification.
And then, with a shock that gripped and almost paralyzed his
mind, Tom saw again the switch ahead of the pilot of the Hercules
0001. The switch was open, and at the speed the electric
locomotive had attained, if she did not jump the rails, it seemed
scarcely possible that she could be stopped before hitting the
bumper at the end of the siding!
Chapter XXII
A Desperate Chase
These moments were fraught with peril, and not alone peril to
the huge machine that Tom Swift had built, but peril to those who
remained in the cab of the electric locomotive, as her forward
trucks struck the open switch.
There was a mighty jerk that brought a shout from Ned Newton's
lips and a grunt from Mr. Damon. Tom clung to his swivel-seat,
staring ahead.
The pilot of the electric locomotive shot over on the siding;
the forward trucks followed, then the great drivers. The whole
locomotive swerved into the siding, but for several breathless
seconds Tom was not at all sure that the monster would not jump
the rails and head into the ditch!
Meanwhile his gaze measured the speed of that flying figure in
the Mackinaw as it scuttled up the slope through the open grove
of hard wood and pine. He could not at first see Koku, but he
knew the giant was headed for the fugitive, whether the latter
proved to be Andy O'Malley or not.
Tom's gaze flashed to what lay ahead of the electric
locomotive. As it seemed to joggle back into balance, gain its
uprightness, as it were, the inventor saw the great, log-braced
bumper between the two rails at the end of the siding. With what
force would the locomotive hit that obstruction?
Until the trailers were over the switch Tom dared not give her
the brakes. To lock the brake shoes upon the wheels might easily
throw the locomotive off the rails. But the instant he felt the
tail of the long locomotive swerve off the switch he jabbed the
compressed air lever and the wild shriek of the brake shoes
answered to his effort.
Then the bumper was but a few yards ahead. The electric
locomotive was bound to collide with it. And under the speed at
which it had been running, now scarcely reduced by half, the
collision was apt to be a tragic happening!
Weeks of effort might be ruined in that moment! If the crash
was serious, thousands of dollars might be lost! In truth, Tom
Swift apprehended the possibility of a disaster, the complete
results of which might put the test of his invention forward for
weeks--perhaps for months.
Nor could he do a thing to avert the disaster. He had reversed
and set the brakes immediately after the last wheel of the
trailer was on the siding. Nothing more could he do as the great
electric locomotive bore down upon the solid timber at the far
end of this short track.
Those few seconds, as the locked wheels slid toward the end of
the siding, were about as hard to bear as any experience the
young inventor had ever gone through. It was not so much the
peril of the accident, it was the possibility of what might
happen to the locomotive.
Within those few moments, however, Tom considered more than the
safety of his companions and himself, and more than the peril of
wreck to his locomotive. He considered the schedule of the trains
on this division of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos and remembered all
those that might be within this sector at this time.
If the locomotive smashed into the bumper with force enough to
wreck the structure, would some approaching train on the
westbound track not be endangered?
The thought was parent to Tom's act before the collision
occurred. With a single swift motion he reached for the signaling
apparatus which he had established in connection with his
wireless telephone.
Just the moment before the head of the locomotive rammed that
seemingly immovable barrier at the end of the siding there
flashed into the air from Tom's annunciator the code word agreed
upon announcing a wreck, and the number of the sector on which
the electric locomotive was then running.
The next moment the crash occurred.
Tom had leaped up with a shout of warning. "Hang on!" was his
cry. But when the locomotive had struck and rebounded Ned, from
far down the aisle of the locomotive, wanted to know in a very
peevish tone what he should have hung on to?
"My elbows!" he groaned. "I've skinned 'em, and my back has got
a twist in it like the Irishman thought he had when he put on his
overalls hind-side to. What's happened?"
"Bless my radiolite!" growled Mr. Damon. "My watch crystal is
broken all to finders, if you want to know. Bless my shock-
absorbers! you won't do this locomotive a bit of good, Tom Swift,
if you stop it so abruptly."
"And that's the surest word you ever said" responded Tom,
hurrying to the door. "I don't know what's broken, but we're
still on the rails. The most immediate thing to learn, is the
where-abouts of the fellow who did this."
"Who opened the switch?" cried Ned.
"I believe it was Andy O'Malley. Come on, Ned! Koku is after
him and I don't want him to tear O'Malley apart before I get
there."
"O'Malley has got powerful interests behind him, and it might
go hard with Koku if he injured the spy and some of these
Westerners caught him," suggested Mr. Damon.
"They ought to thank Koku for manhandling the fellow--if he
does," said Ned.
"As a matter of fact," replied Tom, "Koku will merely hold to
the fellow until we get there. But my giant's strength is
enormous, and he does not always know the strength of his grasp.
he might hurt the fellow. Come on," and Tom leaped from the
doorway of the electric locomotive.
Ned leaped down the ladder after his chum.
"Which way did they go?" he asked.
"Across the ditch and up the hill," said Tom. "Mr. Damon!" he
called back to that eccentric man, "will you please remain there
and watch the locomotive?"
"I certainly will. And I'm armed, too," shouted Mr. Damon.
"Don't fear for this locomotive, Tom. I am right on the job."
Tom waved his hand in reply, leaped the ditch, and started up
through the wood. Ned was close behind him, and the two young men
ran as hard as they could in the direction Tom had seen Andy
O'Malley, followed by the giant, running.
In places the earth was slippery with pine needles, and the
ground was elsewhere rough. Therefore the chums did not make much
speed in running after the giant and his quarry. But Tom was sure
of the direction in which the two had disappeared, and he and Ned
kept doggedly on.
They went over the crest of the hill and lost sight of the
siding and the locomotive. Here was a sharp descent into a gulch,
and some rods away, in the bottom of this gully, the young
fellows obtained their first sight of Koku. He was still running
with mighty strides and was evidently within sight of the man he
had set out after in such haste.
"Hey! Koku!" shouted Tom Swift.
The giant's hearing was of the keenest. He glanced back and
raised his arm in greeting. But he did not slacken his pace.
"He must see O'Malley, Tom," cried Ned Newton.
"I am sure he does. And I want to get there about as soon as
Koku grabs the fellow," panted Tom.
"He'll maul O'Malley unmercifully," said Ned.
"I don't want Koku to injure him," admitted Tom, and he
increased his own stride as he plunged down into the gully.
The young inventor distanced his chum within the next few
moments. Tom ran like a deer. He reached the bottom of the gully
and kept on after Koku's crashing footsteps. At every jump, too,
he began to shout to the giant:
"Koku! Hold him!"
The giant's voice boomed back through the heavy timber: "I
catch him! I hold him for Master! I break all um bones! Wait till
Koku catch him!"
"Hold him, Koku!" yelled Tom again. "Be careful and don't hurt
him till I get there!"
He could not see what the giant was doing. The timber was
thicker down here. It might be that the giant would seize the man
roughly. His zeal in Tom's cause was great, and, of course, his
strength was enormous.
Yet Tom did not want to call the giant off the trail. Andy
O'Malley must be captured at this time. He had done enough, too
much, indeed, in attempting the ruin of Tom's plans. Before the
matter went any further the young inventor was determined that
Montagne Lewis' spy should be put where he would be able to do no
more harm.
But he did not want the man permanently injured. He knew now
that Koku was so wildly excited that he might set upon O'Malley
as he would upon an enemy in his own country.
"Koku! Stop! Wait for me!" Tom finally shouted.
Now the young inventor got no reply from the giant. Had the
latter got so far ahead that he no longer heard his master's
command?
Tom pounded on, working his legs like pistons, putting every
last ounce of energy he possessed into his effort. This was
indeed a desperate chase.
Chapter XXIII
Mr. Damon at Bay
Mr. Wakefield Damon was a very odd and erratic gentleman, but
he did not lack courage. He was much more disturbed by the
possible injury to Tom Swift's invention by this collision with
the bumper at the end of the timber siding than he had been by
his own danger at the time of the accident.
He did not understand enough about the devices Tom had built in
the forward end of the locomotive cab to understand, by any
casual examination, if they were at all injured. But when he
climbed down beside the track he saw at once that the forward end
of the locomotive had received more than a little injury.
The pilot, or cow-catcher, looked more like an iron cobweb than
it did like anything else. The wheels of the forward trucks had
not left the track, but the impact of the heavy locomotive with
the bumper had been so great that the latter was torn from its
foundations. A little more and the electric locomotive would have
shot off the end of the rails into the ditch.
While Mr. Damon was examining the front of the locomotive, and
Tom and Ned remained absent, he suddenly observed a group of men
hurrying out of the forest on the other side of the H. & P. A.
right of way. They were not railroad men--at least, they were not
dressed in uniform--but they were drawn immediately to the
locomotive.
The leader of the party was a squarely built man with a
determined countenance and a heavy mustache much blacker than his
iron gray hair. He was a bullying looking man, and he strode
around the rear of the locomotive and came forward just as though
he was confident of boarding the machine by right.
Mr. Damon, knowing himself in the wilderness and not liking the
appearance of this group of strangers, had retired at once to the
cab, and now stood in the doorway.
"Where's that young fool Swift?" growled the man with the dyed
mustache, looking up at Mr. Damon and laying one hand upon the
rail beside the ladder.
"Don't know any such person," declared Mr. Damon promptly.
"You don't know Tom Swift?" cried the man.
"Oh! That's another matter," said Mr. Damon coolly. "I don't
know any fool named Swift, either young or old. Bless my
blinkers! I should say not."
"Isn't he here?" demanded the man, gruffly.
"Tom Swift isn't here just now--no."
"I'm coming up," announced the stranger, and started to put his
foot on the first rung of the iron ladder.
"You're not," said Mr. Damon, promptly.
"What's that?" ejaculated the man.
"You only think you are coming up here. But you are not. Bless
my fortune telling cards!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, "I should say
not."
At this point the black-mustached man began to splutter words
and threats so fast that nobody could quite understand him. Mr.
Damon, however, did not shrink in the least. He stood adamant in
the doorway of the cab.
Finding little relief in bad language, the enemy made another
attempt to climb up. For one thing, he was physically brave. He
did not call on his companions to go where he feared to.
"I'll show you!" he bawled, and scrambled up the rungs of the
ladder.
Mr. Damon did show him. He drew from some pocket a black object
with a bulb and a long barrel. Somebody below on the cinder path
shouted:
"Look out, boss lie's got a gun!"
At that moment the marauder reached out to seize Mr. Damon's
coat. Then the object in Mr. Damon's hand spat a fine spray into
the florid face of the enemy!
"Whoo! Achoo! By gosh!" bawled the big man, and he fell back
screaming other ejaculations.
"Bless my face and eyes!" cried Mr. Damon. "What did I tell
you? And you other fellows want to notice it. Tom Swift isn't
here just at this precise moment; but he is guarding his
locomotive just the same. He invented this ammonia pistol, and I
should say it was effectual. Do you?"
The eccentric man was shrewd enough now to keep behind the jamb
of the cab door. For some of these fellows, he realized, might be
armed with more deadly weapons than his own.
"Hey, Mr. Lewis!" cried one big fellow, "d'you want we should
get that fellow for you?"
"I want to know how badly that blamed thing is smashed,"
replied the big man with the dyed mustache savagely. "Where's
O'Malley?"
"O'Malley's lit out, Boss, like I told you. That giant and them
other fellows is after him."
"Break into that cab! Oh! My eyes! I'll kill that old fool!
Break a way in there--What's that?"
In pain as he was, his other senses were alert. He was first to
hear the screeching whistle of the on-coming freight.
"Think they got wind of this so quick?" demanded Montagne
Lewis, for it was he. "Are they sending help from Cliff City?"
"It's a regular freight," returned one of his men.
"She's comm' a-whizzin'," added another. "Right down the
eastbound track. If the crew see us--"
"Wait!" commanded Lewis. "Isn't that switch open?"
"You bet it is, Boss."
"Let it be, then," cried the chief plotter. "Let 'em run into
it. That freight will smash up this electric locomotive more
completely than we could possibly do it. Stand away, men, and let
her go!"
A sharp curve in the right of way hid the siding, as well as
the open switch into it, from the gaze of the engineer who held
the throttle of the coming freight. His locomotive drew a string
of empties, eastbound, and having had a heavy pull of it coming
up the grade to Cliff City, as soon as he had got the highball
from the yardmaster there, he had "let her out," and was now
coming to the head of the down grade to Hammon at high speed.
As it chanced, the wireless receiving station of Tom's new
telephone system was not yet completed at Cliff City. The news of
the wreck of the Hercules 0001 and her position had not been
relayed to the master of the Cliff City yards.
That employee of the H. & P. A. had taken a chance in letting
the string of empties through his block. He knew the electric
locomotive was somewhere ahead, but he thought it would be making
its usual time and would have already passed Half Way.
But the situation was serious. The freight was coming along at
top speed and the switch into the siding was still open. Montagne
Lewis and his crew of ruffians might well stand back and let what
seemed sure to happen, happen! The driving freight must do more
harm to Tom Swift's invention than they could have hoped to do
with the sledges and bars they had brought with them to the spot.
Mr. Wakefield Damon had shown his courage already. He would
have been glad to do more to save Tom's locomotive from further
injury, but he did not realize what was threatening. He did not
hear the shriek of the freight engine's whistle.
Chapter XXIV
Putting the Enemy to Flight
The pilot and headlight of the freight locomotive came around
the turn and the freight thundered on toward the switch. Seeing
the group of men standing by the stalled electric locomotive, and
the locomotive itself in the clear of the siding, the driver of
the freight did not suppose the switch was open. Nobody who was
not a criminal would have stood by idly in such an emergency and
let the freight run into an open switch.
Therefore, for the first minute, the coming engineer did not
observe his danger. Lewis and his gang stared at the head of the
freight and did nothing. They had moved hastily back from the
siding so as to be clear of the wreckage. Mr. Damon was in the
front of the cab of Hercules 0001 and had no idea of the
approaching menace.
But of a sudden a loud shout echoed through the wood. Tom Swift
came over the ridge and started toward his invention at top
speed. From that height he saw the freight train coming, he
observed the men standing at the siding, and he recognized
Montagne Lewis, roughly as the railroad magnate was dressed.
Instantly Tom realized what was about to happen--what would
surely occur--and he saw what must be done if the utter wreck of
his locomotive was to be averted. Yelling at the top of his
voice, he leaped down the slope.
"That's Swift!" shouted Lewis. "Stop him!" But the men he had
hired to do his wicked work fell back instead of trying to halt
the young inventor. It was not Tom's appearance that made them
quail. Over the ridge there appeared a second figure--and a more
fearful or threatening apparition none of them had ever before
seen!
Koku came running with the limp body of Andy O'Malley slung
over his shoulder like a bag of meal. The fellows knew it was
Andy from his dress.
The giant came down the slope after Tom as though he wore the
seven-league boots. The fellows Lewis had hired to wreck the
electric locomotive shrank back from before both Tom and the
giant.
"Get him!" yelled the half blinded Lewis again.
"Get your grandmother!" bawled one of the men suddenly. "Good-
night!"
He turned tail and ran, disappearing almost instantly into the
thicker woods. And his mates, after a moment of wavering, sped
after him. Lewis was left alone, quite helpless because of the
ammonia fumes.
As a matter of fact not all of O'Malley's predicament was due
to Koku. The rascal, exhausted by his run and half blind through
fright and rage, had stumbled, fallen, and struck his head on a
root, which rendered him unconscious.
This, of course, Lewis and his ruffians did not know. All the
men of the railroad president's gang saw was the gigantic Koku
coming along in great strides, bearing the unconscious O'Malley,
who was a burly fellow, as though he were a featherweight. No
wonder they fled from such a monster.
Tom had reached the switch, and he was several seconds ahead of
the freight locomotive. The engineer saw the open switch then;
but he was too late to stop his train.
Going into reverse, however, helped some. Tom seized the switch
lever and threw it over, locking it in place, just as the forward
trucks thundered upon the joint. The train swept by in safety,
and the engineer leaned from his cab window to wave a grateful
hand at the young inventor.
Neither the engineer nor the crew of the freight understood the
meaning of the scene at the timber siding. All they learned was
that Tom Swift had saved the freight from a possible wreck.
The young inventor turned sharply from the switch and motioned
with his hand to Koku.
"Throw that fellow into the cab, Koku," he commanded.
The giant did as he was told, just as Ned Newton came panting
to the spot.
"Did they do any harm, Tom?" he cried. Then he saw Montagne
Lewis standing by, and he seized his chum's arm. "Do you see what
I see, Tom?" he demanded, earnestly.
"I guess we both see the same snake," rejoined his chum. "And
I mean to scotch it."
"Montagne Lewis!" murmured Ned. "And we've got his chief tool."
Tom said nothing to his chum, hut he approached Lewis with
determined mien.
"I can see something has happened to you, Mr. Lewis, and I can
guess what it is. The effect of that ammonia will blow away after
a time. Ask your friend, Andy O'Malley. He knows all about it,
for he sampled it back East, in Shopton."
"I'm going to get square for this, young man," growled the
railroad magnate. "You know who I am. And that fellow in the cab
knew me, too. How dared he shoot that stuff into my face and
eyes?"
"I fancy it didn't take much daring on Mr. Damon's part," and
Tom actually chuckled. "A big crook isn't any more important in
our eyes than a little crook. We've got your henchman,
O'Malley--"
"And you'd better let him go. I'm telling you," snarled Lewis.
"I'll ruin you in this country, Tom Swift. I've got influence--"
"You won't have much after this thing comes out. And believe
me, I mean to spread it abroad. I've got nothing to win or lose
from you, Mr. Lewis. As for O'Malley, I'll put him behind the
bars for a good long term."
"You'll do a lot--"
"More than you think," said Tom. "Koku!" The giant had pitched
O'Malley, who was still senseless, into the cab, and now was
coming up behind Lewis.
"Yes, Master," said the giant.
"Get him!"
"Yes, Master," said Koku, and to Lewis' startled amazement, the
next instant he was in the hands of the giant!
He screamed and threatened, and even kicked, to no avail. When
he was pitched into the electric locomotive he was held under the
threat of Mr. Damon's ammonia pistol until Tom and Ned and the
giant entered and the door was shut. Then Koku proceeded to tie
both the prisoners by wrist and ankle while the others examined
the mechanism of the Hercules 0001.
The pantagraph had been torn off the trolley wires when the
locomotive had gone on the siding. But now Tom climbed to the
roof of the locomotive, and with Koku's aid managed to set the
rear pantagraph at such an angle that its wheels caught the
trolley cables again, and once more the current was pumped into
the Hercules 0001.
Tom tried out the several parts of the mechanism and found
that, despite the jar of the collision, nothing was really
injured.
"I built this thing to withstand hard usage," he declared with
pride. "The Swift Hercules Electric Locomotives will not be built
for parlor ornaments. She is going to run into Hendrickton under
her own power, in spite of a smashed cows catcher and target
lights."
"Is nothing really injured, Tom?" asked Mr, Damon. "Bless my
dinner set! I thought everything had gone to smash when she hit
that bumper."
"She will be as good as new in a week," declared Tom, with
conviction.
This prophecy of the young inventor proved to be true. A week
from that day the public test of the electric locomotive on the
Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad was held. A picked delegation of
railroad men was present to observe and marvel, with Mr.
Bartholomew; but Montagne Lewis, the president of the H. & W.,
was not one of those who attended.
Of course, Lewis soon got out of jail on bail. But the
accusation against him was a serious one. His guilt would be
proved by his own employee, Andy O'Malley, who was in a hospital
for the time being.
O'Malley had got enough. He had turned State's evidence and
implicated his employer. Influential and wealthy as Lewis was,
he could not escape trial with O'Malley when the time came.
"One thing sure, Lewis has got all he wants. He isn't likely to
try any more crooked work against the H. & P. A.," Mr.
Bartholomew said. "I can thank you for that, Torn. Swift, as well
as for your invention. You have saved the day for my railroad."
"You can thank Koku," chuckled Tom. "If he hadn't spied and
identified 'Big Feet,' we might not have caught O'Malley, and,
through O'Malley, implicated Montagne Lewis. You give Koku a new
suit of clothes, Mr. Bartholomew, and we will call it square. But
be sure and have the pattern of the goods loud enough."
This conversation took place while the party of guests was
gathering to board Mr. Bartholomew's private car, attached to the
Hercules 0001. Mr. Damon was one of the guests and so was Ned
Newton. Tom took into the cab a crew of H. & P. A. men who would
hereafter drive the huge locomotive and take care of her.
The semaphore signal dropped and the electric locomotive
started as quietly as a baby going to sleep! There was not a jar
as the train moved off the siding and over the switches to the
main line.
The dispatcher had arranged a clear road for them. Tom knew
that he had a free track ahead of him--a level of ninety-odd
miles to the Hammon yards. As he passed the Hendrickton shops he
touched the siren lever for a moment, and the shrill voice of the
Hercules 0001 bade the town good-bye.
The next minute the visitors in the private car grabbed out
their split-second watches and began to murmur. The electric
locomotive had begun to travel!
Chapter XXV
Speed and Success
"What town is that?"
"Looks like a splotch of paint on a board fence, we went by so
quick."
"I've lost count, Bartholomew. Where are we?"
Ned Newton listened to these comments from the visiting
railroad men with delight. In reply to a question of his
neighbor, the grinning financial manager of the Swift
Construction Company paid:
"No, sir. That isn't a picket fence. It's the telegraph poles
you see, and they are no nearer together than on another
railroad. But we're going some."
"Bless my railroad stock!" shouted Mr. Damon, "I should say we
were."
The electric, locomotive and the private car were hurled toward
the Pas Alos Range at a speed that almost frightened some of the
guests.
"Three-quarters of an hour!" gasped one man as they began to
see the outskirts of Hammon. "And ninety-six miles? Great Scott,
Bartholomew! that's over two miles a minute!"
"That is the speed we set out to get," Mr. Richard Bartholomew
said, with quite as much pride as though he had done it all
himself.
But it had been his suggestion and his money that had
accomplished this wonder. Tom Swift was willing to give the
railroad president his share of the fame.
The train scarcely slackened speed at Hammon, for Tom got the
signal announcing a clear track ahead, and he bucked the grade
with all the power he could get from the feed wires. This hill,
so well known to him now, was surmounted at a slightly decreased
speed; but it was a wonderful display of power after all.
They went down the other side to Panboro and there linked up
with an eastbound freight that the Hercules 0001 snatched over
the mountain to Hammon at a pace slightly exceeding forty-five
miles an hour--at least twice the speed that any two oil-burning
locomotives could attain. As for the Jandels, they were not in
the same class at all with Tom Swift's locomotive!
"Bless my speedometer!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, when the train
pulled down and stopped again at the Hendrickton terminal. "This
is the greatest test of speed and power I ever heard of. Why, a
coal burner or an oil burner isn't in it with this Hercules
locomotive! What do you say, Mr. Bartholomew?"
"I'll say I am satisfied--completely and thoroughly satisfied,
Mr. Damon," said the president of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
Railroad frankly. "Mr. Swift has fulfilled his contract in every
particular."
An hour later the young inventor and his two friends were in
conference with Mr. Bartholomew over a new contract. The bonus of
a hundred thousand dollars would be paid at once to the Swift
Construction Company. But as the elder Swift's name would be
needed on the new contract for the building of other Hercules
locomotives, Tom had an idea.
"We won't send the papers East for father to sign," he said. "I
want him to see the locomotive in real action. And I know where
he can borrow a private car and come out here in comfort. Rad can
come with him."
"Bless my valentines!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, "I bet somebody
else will come too."
Mr. Damon must have been a prophet, for a fortnight later, when
the borrowed car got in to the Hendrickton terminal at the tail
of the transcontinental flyer, Tom Swift saw first of all Mary
Nestor's rosy face on the platform of the car.
"Tom! are you all right?" she cried, beaming down upon the
young inventor.
"No. Half of me is left," he said, grinning up at her. "You
look great, Mary!"
"Do you think so?" she cried, dimpling. "Well, if anybody
should ask you, Mr. Tom Swift, you look very good to me."
"Don't make me swell all up, Mary," he laughed. "How's father?"
"Splendid! And Rad--"
"Eradicate Sampson is sho' 'nough puffectly all right," broke
in the voice of the old colored man, eager to make himself heard
and seen. "Here I is, Massa Tom. What dat lizard doin' here?
Ain't he a sight?"
The old man had caught sight of Koku in the wonderful new suit
Mr. Bartholomew had ordered made for the giant. A Navajo blanket
had nothing on that suit for a mixture of colors, and Koku
strutted like a turkey-gobbler.
"My lawsy!" gasped Rad again, "he's as purty as a sunset. Is
dat de way de tailors out here build a man up? Sure's yo live,
Massa Tom, I needs a new suit of clo'es myself."
And before he got away from Hendrickton, Rad Sampson sported a
suit off the same piece of goods as that of Koku's. Otherwise
there might have been a lasting feud between the giant and the
Swift's ancient serving man.
Mr. Barton Swift had stood the easy journey in the private car
very well. Before he would sign the contract that Mr. Bartholomew
offered, he wished to see for himself just how good his son's
invention was.
They made another test from Hendrickton to Panboro, over the
"official route," as Ned called it. The time made by Hercules
0001 was even a little better than before.
That the invention was well nigh perfect, and that it could do
even more than Mr. Bartholomew had hoped or Tom had claimed, was
Mr. Swift's conviction.
"Tom," he said to his son, "you have done a wonderful thing.
Not only have you completed a marvelous invention and gained
thereby a lot of money, and more in prospect, but you have aided
in the world's progress to no small degree.
"Speed in transportation is the big problem before the world of
commerce today. To move goods from point to point safely and
cheaply, as well as rapidly, is the great task of this age. We
are entering the Age of Speed. The railroads must solve the
problem to compete with motor-truck traffic and fast boats on the
lakes and rivers of our land.
"You have, by your invention, shoved the clock of progress
forward. I am proud of you, my boy. I know now that, no matter
what may happen to me, you will make an enviable mark in the
world of invention.
"You have done much before for the Government in time of
stress. But war engines of any kind are not worthy examples of
inventive genius beside such a thing as this.
"It is the inventions of peace, rather than those of war, that
stand for human progress."
Coming back over the mountain, Mary Nestor rode in the cab with
Tom. She sat on the swivel stool, in fact, and handled the
controls for part of the way. But she gave up the driver's place
to Tom before they reached the timber siding east of Cliff City.
"I cannot go by that place without a shudder," Mary said to the
inventor. "Ned and Mr. Damon told me all about that accident.
Suppose you had been killed, Tom!"
"I see I'll have to build an invention that will make that
impossible," chuckled the young fellow. "Make what impossible?"
"Some invention that will make it positively certain that no
matter what I do or where I go, nothing can harm me. Nothing else
will suit you, Mary, I plainly see."
"Well," returned the girl, smiling fondly at him. "I admit that
would satisfy me completely!"
This Isn't ALL!
Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have
made in this book?
Would you like to read other stories continuing their
adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining
by the same author?
On the reverse side of the wrapper which comes with this book,
you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at
the same store where you got this book.
Don't throw away the Wrapper
Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have.
But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a
complete catalog.
THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
By VICTOR APPLETON
Uniform Style of Binding. Individual Colored Wrappers.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
Every boy possesses some form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is
a bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make
the most interesting kind of reading.
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR CYCLE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS
TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE
TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER
TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON
TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT OIL GUSHER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS CHEST OF SECRETS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRLINE EXPRESS
THE DON STURDY SERIES
By VICTOR APPLETON
Individual Colored Wrappers and Text illustrations by
WALTER S. ROGERS
Every Volume Complete in Itself
In company with his uncles, one a mighty hunter and the other a
noted scientist, Don Sturdy travels far and wide, gaining much
useful knowledge and meeting many thrilling adventures.
DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY;
Or, Autoing in the Land of the Caravans.
An engrossing tale of the Sahara Desert, of encounters with
wild animals and crafty Arabs.
DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS;
Or, Lost in the Jungles of the Amazon.
Don's uncle, the hunter, took an order for some of the biggest
snakes to be found in South America--to be delivered alive! The
filling of that order brought keen excitement to the boy.
DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD;
Or, The Old Egyptian's Great Secret.
A fascinating tale of exploration and adventure in the Valley
of Kings in Egypt. Once the whole party became lost in the maze
of cavelike tombs far underground.
DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE;
Or, Cast Away in the Land of Ice.
Don and his uncles joined an expedition bound by air across the
north pole. A great polar blizzard nearly wrecks the airship.
DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES;
Or, The Trail of the Ten Thousand Smokes.
An absorbing tale of adventures among the volcanoes of Alaska
in a territory but recently explored. A story that will make Don
dearer to his readers than ever.
THE RADIO BOYS SERIES
(Trademark Registered)
By ALLEN CHAPMAN
Author of the "Railroad Series," Etc.
Individual Colored Wrappers. Illustrated.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
A new series for boys giving full details of radio work, both
in sending and receiving--telling how small and large amateur
sets can be made and operated, and how some boys got a lot of fun
and adventure out of what they did. Each volume from first to
last is so thoroughly fascinating, so strictly up-to-date and
accurate, we feel sure all lads will peruse them with great
delight.
Each volume has a Foreword by Jack Binns, the well-known radio
expert.
THE RADIO BOYS' FIRST WIRELESS;
Or, Winning the Ferberton Prize.
THE RADIO BOYS AT OCEAN POINT;
Or, The Messsage That Saved the Ship.
THE RADIO BOYS AT THE SENDING STATION;
Or, Making Good in the Wireless Room.
THE RADIO BOYS AT MOUNTAIN PASS;
Or, The Midnight Call for Assistance.
THE RADIO BOYS TRAILING A VOICE;
Or, Solving a Wireless Mystery.
THE RADIO BOYS WITH THE FOREST RANGERS;
Or, The Great Fire on Spruce Mountain.
THE RADIO BOYS WITH THE ICEBERG PATROL;
Or, Making Safe the Ocean Lanes.
RADIO BOYS WITH THE FLOOD FIGHTERS;
Or, Saving the City in the Valley.
THE RAILROAD SERIES
By ALLEN CHAPMAN
Author of the "Radio Boys," Etc.
Uniform Style of Binding. Illustrated.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
In this line of books there is revealed the whole workings of a
great American railroad system. There are adventures in
abundance--railroad wrecks, dashes through forest fires, the
pursuit of a "wildcat" locomotive, the disappearance of a pay car
with a large sum of money on board--but there is much more than
this--the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the
working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time"
in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad
securities by evil men who wish to rule or ruin.
RALPH OF THE ROUND HOUSE;
Or, Bound to Become a Railroad Man.
RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER;
Or, Clearing the Track.
RALPH ON THE ENGINE;
Or, The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail.
RALPH ON THE OVERLAND EXPRESS;
Or, The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer.
RALPH, THE TRAIN DISPATCHER;
Or, the Mystery of the Pay Car.
RALPH ON THE ARMY TRAIN;
Or, The Young Railroader's Most Daring Exploit.
RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER;
Or, The Wreck at Shadow Valley.
RALPH AND THE MISSING MAIL POUCH;
Or, The Stolen Government Bonds.
THE RIDDLE CLUB BOOKS
By ALICE DALE HARDY
Individual Colored Wrappers. Attractively Illustrated.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
Here is as ingenious a series of books for little folks as has
ever appeared since "Alice in Wonderland." The idea of the Riddle
books is a little group of children--three girls and three boys
decide to form a riddle club. Each book is full of the adventures
and doings of these six youngsters, but as an added attraction
each book is filled with a lot of the best riddles you ever
heard.
THE RIDDLE CLUB AT HOME
An absorbing tale that all boys and girls will enjoy reading.
How the members of the club fixed up a clubroom in the Larue
barn, and how they, later on, helped solve a most mysterious
happening, and how one of the members won a valuable prize, is
told in a manner to please every young reader.
THE RIDDLE CLUB IN CAMP
The club members went into camp on the edge of a beautiful
lake. Here they had rousing good times swimming, boating and
around the campfire. They fell in with a mysterious old man known
as The Hermit of Triangle Island. Nobody knew his real name or
where be came from until the propounding of a riddle solved these
perplexing questions.
THE RIDDLE CLUB THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS
This volume takes in a great number of winter sports, including
skating and sledding and the building of a huge snowman. It also
gives the particulars of how the club treasurer lost the dues
entrusted to his care and what the melting of the great snowman
revealed.
THE RIDDLE CLUB AT SUNRISE BEACH
This volume tells how the club journeyed to the seashore and
how they not only kept up their riddles but likewise had good
times on the sand and on the water. Once they got lost in a fog
and are marooned on an island. Here they made a discovery that
greatly pleased the folks at home.
THE HONEY BUNCH BOOKS
By HELEN LOUISE THORNDYKE
Individual Colored Wrappers and Text Illustrations Drawn by
WALTER S. ROGERS
A new line of fascinating tales for little girls. Honey Bunch
is a dainty, thoughtful little girl, and to know her is to take
her to your heart at once.
HONEY BUNCH: JUST A LITTLE GIRL
Happy days at home, helping mamma and the washerlady. And Honey
Bunch helped the house painters too--or thought she did.
HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST VISIT TO THE CITY
What wonderful sights Honey Bunch saw when she went to visit
her cousins in New York! And she got lost in a big hotel and
wandered into a men's convention!
HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST DAYS ON THE FARM
Can you remember bow the farm looked the first time you visited
it? How big the cows and horses were, and what a roomy place to
play in the barn proved to be?
HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST VISIT TO THE SEASHORE
Honey Bunch soon got used to the big waves and thought playing
in the sand great fun. And she visited a merry-go-round. and took
part in a seaside pageant.
HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST LITTLE GARDEN
It was great sport to dig and to plant with one's own little
garden tools. But best of all was when Honey Bunch won a prize at
the flower show.
HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST DAYS IN CAMP
It was a great adventure for Honey Bunch when she journeyed to
Camp Snapdragon. It was wonderful to watch the men erect the
tent, and wonderful to live in it and have good times on the
shore and in the water.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES
of the By LAURA LEE HOPE
Author "Bobbsey Twins," "Bunny Brown" Series, Etc.
Uniform Style of Binding. Individual Colored Wrappers.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
These tales take in the various adventures participated in by
several bright, up-to-date girls who love outdoor life.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE;
Or, Camping and Tramping for Fun and Health.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE;
Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Motor Boat Gem.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR;
Or, The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP;
Or, Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA;
Or, Wintering in the Sunny South.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT OCEAN VIEW;
Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON PINE ISLAND;
Or, A Cave and What it Contained.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN ARMY SERVICE;
Or, Doing Their Bit for Uncle Sam.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT THE HOSTESS HOUSE;
Or, Doing Their Best For the Soldiers.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT BLUFF POINT;
Or, A Wreck and A Rescue.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT WILD ROSE LODGE;
Or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN THE SADDLE;
Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AROUND THE CAMPFIRE;
Or, The Old Maid of the Mountains.
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON CAPE COD;
Or, Sally Ann of Lighthouse Rock.