“Oh, I sincerely hope he’ll be all right,” remarked the balloonist. “We want you in this race. In fact, we’re going to feature you, as they say about the actors and story-writers. The committee is planning to do considerable advertising on the strength of Tom Swift, the well-known young inventor, being a contestant for the ten-thousand-dollar prize.”
“That’s very nice, I’m sure,” replied Tom, “and I’m going to do my best. Perhaps dad will take a turn for the better. He wants me to win as much as I want to myself. Well, we’ll not worry about it, anyhow, until the time comes. I want to show you some new features of my latest aeroplane.”
“And I want to see them, Tom. Don’t you think you’re making a mistake, though, in equipping it with a wireless outfit?”
“Why so?”
“Well, because it will add to the weight, and you want such a small machine to be as light as possible.”
“Yes, but you see I have a very light engine. That part my father helped me with. In fact, it is the lightest air-cooled motor made, for the amount of horsepower it develops, so I can afford to put on the extra weight of the wireless outfit. I may need to signal when I am flying along at a hundred miles an hour.”
“That’s so. Well, show me some of the other good points. You’ve certainly got a wonderful craft here.”
Tom and Mr. Sharp spent some time going over the Humming-Bird and in talking over old times. The balloonist paid another visit to Mr. Swift, who was feeling pretty good, and who expressed his pleasure in seeing his old friend again.
“Can’t you stay for a few days?” asked Tom, when Mr. Sharp was about to leave. “If you wait long enough you may be able to help me work up the clues against Andy Foger, and also witness a trial flight of the Humming-Bird.”
“I’d like to stay, but I can’t,” was the answer. “The committee will be anxious for me to get back with my report. Good luck to you. I’ll see you at the time of the race, if not before.”
Tom resolved to get right to work seeking clues against his old enemy, Andy, but the next day Mr. Swift was not so well, and Tom had to remain in the house. Then followed several days, during which time it was necessary to do some important work on his craft, and so a week passed without any information having been obtained.
In the meanwhile Tom had made some cautious inquiries, but had learned nothing about Andy. He had no chance to interview Pete or Sam, the two cronies, and he did not think it wise to make a bald request for information at the Foger home.
Ned Newton could not be of any aid to his friend, as he was kept busy in the bank night and day, working over a new set of books.
“I wonder how I can find out what I want to know?” mused Tom one afternoon, when he had done considerable work on the Humming-Bird. “I certainly ought to do it soon, so as to be able to stop Andy if he’s infringing on my patents. Yet, I don’t see how—”
His thoughts were interrupted by hearing a voice outside the shop, exclaiming:
“Bless my toothpick! I know the way, Eradicate, my good fellow. It isn’t necessary for you to come. As long as Tom Swift is out there, I’ll find him. Bless my horizontal rudder! I’m anxious to see what progress he’s made. I’ll find him, if he’s about!”
“Yes, sah, he’s right in dere,” spoke the colored man. “He’s workin’ on dat Dragon Fly of his.” Eradicate did not always get his names right.
“Mr. Damon!” exclaimed Tom in delight, at the sound of his friend’s voice. “I believe he can help me get evidence against Andy Foger. I wonder I didn’t think of it before! The very thing! I’ll do it!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE EMPTY SHED
“Bless my dark-lantern! Where are you, Tom?” called Mr. Damon as he entered the dim shed where the somewhat frail-appearing aeroplane loomed up in the semi-darkness, for it was afternoon, and rather cloudy. “Where are you?”
“Here!” called the young inventor. “I’m glad to see you! Come in!”
“Ah! there it is, eh?” exclaimed the odd man, as he looked at the aeroplane, for there had been much work done on it since he had last seen it. “Bless my parachute, Tom! But it looks as though you could blow it over.”
“It’s stronger than it seems,” replied the lad. “But, Mr. Damon, I’ve got something very important to talk to you about.”
Thereupon Tom told all about Mr. Sharp’s visit, of Andy’s entry in the big race, and of the suspicions of himself and the balloonist.
“And what is it you wish me to do?” asked Mr. Damon.
“Work up some clues against Andy Foger.”
“Good! I’ll do it! I’d like to get ahead of that bully and his father, who once tried to wreck the bank I’m interested in. I’ll help you, Tom! I’ll play detective! Let me see—what disguise shall I assume? I think I’ll take the part of a tramp. Bless my ham sandwich! That will be the very thing. I’ll get some ragged clothes, let my beard grow again—you see I shaved it off since my last visit—and I’ll go around to the Foger place and ask for work. Then I can get inside the shed and look around. How’s that for a plan?”
“It might be all right,” agreed Tom, “only I don’t believe you’re cut out for the part of a tramp, Mr. Damon.”
“Bless my fingernails! Why not?”
“Oh, well, it isn’t very pleasant to go around in ragged clothes.”
“Don’t mind about me. I’ll do it.” And the odd gentleman seemed quite delighted at the idea. He and Tom talked it over at some length, and then adjourned to the house, where Mr. Swift, who had seemed to improve in the last few days, was told of the plan.
“Couldn’t you go around after evidence just as you are?” asked the aged inventor. “I don’t much care for this disguising business.”
“Oh, it’s very necessary,” insisted Mr. Damon earnestly. “Bless my gizzard! but it’s very necessary. Why, if I went around the Foger place as I am now, they’d know me in a minute, and I couldn’t find out what I want to know.”
“Well, if you keep on blessing yourself,” said Tom, with a laugh, “they’ll know you, no matter what disguise you put on, Mr. Damon.”
“That’s so,” admitted the eccentric gentleman. “I must break myself of that habit. I will. Bless my topknot! I’ll never do it any more. Bless my trousers buttons!”
“I’m afraid you’ll never do it!” exclaimed Tom.
“It is rather hard,” said Mr. Damon ruefully, as he realized what he had said. “But I’ll do it. Bless—”
He paused a moment, looked at Tom and his father, and then burst into a laugh. The habit was more firmly fastened on him than he was aware.
For several hours Tom, his father and Mr. Damon discussed various methods of proceeding, and it was finally agreed that Mr. Damon should first try to learn what Andy was doing, if anything, without resorting to a disguise.
“Then, if that doesn’t work, I’ll become a tramp,” was the decision of the odd character. “I’ll wear the raggedest clothes I can find Bless—” But he stopped in time.
Mr. Damon took up his residence in the Swift household, as he had often done before, and for the next week he went and came as he pleased, sometimes being away all night.
“It’s no use, though,” declared Mr. Damon at the end of the week. “I can’t get anywhere near that shed, nor even get a glimpse inside of it. I haven’t been able to learn anything, either. There are two gardeners on guard all the while, and several times when I’ve tried to go in the side gate, they’ve stopped me.”
“Isn’t there any news of Andy about town?” asked Tom. “I should think Sam or Pete would know where he is.”
“Well, I didn’t ask them, for they’d know right away why I was inquiring,” said Mr. Damon, “but it seems to me as if there was something queer going on. If Andy Foger is working in that shed of his, he’s keeping mighty quiet about it. Bless my—”
And once more he stopped in time. He was conquering the habit in a measure.
“Well, what do you propose to do next?�
�� asked Tom.
“Disguise myself like a tramp, and go there looking for work,” was the firm answer. “There are plenty of odd jobs on a big place such as the Foger family have. I’ll find out what I want to know, you see.”
It seemed useless to further combat this resolution, and, in a few days Mr. Damon presented a very different appearance. He had on a most ragged suit, there was a scrubby beard on his face, and he walked with a curious shuffle, caused by a pair of big, heavy shoes which he had donned, first having taken the precaution to make holes in them and get them muddy.
“Now I’m all ready,” he said to Tom one day, when his disguise was complete. “I’m going over and try my luck.”
He left the house by a side door, so that no one would see him, and started down the walk. As he did so a voice shouted:
“Hi, there! Git right out oh heah! Mistah Swift doan’t allow no tramps heah, an’ we ain’t got no wuk fo’ yo’, an’ there ain’t no cold victuals. I does all de wuk, me an’ mah mule Boomerang, an’ we takes all de cold victuals, too! Git right along, now!”
“It’s Eradicate. He doesn’t know you,” said Tom, with a chuckle.
“So much the better,” whispered Mr. Damon. But the disguise proved almost too much of a success, for seeing the supposed tramp lingering near the house, Eradicate caught up a stout stick and rushed forward. He was about to strike the ragged man, when Tom called out:
“That’s Mr. Damon, Rad!”
“Wh—what!” gasped the colored man; and when the situation had been explained to him, and the necessity for silence impressed upon him, he turned away, too surprised to utter a word. He sought consolation in the stable with his mule.
Just what methods Mr. Damon used he never disclosed, but one thing is certain: That night there came a cautious knock on the door of the Swift home, and Tom, answering it, beheld his odd friend.
“Well,” he asked eagerly, “what luck?”
“Put on a suit of old clothes, and come with me,” said Mr. Damon. “We’ll look like two tramps, and then, if we’re discovered, they won’t know it was you.”
“Have you found out anything?” asked Tom eagerly.
“Not yet; but I’ve got a key to one of the side doors of the shed, and we can get in as soon as it’s late enough so that everybody there will be in bed.”
“A key? How did you get it?” inquired the youth.
“Never mind,” was the answer, with a chuckle. “That was because of my disguise; and I haven’t blessed anything today. I’m going to, soon, though. I can feel it coming on. But hurry, Tom, or we may be too late.”
“And you haven’t had a look inside the shed?” asked the young inventor. “You don’t know what’s there?”
“No; but we soon will.”
Eagerly Tom put on some of the oldest and most ragged garments he could find, and then he and the odd gentleman set off toward the Foger home. They waited some time after getting in sight of it, because they saw a light in one of the windows. Then, when the house was dark, they stole cautiously forward toward the big, gloomy shed.
“On this side,” directed Mr. Damon in a whisper. “The key I have opens this door.”
“But we can’t see when we get inside,” objected Tom. “I should have brought a dark lantern.”
“I have one of those pocket electric flashlights,” said Mr. Damon. “Bless my candlestick! but I thought of that.” And he chuckled gleefully.
Cautiously they advanced in the darkness. Mr. Damon fumbled at the lock of the door. The key grated as he turned it. The portal swung back, and Tom and his friend found themselves inside the shed which, of late, had been such an object of worry and conjecture to the young inventor. What would he find there?
“Flash the light,” he called to Mr. Damon in a hoarse whisper.
The eccentric man drew it from his packet. He pressed the spring switch, and in an instant a brilliant shaft of radiance shot out, cutting the intense blackness like a knife. Mr. Damon flashed it on all sides.
But to the amazement of Tom and his companion, it did not illuminate the broad white wings and stretches of canvas of an aeroplane. It only shone on the bare walls of the shed, and on some piles of rubbish in the corners. Up and down, to right and left, shot the pencil of light.
“There’s—there’s nothing here!” gasped Tom.
“I—I guess you’re right!” agreed Mr. Damon “The shed is empty!”
“Then where is Andy Foger building his aeroplane?” asked Tom in a whisper; but Mr. Damon could not answer him.
CHAPTER NINE
A TRIAL FLIGHT
For a few moments after their exclamations of surprise Tom and Mr. Damon did not know what else to say. They stared about in amazement, hardly able to believe that the shed could be empty. They had expected to see some form of aeroplane in it, and Tom was almost sure his eyes would meet a reproduction of his Humming Bird, made from the stolen plans.
“Can it be possible there’s nothing here?” went on Tom, after a long pause. He could not seem to believe it.
“Evidently not,” answered Mr. Damon, as he advanced toward the center of the big building and flashed the light on all sides. “You can see for yourself.”
“Or, rather, you can’t see,” spoke the youth. “It isn’t here, that’s sure. You can’t stick an aeroplane, even as small a one as my Humming Bird, in a corner. No; it isn’t here.”
“Well, we’ll have to look further,” went on Mr. Damon. “I think—”
But a sudden noise near the big main doors of the shed interrupted him.
“Come on!” exclaimed Tom in a whisper. “Some one’s coming! They may see us! Let’s get out!”
Mr. Damon released the pressure on the spring switch, and the light went out. After waiting a moment to let their eyes become accustomed to the darkness, he and Tom stole to the door by which they had entered. As they swung it cautiously open they again heard the noise near the main portals by which Andy had formerly taken in and out the Anthony, as he had named the aeroplane in which he and his father went to Alaska, where, like Tom’s craft, it was wrecked.
“Some one is coming in!” whispered Tom.
Hardly had he spoken when a light shone in the direction of the sound. The illumination came from a big lantern of the ordinary kind, carried by some one who had just entered the shed.
“Can you see who it is?” whispered Mr. Damon, peering eagerly forward; too eagerly, for his foot struck against the wooden side wall with a loud bang.
“Who’s there?” suddenly demanded the person carrying the lantern.
He raised it high above his head, in order to cast the gleams into all the distant corners. As he did so a ray of light fell upon his face. “Andy Foger!” gasped Tom in a hoarse whisper.
Andy must have heard, for he ran forward just as Tom and Mr. Damon slipped out.
“Hold on! Who are you?” came in the unmistakable tones of the red-haired bully.
“I don’t think we’re going to tell,” chuckled Tom softly, as he and his friend sped off into the darkness. They were not followed, and as they looked back they could see a light bobbing about in the shed.
“He’s looking for us!” exclaimed Mr. Damon with an inward laugh. “Bless my watch chain! But it’s a good thing we got in ahead of him. Are you sure it was Andy himself?”
“Sure! I’d know his face anywhere. But I can’t understand it. Where has he been? What is he doing? Where is he building his aeroplane? I thought he was out of town.”
“He may have come back tonight,” said Mr. Damon. “That’s the only one of your questions I can answer. We’ll have to wait about the rest, I’m sure he wasn’t around the house today, though, for I was working at weeding the flower beds, in my disguise as a tramp, and if he was home I’d have seen him. He must have just come back, and he went out to his shed to get something. Well, we did the best we could.”
“Indeed we did,” agreed Tom, “and I’m ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Damon.”
And forthwith the eccentric man began to call down so many blessings on himself and on his belongings, no less than on his friends, that Tom laughingly warned him that he had better save some for another time.
The two reached home safely, removed their “disguises,” and told Mr. Swift of the result of their trip. He agreed with them that there was a mystery about Andy’s aeroplane which was yet to be solved.
But Tom was glad to find that, at any rate, the craft was not being made in Shopton, and during the next two weeks he devoted all his time to finishing his own machine. Mr. Jackson was a valuable assistant, and Mr. Damon gave what aid he could.
“Well, I think I’ll be ready for a trial flight in another week,” said Tom one day, as he stepped back to get a view of the almost completed Humming-Bird.
“Shall you want a passenger?” asked Mr. Damon.
“Yes, I wish you would take a chance with me. I could use a bag of sand, not that I mean you are to be compared to that,” added Tom quickly, “but I’d rather have a real person, in order to test the balancing apparatus. Yes, we’ll make a trial trip together.”
In the following few days Tom went carefully over the aeroplane, making some slight changes, strengthening it here and there, and testing the motor thoroughly. It seemed to work perfectly.
At length the day of the trial came, and the Humming-Bird was wheeled out of the shed. In spite of the fact that it was practically finished, there yet remained much to do on it. It was not painted or decorated, and looked rather crude. But what Tom wanted to know was how it would fly, what control he had over it, what speed it could make, and how it balanced. For it was, at best, very frail, and the least change in equilibrium might be fatal.
Before taking his place in the operator’s seat Tom started the motor, and by means of a spring balance tested the thrust of the propellers. It was satisfactory, though he knew that when the engine had been run for some time, and had warmed up, it would do much better.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 106
