“He has, eh?” remarked Tom, while a curious look came into his eyes. “Well, maybe I can build one that will beat his.”
And whether the young inventor did or not you can learn by reading the fifth volume of this series, to be called “Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout; Or, The Speediest Car on the Road.”
“Well, Tom, I certainly appreciate what you did for me in getting me a better position,” remarked Ned as they left the drug store. “I was beginning to think I’d never get promoted. Say, have you anything to do this evening? If you haven’t, I wish you’d come over to my house. I’ve got a lot of pictures I took while you were away.”
“Sorry, but I can’t,” replied Tom.
“Why, are you going to build another airship or submarine?”
“No, but I’m going to see— Oh, what do you want to know for, anyhow?” demanded the young inventor with a blush. “Can’t a fellow go see a girl without being cross-questioned?”
“Oh, of course,” replied Ned with a laugh. “Give Miss Nestor my regards,” and at this Tom blushed still more. But, as he said, that was his own affair.
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
Or, THE SPEEDIEST CAR ON THE ROAD
CHAPTER I
TOM HOPES FOR A PRIZE
“Father,” exclaimed Tom Swift, looking up from a paper he was reading, “I think I can win that prize!”
“What prize is that?” inquired the aged inventor, gazing away from a drawing of a complicated machine, and pausing in his task of making some intricate calculations. “You don’t mean to say, Tom, that you’re going to have a try for a government prize for a submarine, after all.”
“No, not a submarine prize, dad,” and the youth laughed. “Though our Advance would take the prize away from almost any other underwater boat, I imagine. No, it’s another prize I’m thinking about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I see by this paper that the Touring Club of America has offered three thousand dollars for the speediest electric car. The tests are to come off this fall, on a new and specially built track on Long Island, and it’s to be an endurance contest for twenty-four hours, or a race for distance, they haven’t yet decided. But I’m going to have a try for it, dad, and, besides winning the prize, I think I’ll take Andy Foger down a peg.
“What’s Andy been doing now?”
“Oh, nothing more than usual. He’s always mean, and looking for a chance to make trouble for me, but I didn’t refer to anything special He has a new auto, you know, and he boasts that it’s the fastest one in this country. I’ll show him that it isn’t, for I’m going to win this prize with the speediest car on the road.”
“But, Tom, you haven’t any automobile, you know,” and Mr. Swift looked anxiously at his son, who was smiling confidently. “You can’t be going to make your motor-cycle into an auto; are you?”
“No, dad.”
“Then how are you going to take part in the prize contest? Besides, electric cars, as far as I know, aren’t specially speedy.”
“I know it, and one reason why this club has arranged the contest is to improve the quality of electric automobiles. I’m going to build an electric runabout, dad.”
“An electric runabout? But it will have to be operated with a storage battery, Tom, and you haven’t—”
“I guess you’re going to say I haven’t any storage battery, dad,” interrupted Mr. Swift’s son. “Well, I haven’t yet, but I’m going to have one. I’ve been working on—”
“Oh, ho!” exclaimed the aged inventor with a laugh. “So that’s what you’ve been tinkering over these last few weeks, eh, Tom? I suspected it was some new invention, but I didn’t suppose it was that. Well, how are you coming on with it?”
“Pretty good, I think. I’ve got a new idea for a battery, and I made an experimental one. I gave it some pretty severe tests, and it worked fine.”
“But you haven’t tried it out in a car yet, over rough roads, and under severe conditions have you?”
“No, I haven’t had a chance. In fact, when I invented the battery I had no idea of using it on a car I thought it might answer for commercial purposes, or for storing a current generated by windmills. But when I read that account in the papers of the Touring Club, offering a prize for the best electric car, it occurred to me that I might put my battery into an auto, and win.”
“Hum,” remarked Mr. Swift musingly. “I don’t take much stock in electric autos, Tom. Gasolene seems to be the best, or perhaps steam, generated by gasolene. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. All the electric runabouts I ever saw, while they were very nice cars, didn’t seem able to go so very fast, or very far.”
“That’s true, but it’s because they didn’t have the right kind of a battery. You know an electric locomotive can make pretty good speed, Dad. Over a hundred miles an hour in tests.”
“Yes, but they don’t run by storage batteries. They have a third rail, and powerful motors,” and Mr. Swift looked quizzically at his son. He loved to argue with him, for he said it made Tom think, and often the two would thus thresh out some knotty point of an invention, to the interests of both.
“Of course, Dad, there is a good deal of theory in what I’m thinking of,” the lad admitted. “But it does seem to me that if you put the right kind of a battery into an automobile, it could scoot along pretty lively. Look what speed a trolley car can make.”
“Yes, Tom, but there again they get their power from an overhead wire.”
“Some of them don’t. There’s a new storage battery been invented by a New Jersey man, which does as well as the third rail or the overhead wire. It was after reading about his battery that I thought of a plan for mine. It isn’t anything like his; perhaps not as good in some ways, but, for what I want, it is better in some respects, I think. For one thing it can be recharged very quickly.”
“Now Tom, look here,” said Mr. Swift earnestly, laying aside his papers, and coming over to where his son sat. “You know I never interfere with your inventions. In fact, the more you think of the better I like it. The airship you helped build certainly did all that could be desired, and—”
“That reminds me. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon are out in it now,” interrupted Tom. “They ought to be back soon. Yes, Dad, the airship Red Cloud certainly scooted along.”
“And the submarine, too,” continued the aged inventor. “Your ideas regarding that were of service to me, and helped in our task of recovering the treasure, but I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in the storage battery. You may get it to work, but I don’t believe you can make it powerful enough to attain any great speed. Why don’t you confine yourself to making a battery for stationary work?”
“Because, Dad, I believe I can build a speedy car, and I’m going to try it. Besides I want to race Andy Foger, and beat him, even if I don’t win the prize. I’m going to build that car, and it will make fast time.”
“Well, go ahead, Tom,” responded his father, after a pause. “Of course you can use the shops here as much as you want, and Mr. Sharp, Mr. Jackson, and I will help you all we can. Only don’t be disappointed, that’s all.”
“I won’t, Dad. Suppose you come out to my shop and I’ll show you a sample battery I’ve been testing for the last week. I have it geared to a small motor, and it’s been running steadily for some time. I want to see what sort of a record it’s made.”
Father and son crossed the yard, and entered a shop which the lad considered exclusively his own. There he had made many machines, and pieces of apparatus, and had invented a number of articles which had been patented, and yielded him considerable of an income.
“There’s the battery, Dad,” he said, pointing to a complicated mechanism in one corner.
“What’s that buzzing noise?” asked Mr. Swift. “That’s the little motor I run from the new cells. Look here,” and Tom switched on an electric light above the experimental battery, from which he hoped so much. It consisted of a steel can, ab
out the size of the square gallon tin in which maple syrup comes, and from it ran two wires which were attached to a small motor that was industriously whirring away.
Tom looked at a registering gauge connected with it.
“That’s pretty good,” remarked the young inventor.
“What is it, Tom?” and his father peered about the shop.
“Why this motor has run an equivalent of two hundred miles on one charging of the battery! That’s much better than I expected. I thought if I got a hundred out of it I’d be doing well. Dad, I believe, after I improve my battery a bit, that I’ll have the very thing I want! I’ll install a set of them in a car, and it will go like the wind. I’ll—” Tom’s enthusiastic remarks were suddenly interrupted by a low, rumbling sound.
“Thunder!” exclaimed Mr. Swift. “The storm is coming, and Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon in the airship—”
Hardly had he spoken than there sounded a crash on the roof of the Swift house, not far away. At the same time there came cries of distress, and the crash was repeated.
“Come on, Dad! Something has happened!” yelled Tom, dashing from the shop, followed by his parent. They found themselves in the midst of a rain storm, as they raced toward the house, on the roof of which the smashing noise was again heard.
CHAPTER II
MR. DAMON’S STEERING
Tom Swift was a lad of action, and his quickness in hurrying out to investigate what had happened when he was explaining about his new battery, was characteristic of him. Those of my readers who know him, through having read the previous books of this series, need not be told this, but you who, perhaps, are just making his acquaintance, may care to know a little more about him.
As told in my first book, “Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle” the young inventor lived with his father, Barton Swift, a widower, in the town of Shopton, New York. Mr. Swift was also an inventor of note.
In my initial volume of this series, Tom became possessed of a motor-cycle in a peculiar way. It was sold to him by a Mr. Wakefield Damon, a wealthy gentleman who was unfortunate in riding it. On his speedy machine, which Tom improved by several inventions, he had a number of adventures. The principal one was being attacked by a number of bad men, known as the “Happy Harry Gang,” who wished to obtain possession of a valuable turbine patent model belonging to Mr. Swift. Tom was taking it to a lawyer, when he was waylaid, and chloroformed. Later he traced the gang, and, with the assistance of Mr. Damon and Eradicate Sampson, an aged colored man who made a living for himself and his mule, Boomerang, by doing odd jobs, the lad found the thieves and recovered a motor-boat which had been stolen. But the men got away.
In the second volume, called “Tom Swift and His Motor-Boat,” Tom bought at auction the boat stolen by, and recovered from, the thieves, and proceeded to improve it. While he was taking his father out on a cruise for Mr Swift’s health, the Happy Harry Gang made a successful attempt to steal some valuable inventions from the Swift house. Tom started to trace them, and incidentally he raced and beat Andy Foger, a rich bully. On their way down the lake, after the robbery, Tom, his father and Ned Newton, Tom’s chum, saw a man hanging from the trapeze of a blazing balloon over Lake Carlopa. The balloonist was Mr. John Sharp and he was rescued by Tom in a thrilling fashion. In his motor-boat, Tom had much pleasure, not the least of which was taking out a young lady named Miss Mary Nestor, whose acquaintance he had made after stopping her runaway horse, which his bicycle had frightened. Tom’s association with Miss Nestor soon ripened into something deeper than mere friendship.
It developed that Mr Sharp, whom Tom had saved from the burning balloon, was an aeronaut of note, and had once planned to build an airship. After his recovery from his thrilling experience, he mentioned the matter to Mr. Swift and his son, with whom he took up his residence. This fitted right in with Tom’s ideas, and soon father, son and the balloonist were constructing the Red Cloud, as they named their airship. It was finally completed, as related in “Tom Swift and His Airship,” made a successful trial trip, and won a prize. It was planned to make a longer journey, and Tom, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon agreed to go together. Mr. Damon was an odd individual, who was continuously blessing some part of his anatomy, his clothing or some inanimate object but, for all that, he was a fine man.
The night before Tom and his friends started off in their airship, the Shopton Bank vault was blown open and seventy-five thousand dollars was taken. Tom and his friends did not know of this, but, no sooner had the young inventor, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon sailed away, than the police arrived at Mr. Swift’s house to arrest them. They were charged with the robbery, and with having sailed away with the booty.
It appeared that Andy Foger said he had seen Tom hanging around the bank the night of the robbery, with a bag of burglar tools in his possession. Search was immediately begun for the airship, the occupants of which were, meanwhile, speeding on.
Tom and his two friends had trouble. They were nearly burned up in a forest fire, and were fired upon by a crowd of people with rifles, who, reading of the bank robbery and the reward offered for the capture of the thieves, hoped to bring down the airship. The fact that they were fired upon caused Tom and the two aeronauts to descend to make an investigation, and for the first time they learned of the bank theft. How they got track of the real robbers, took the sheriff with them in the airship, and raided the gang will be found set down at length in the book. Also how Tom administered well-deserved thrashing to Andy Foger.
Mr. Swift did not accompany his son in the airship, and when asked why he did not care to make the trip, said he was working on a new type of submarine boat, which he hoped to enter in the government trials, to win a prize. In the fourth volume of the series, called “Tom Swift and his Submarine,” you may read how successful Mr. Swift was.
When the submarine, called the Advance, was finished, the party made a trip to recover three hundred thousand dollars in gold from a sunken treasure ship, off the coast of Uruguay, South America. They sailed beneath the seas for many miles, and were in great peril at times. One reason for this was that a rival firm of submarine builders got wind of the treasure, and tried to get ahead of the Swifts in recovering it. How Tom and his friends succeeded in their quest, how they nearly perished at the bottom of the sea, how they were captured by a foreign war vessel, and sentenced to death, how they fought with a school of giant sharks and how they blew up the wreck to recover the money is all told of in the book.
On their return to civilization with the gold, Mr. Swift, Tom, and their friends deposited the money in the Shopton Bank, where Ned Newton worked. Ned was a bright lad, but had not been advanced as rapidly as he deserved, and Tom knew this. He asked his father to speak to the president, Mr. Pendergast, in Ned’s behalf, and, as a result the lad was made assistant cashier, for the request of a man who controlled a three hundred thousand dollar deposit was not to be despised.
In building the submarine Tom and his father rented a large cottage on the New Jersey seacoast, but, on returning from their treasure-quest they went back to Shopton, leaving the submarine at the boathouse of the shore cottage, which was near the city of Atlantis. That was in the fall of the year, and all that winter the young inventor had been busy on many things, not the least of which was his storage battery. It was now spring, and seeing the item in the paper, about the touring club prize for an electric auto, had given him a new idea.
But all thoughts of electric cars, and everything else, were driven from the mind of the young man, when, with his father, he rushed out to see the cause of the crash on the roof of the Swift homestead.
“There’s something up there, Tom,” called his father, as he splashed on through the rain.
“That’s right,” added his son. “And somebody, too, to judge by the fuss they’re making.”
“Maybe the house has been struck by lightning!” suggested the aged inventor.
“No, the storm isn’t severe enough for that; and, besides, if the house had been struck you’d hear
Mrs. Baggert yelling, Dad. She—”
At that moment a woman’s voice cried out:
“Mr. Swift! Tom! Where are you? Something dreadful has happened!”
“There she goes!” remarked Mr. Swift, as he splashed into a mud puddle.
“Bless my deflection rudder!” suddenly cried a voice from the flat roof of the Swift house. “Hello! I say, is anyone down there?”
“Yes, we are,” answered Tom. “Is that you, Mr. Damon?”
“Bless my collar button! It certainly is.”
“Where’s Mr. Sharp? I don’t hear him.”
“Oh, I’m here all right,” answered the balloonist. “I’m trying to get the airship clear of the chimney. Mr. Damon—”
“Yes, I steered wrong!” interrupted the odd man. “Bless my liver pin, but it was so dark I couldn’t see, and when that clap of thunder came I shifted the deflection rudder instead of the lateral one, and tried to knock over your chimney.”
“Are either of you hurt?” asked Mr. Swift anxiously.
“No, not at all,” replied Mr. Sharp. “We were moving slowly, ready for a landing.”
“Is the airship damaged?” inquired Tom.
“I don’t know. Not much, I guess,” was the answer of the aeronaut. “I’ve stopped the engine, and I don’t like to start it again until I can see what shape we’re in.”
“I’ll come up, with Mr. Jackson,” called Tom, and he hastily summoned Garret Jackson, an engineer, who had been in the service of Mr. Swift for many years. Together they proceeded to the roof by a stairway that led to a scuttle.
“Is anyone killed?” asked Mrs. Baggert, as Tom hurried up the stairs. “Don’t tell me there is, Tom!”
“Well, I don’t have to tell you, for no one is,” replied the young inventor with a laugh. “It’s all right. The airship tried to collide with the chimney, that’s all.”
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 52
