“So, when I got your letter,” continued the General, “I naturally jumped on my machine and came over. Now I find that it is all a hoax.”
“I am very sorry, I assure you,” said Tom. “We did have a sort of test today; but it was a failure, owing to the fact that someone tampered with my powder. From what you tell me, I am inclined to the belief that the same person may have sent you that letter. Let me look at it again,” he requested.
Carefully he scanned it.
“I should say that was written in a sort of German hand; would you not also?” he asked of Mr. Damon.
“I would, Tom.”
“A German!” exclaimed General Waller.
At the mention of the word “German” Koku, the giant, who had entered the room, to be stared at in amazement by the officer, exclaimed:
“That he, Master! That he!”
“What do you mean?” inquired Tom.
“German man give me stuff for to put in your powder. I ’member now, he talk like Hans who make our garden here; and he say ‘yah’ just the same like. That man German sure.”
“What does this mean?” inquired the officer.
Quickly Tom told of the visit of an unknown man who had prevailed on the simple-minded giant to “dope” Tom’s new powder under the impression that he was doing his master a favor. Then the flight of the spy on a motor-cycle, just as the experiment failed, was related.
“We have a German gardener,” went on Tom, “and Koku now recalls that our mysterious visitor had the same sort of speech. This ought to give us a clue.”
“Let me see,” murmured General Waller. “In the first place your test fails—you learn, then, that your powder has been tampered with—you see a man riding away in haste after having, in all likelihood, spied on your work—your giant servant recalls the visit of a mysterious man, and, when the word ‘German’ is pronounced in his hearing he recalls that his visitor was of that nationality. So far so good.
“I come to this vicinity for my health. That fact, as are all such regarding officers, was doubtless published in the Army and Navy Journal, so it might easily become known to almost anyone. I receive a letter which I think is from Tom Swift, asking me to attend the test. As the distance is short I go, only to find that the letter has been forged, presumably by a German.
“Question: Can the same German be the agent in both cases?”
“Bless my arithmetic! how concisely you put it!” exclaimed Mr. Damon.
“It is part of my training, I suppose,” remarked the officer. “But it strikes me that if we find your German spy, Tom, we will find the man who played the joke on me. And if I do find him—well, I think I shall know how to deal with him,” and General Waller assumed his characteristic haughty attitude.
“I believe you are right, General,” spoke Tom. “Though why any German would want to prevent my experiments, or even damage my property, and possibly injure my friends, I cannot understand.”
“Nor can I,” spoke the officer.
“I am sorry you have had your trouble for nothing,” went on Tom. “And, if you are in this vicinity when I conduct my next test, I shall be glad to have you come. I will send word by Mr. Damon, and then there will be no chance of a mistake.”
“Thank you, Tom, I shall be glad to come I do not know how long I shall remain in this vicinity. If I knew where to look for the German I would make a careful search. As it is, I shall turn this letter over to the United States Secret Service, and see what its agents can do. And, Tom, if you are annoyed again, let me know. You are a sort of rival, so to speak, but, after all, we are both working to serve Uncle Sam. I’ll do my best to protect you.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Tom. “On my part, I shall keep a good lookout. It will be a bold spy who gets near my shop after this. I’m going to put up my highly-charged protecting electric wires again. We were just talking about them when you came in. Would you like to look about here, General?”
“I would, indeed, Tom. Have you made your big gun yet?”
“No, but I am working on the plans. I want first to decide on the kind of explosive I am to use, so I can make my gun strong enough to stand it.”
“A wise idea. I think there is where I made my mistake. I did not figure carefully enough on the strength of material. The internal pressure of the powder I used, as well as the muzzle velocity of my projectile, were both greater than they should have been. Take a lesson from my failure. But I am going to start on another gun soon, and—Tom Swift—I am going to try to beat you!”
“All right, General,” answered Tom, genially. “May the best gun win!”
“Bless my powder box!” cried Mr. Damon. “That’s the way to talk.”
General Waller was much interested in going about Tom’s shop, and expressed his surprise at the many inventions he saw. While ordnance matters, big guns and high explosives were his hobby, nevertheless the airships were a source of wonder to him.
“How do you do it, Tom?” he asked.
“Oh, by keeping at it,” was the modest answer. “Then my good friends here—Ned and Mr. Damon—help me.”
“Bless my check book!” exclaimed the odd gentleman. “It is very little help I give, Tom.”
General Waller soon took his departure, promising to call again, to see Tom’s test if one were held. He also repeated his determination to set the Secret Service men at work to discover the mysterious German.
“I can’t imagine who would want to injure you or me, Tom Swift,” he said.
“Do you think they wanted to injure you, General?” asked Mr. Damon.
“It would seem so,” remarked Ned. “That man doped Tom’s powder, hoping to make it so powerful that it would blow up everything. Then he sends word to the General to be present. If there had been a blow-up he would have gone with it.”
“Bless my gaiters, yes!” exclaimed Mr. Damon.
“Well, we’ll see if we can ferret him out!” spoke the officer as he took his leave.
Tom, Ned and the others talked the matter over at some length.
“I wonder if we could trace that man who rode away on the motor-cycle?” said Ned.
“We’ll try,” decided Tom, energetically, and in the electric runabout, that had once performed such a service to his father’s bank, the young inventor and his chum were soon traversing the road taken by the spy. They got some traces of him—that is, several persons had seen him pass—but that was all. So they had to record one failure at least.
“I wonder if the General himself could have sent that letter?” mused Ned, as they returned home.
“What! To himself?” cried Tom, in amazement.
“He might have,” went on Ned, coolly. “You see, Tom, he admits that he was jealous of you. Now what is there to prevent him from hiring someone to dope your powder, and then, to divert suspicion from himself, faking up a letter and inviting himself to the blowout.”
“But if he did that—which I don’t believe—why would he come when there was danger, in case his trick worked, of the whole place being blown to kingdom come.”
“Ah, but you notice he didn’t arrive until after danger of an explosion had passed,” commented Ned.
“Oh, pshaw!” cried Tom. “I don’t take any stock in that theory.”
“Well, maybe not,” replied Ned. “But it’s worth thinking about. I believe if General Waller could prevent you from inventing your big gun, he would.”
The days that followed were busy ones for Tom. He worked on the powder problem from morning to night, scoring many failures and only a few successes. But he did not give up, and in the meanwhile drew tentative plans for the big gun.
One evening, after a hard day’s work, he went to the library where his father was reading.
“Tom,” said Mr. Swift, “do you remember that old fortune hunter, Alec Peterson, who wanted me to go into that opal mine scheme?”
“Yes, Dad. What about him? Has he found it?”
“No, he writes to say he reache
d the island safely, and has been working some time. He hasn’t had any success yet in locating the mine; but he hopes to find it in a week or so.”
“That’s just like him,” murmured Tom. “Well, Dad, if you lose the ten thousand dollars I guess I’ll have to make it up to you, for it was on my account that you made the investment.”
“Well, you’re worth it, Tom,” replied his father, with a smile.
CHAPTER XII
A POWERFUL BLAST
“Look out with that box, Koku! Handle it as though it contained a dozen eggs of the extinct great auk, worth about a thousand dollars apiece.
“Eradicate! Don’t you dare stumble while you’re carrying that tube. If you do, you’ll never do it again!”
“By golly, Massa Tom! I—I’s gwine t’ walk on mah tiptoes all de way!”
Thus Eradicate answered the young inventor, while the giant, Koku, who was carrying a heavy case, nodded his head to show that he understood the danger of his task.
“So you think you’ve got the right stuff this time, Tom?” asked Ned Newton.
“I’m allowing myself to hope so, Ned.”
“Bless my woodpile!” cried Mr. Damon. “I—I really think I’m getting nervous.”
It was one afternoon, about two weeks after Tom had made his first test of the new powder. Now, after much hard work, and following many other tests, some of which were more or less successful, he had reached the point where he believed he was on the threshold of success. He had succeeded in making a new explosive that, in the preliminary tests, in which only a small quantity was used, gave promise of being more powerful than any Tom had ever experimented with—his own or the product of some other inventor.
And his experiments had not always been harmless. Once he came within a narrow margin of blowing up the shop and himself with it, and on another occasion some of the slow-burning powder, failing to explode, had set ablaze a shack in which he was working.
Only for the prompt action of Koku, Tom might have been seriously injured. As it was he lost some valuable patterns and papers.
But he had gone on his way, surmounting failure after failure, until now he was ready for the supreme test. This was to be the explosion of a large quantity of the powder in a specially prepared steel tube of great thickness. It was like a miniature cannon, but, unlike the first small one, where the test had failed, this one would carry a special projectile, that would be aimed at an armor plate set up on a big hill.
Tom’s hope was that this big blast would show such pressure in foot-tons, and give such muzzle velocity to the projectile, and at the same time such penetrating power, that he would be justified in taking it as the basis of his explosive, and using it in the big gun he intended to make.
The preliminaries had been completed. The special steel tube had been constructed, and mounted on a heavy carriage in a distant part of the Swift grounds. A section of armor plate, a foot and a half in thickness, had been set up at the proper distance. A new projectile, with a hard, penetrating point, had been made—a sort of miniature of the one Tom hoped to use in his giant cannon.
Now the young inventor and his friends were on their way to the scene of the test, taking the powder and other necessaries, including the primers, with them. Tom, Ned and Mr. Damon had some of the gauges to register the energy expended by the improvised cannon. There were charts to be filled in, and other details to be looked after.
“So General Waller won’t be here?” remarked Ned, as they walked along, Tom keeping a watchful eye on Koku.
“No,” was the reply. “He has gone back to Sandy Hook. He wrote that his health was better, and that he wanted to resume work on a new type of gun.”
“I guess he’s afraid you’ll beat him out, Tom,” laughed Ned. “You take my advice, and look out for General Waller.”
“Nonsense! I say, Rad! Look out with those primers!”
“I’se lookin’ out, Massa Tom. Golly, I don’t laik dis yeah job at all! I—I guess I’d better be gittin’ at dat whitewashin’, Massa Tom. Dat back fence suah needs a coat mighty bad.”
“Never you mind about the whitewashing, Rad. You just stick around here for a while. I may need you to sit on the cannon to hold it down.”
“Sit on a cannon, Massa Tom! Say, looky heah now! You jest take dese primary things from dish yeah coon. I—I’se got t’ go!”
“Why, what’s the matter, Rad? Surely you’re not afraid; are you?” and Tom winked at Ned.
“No, Massa Tom, I’se not prezactly ’skeered, but I done jest ’membered dat I didn’t gib mah mule Boomerang any oats t’day, an’ he’s suahly gwine t’ be desprit mad at me fo’ forgettin’ dat. I—I’d better go!”
“Nonsense, Rad! I was only fooling. You can go as soon as we get to my private proving grounds, if you like. But you’ll have to carry those primers, for all the rest of us have our hands full. Only be careful of ’em!”
“I—I will, Massa Tom.”
They kept on, and it was noticed that Mr. Damon gave nervous glances from time to time in the direction of Koku, who was carrying the box of powder. The giant himself, however, did not seem to know the meaning of fear. He carried the box, which contained enough explosive to blow them all into fragments, with as much composure as though it contained loaves of bread.
“Now you can go, Rad,” announced Tom, when they reached the lonely field where, pointing toward a big hill, was the little cannon.
“Good, Massa Tom!” cried the colored man, and from the way in which he hurried off no one would ever suspect him of having rheumatic joints.
“Say, that stuff looks just like Swiss cheese,” remarked Ned, as Tom opened the box of explosive. It would be incorrect to call it powder, for it had no more the appearance of gunpowder, or any other “powder,” than, as Ned said, swiss cheese.
And, indeed, the powerful stuff bore a decided resemblance to that peculiar product of the dairy. It was in thin sheets, with holes pierced through it here and there, irregularly.
“The idea is,” Tom explained, “to make a quick-burning explosive. I want the concussion to be scattered through it all at once. It is set off by concussion, you see,” he went on. “A sort of cartridge is buried in the middle of it, after it has been inserted in the cannon breech. The cartridge is exploded by a primer, which responds to an electric current. The thin plates, with holes corresponding to the centre hole in a big grain of the hexagonal powder, will, I hope, cause the stuff to burn quickly, and give a tremendous pressure. Now we’ll put some in the steel tube, and see what happens.”
Even Tom was a little nervous as he prepared for this latest test. But he was not nervous enough to drop any of those queer, cheese-like slabs. For, though he knew that a considerable percussion was needed to set them off, it would not do to take chances. High explosives do not always act alike, even under the same given conditions. What might with perfect safety be done at one time, could not be repeated at another. Tom knew this, and was very careful.
The powder, as I shall occasionally call it for the sake of convenience, though it was not such in the strict sense of the word—the powder was put in the small cannon, together with the primer. Then the wires were attached to it, and extended off for some distance.
“But we won’t attach the battery until the last moment,” Tom said. “I don’t want a premature explosion.”
The projectile was also put in, and Tom once more looked to see that the armor plate was in place. Then he adjusted the various gauges to get readings of the power and energy created by his new explosive.
“Well, I guess we’re all ready,” he announced to his friends. “I’ll hook on the battery now, and we’ll get off behind that other hill. I had Koku make a sort of cave there—a miniature bomb-proof, that will shelter us.”
“Do you think the blast will be powerful enough to make it necessary?” asked Mr. Damon.
“It will, if this larger quantity of explosive acts anything like the small samples I set off,” replied the young in
ventor.
The electric wires were carried behind the protecting hill, whither they all retired.
“Here she goes!” exclaimed Tom, after a pause.
His thumb pressed the electric button, and instantly the ground shook with the tremor of a mighty blast, while a deafening sound reared about them. The earth trembled, and there was a big sheet of flame, seen even in the powerful sunlight.
“Something happened, anyhow!” yelled Tom above the reverberating echoes.
CHAPTER XIII
CASTING THE CANNON
“Come on!” yelled Ned. “We’ll see how this experiment came out!” and he started to run from beneath the shelter of the hill.
“Hold on!” shouted Tom, laying a restraining hand on his chum’s shoulder.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Ned in surprise.
“Some of that powder may not have exploded,” went on the young inventor. “From the sound made I should say the gun burst, and, if it did, that gelatin is bound to be scattered about. There may be a mass of it burning loose somewhere, and it may go off. It ought not to, if my theory about it being harmless in the open is correct, but the trouble is that it’s only a theory. Wait a few seconds.”
Anxiously they lingered, the echoes of the blast still in their ears, and a peculiar smell in their nostrils.
“But there’s no smoke,” said Mr. Damon. “Bless my spyglass! I always thought there was smoke at an explosion.”
“This is a sort of smokeless powder,” explained Tom. “It throws off a slight vapor when it is ignited, but not much. I guess it’s safe to go out now. Come on!”
He dropped the pushbutton connected with the igniting battery, and, followed by the others, raced to the scene of the experiment. A curious sight met their eyes.
A great hole had been torn in the hillside, and another where the improvised gun had stood. The gun itself seemed to have disappeared.
“Why—why—where is it?” asked Ned.
“Burst to pieces I guess,” replied Tom. “I was afraid that charge was a bit too heavy.”
“No, here it is!” shouted Mr. Damon, circling off to one side. “It’s been torn from the carriage, and partly buried in the ground,” and he indicated a third excavation in the earth.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 197
