The Tom Swift Megapack

by Victor Appleton

  The connection was made, and Tom uttered a cry of joy. For there, staring at him from the plate in front of him was the face of Ned.

  It was somewhat reduced in size, of course, and was not extra clear, but anyone who knew Ned could have told he was at the other end of the wire.

  “Do you get me, Tom?” called Ned, over the telephone.

  “I sure do! Now see if you can get me.”

  Tom made other connections, and then looked at the sending plate of his instrument, there being both a sending and receiving plate in each booth, just as there was a receiver and a transmitter to the telephone.

  “Hurray! I see you, Tom!” cried Ned, over the wire. “Say, this is great!”

  “It isn’t as good as I want it,” went on Tom. “But it proves that I’m right. The photo telephone is a fact, and now persons using the wire can be sure of the other person they are conversing with. I must tell dad. He wouldn’t believe I could do it!”

  And indeed Mr. Swift was surprised when Tom proved, by actual demonstration, that a picture could be sent over the wire.

  “Tom, I congratulate you!” declared the aged inventor. “It is good news!”

  “Yes, but we have bad news of Mr. Damon,” said Tom, and he told his father of the disappearance of the eccentric man. Mr. Swift at once telephoned his sympathy to Mrs. Damon, and offered to do anything he could for her.

  “But Tom can help you more than I can,” he said. “You can depend on Tom.”

  “I know that,” replied Mrs. Damon, over the wire.

  And certainly Tom Swift had many things to do now. He hardly knew at what to begin first, but now, since he was on the right road in regard to his photo telephone, he would work at improving it.

  And to this end he devoted himself, after he had sent out a general alarm to the police of nearby towns, in regard to the disappearance of Mr. Damon. The airship clue, he believed, as did the police, would be a good one to work on.

  For several days after this nothing of moment occurred. Mr. Damon could not be located, and Tom’s airship might still be sailing above the clouds as far as getting any trace of it was concerned.

  Meanwhile the young inventor, with the help of Ned, who was given a leave of absence from the bank, worked hard to improve the photo telephone.

  CHAPTER XV

  THE AIRSHIP CLEW

  “Now Ned, we’ll try again. I’m going to use a still stronger current, and this is the most sensitive selenium plate I’ve turned out yet. We’ll see if we can’t get a better likeness of you—one that will be plainer.”

  It was Tom Swift who was speaking, and he and his chum had just completed some hard work on the new photo telephone. Though the apparatus did what Tom had claimed for it, still he was far from satisfied. He could transmit over the wire the picture of a person talking at the telephone, but the likeness was too faint to make the apparatus commercially profitable.

  “It’s like the first moving pictures,” said Tom. “They moved, but that was about all they did.”

  “I say,” remarked Ned, as he was about to take his place in the booth where the telephone and apparatus were located, “this double-strength electrical current you’re speaking of won’t shock me; will it? I don’t want what happened to Eradicate to happen to me, Tom.”

  “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. The trouble with Rad was that he didn’t have the wires insulated when he turned that arc current switch by mistake—or, rather, to play his joke. But he’s all right now.”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to take any chances,” insisted Ned. “I want to be insulated myself.”

  “I’ll see to that,” promised Tom. “Now get to your booth.”

  For the purpose of experiments Tom had strung a new line between two of his shops, They were both within sight, and the line was not very long; but, as I have said, Tom knew that if his apparatus would work over a short distance, it would also be successful over a long one, provided he could maintain the proper force of current, which he was sure could be accomplished.

  “And if they can send pictures from Monte Carlo to Paris I can do the same,” declared Tom, though his system of photo telephony was different from sending by a telegraph system—a reproduction of a picture on a copper plate. Tom’s apparatus transmitted the likeness of the living person.

  It took some little time for the young inventor, and Ned working with him, to fix up the new wires and switch on the current. But at last it was complete, and Ned took his place at one telephone, with the two sensitive plates before him. Tom did the same, and they proceeded to talk over the wire, first making sure that the vocal connection was perfect.

  “All ready now, Ned! We’ll try it,” called Tom to his chum, over the wire. “Look straight at the plate. I want to get your image first, and then I’ll send mine, if it’s a success.”

  Ned did as requested, and in a few minutes he could hear Tom exclaim, joyfully:

  “It’s better, Ned! It’s coming out real clear. I can see you almost as plainly as if you were right in the booth with me. But turn on your light a little stronger.”

  Tom could hear, through the telephone, his chum moving about, and then he caught a startled exclamation.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Tom anxiously.

  “I got a shock!” cried Ned. “I thought you said you had this thing fixed. Great Scott, Tom! It nearly yanked the arm off me! Is this a joke?”

  “No, old man. No, of course not! Something must be wrong. I didn’t mean that. Wait, I’ll take a look. Say, it does seem as if everything was going wrong with this invention. But I’m on the right track, and soon I’ll have it all right. Wait a second. I’ll be right over.”

  Tom found that it was only a simple displacement of a wire that had given Ned a shock, and he soon had this remedied.

  “Now we’ll try again,” he said. This time nothing wrong occurred, and soon Tom saw the clearest image he had yet observed on his telephone photo plate.

  “Switch me on now, Ned,” he called to his chum, and Ned reported that he could see Tom very plainly.

  “So far—so good,” observed Tom, as he came from the booth. “But there are several things I want yet to do.”

  “Such as what?” questioned Ned.

  “Well, I want to arrange to have two kinds of pictures come over the wire. I want it so that a person can go into a booth, call up a friend, and then switch on the picture plate, so he can see his friend as well as talk to him. I want this plate to be like a mirror, so that any number of images can be made to appear on it. In that way it can be used over and over again. In fact it will be exactly like a mirror, or a telescope. No matter how far two persons may be apart they can both see and talk to one another.”

  “That’s a big contract, Tom.”

  “Yes, but you’ve seen that it can be done. Then another thing I want to do is to have it arranged so that I can make a photograph of a person over a wire.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that if a certain person talks to me over the wire, I can turn my switch, and get a picture of him here at my apparatus connected with my telephone. To do that I’ll merely need a sending apparatus at the other end of the telephone line—not a receiving machine.”

  “Could you arrange it so that the person who was talking to you would have his picture taken whether he wanted it or not?” asked Ned.

  “Yes, it might be done,” spoke Tom, thoughtfully. “I could conceal the sending plate somewhere in the telephone booth, and arrange the proper light, I suppose.”

  “That might be a good way in which to catch a criminal,” went on Ned. “Often crooks call up on the telephone, but they know they are safe. The authorities can’t see them—they can only hear them. Now if you could get a photograph of them while they were telephoning—”

  “I see!” cried Tom, excitedly. “That’s a great idea! I’ll work on that, Ned.”

  And, all enthusiasm, Tom began to plan new schemes with his photo telephone.

&nb
sp; The young inventor did not forget his promise to help Mrs. Damon. But he could get absolutely no clue to her husband’s whereabouts. Mr. Damon had completely and mysteriously disappeared. His fortune, too, seemed to have been swallowed up by the sharpers, though lawyers engaged by Tom could fasten no criminal acts on Mr. Peters, who indignantly denied that he had done anything unlawful.

  If he had, he had done it in such a way that he could not be brought to justice. The promoter was still about Shopton, as well groomed as ever, with his rose in his buttonhole, and wearing his silk hat. He still speeded up and down Lake Carlopa in his powerful motor boat. But he gave Tom Swift a wide berth.

  Late one night, when Tom and Ned had been working at the new photo telephone, after all the rest of the household had retired, Tom suddenly looked up from his drawings and exclaimed:

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” inquired Ned.

  “That sound? Don’t you hear it? Listen!”

  “It’s an airship—maybe yours coming back!” cried the young banker.

  As he spoke Ned did hear, seemingly in the air above the house, a curious, throbbing, pulsating sound.

  “That’s so! It is an airship motor!” exclaimed Tom. “Come on out!”

  Together they rushed from the house, but, ere they reached the yard, the sound had ceased. They looked up into the sky, but could see nothing, though the night was light from a full moon.

  “I certainly heard it,” said Tom.

  “So did I,” asserted Ned. “But where is it now?”

  They advanced toward the group of work-buildings. Something showing white in the moonlight, before the hangar, caught Ned’s eyes.

  “Look!” he exclaimed. “There’s an airship, Tom!”

  The two rushed over to the level landing place before the big shed. And there, as if she had just been run out for a flight, was the Eagle. She had come back in the night, as mysteriously as she had been taken away.

  CHAPTER XVI

  SUCCESS

  “Well, this gets me!” exclaimed Tom.

  “It sure is strange,” agreed Ned. “How did she come here?”

  “She didn’t come alone—that’s sure,” went on Tom. “Someone brought her here, made a landing, and got away before we could get out.”

  The two chums were standing near the Eagle, which had come back so mysteriously.

  “Just a couple of seconds sooner and we’d have seen who brought her here,” went on Tom. “But they must have shut off the motor some distance up, and then they volplaned down. That’s why we didn’t hear them.”

  Ned went over and put his hand on the motor.

  “Ouch!” he cried, jumping back. “It’s hot!”

  “Showing that she’s been running up to within a few minutes ago,” said Tom. “Well, as I said before, this sure does get me. First these mysterious men take my airship, and then they bring her back again, without so much as thanking me for the use of her.”

  “Who in the world can they be?” asked Ned.

  “I haven’t the least idea. But I’m going to find out, if it’s at all possible. We’ll look the machine over in the morning, and see if we can get any clues. No use in doing that now. Come on, we’ll put her back in the hangar.”

  “Say!” exclaimed Ned, as a sudden idea came to him. “It couldn’t be Mr. Damon who had your airship; could it, Tom?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you ask that?”

  “Well, he might have wanted to get away from his enemies for a while, and he might have taken your Eagle, and—”

  “Mr. Damon wouldn’t trail along with a crowd like the one that took away my airship,” said Tom, decidedly. “You’ve got another guess coming, Ned. Mr. Damon had nothing to do with this.”

  “And yet the night he disappeared an airship was heard near his house.”

  “That’s so. Well, I give up. This is sure a mystery. We’ll have a look at it in the morning. One thing I’ll do, though, I’ll telephone over to Mr. Damon’s house and see if his wife has heard any news. I’ve been doing that quite often of late, so she won’t think anything of it. In that way we can find out if he had anything to do with my airship. But let’s run her into the shed first.”

  This was done, and Koku, the giant, was sent to sleep in the hangar to guard against another theft. But it was not likely that the mysterious men, once having brought the airship back, would come for it again.

  Tom called up Mrs. Damon on the telephone, but there was no news of the missing man. He expressed his sympathy, and said he would come and see her soon. He told Mrs. Damon not to get discouraged, adding that he, and others, were doing all that was possible. But, in spite of this, Mrs. Damon, naturally, did worry.

  The next morning the two chums inspected the airship, so mysteriously returned to them. Part after part they went over, and found nothing wrong. The motor ran perfectly, and there was not so much as a bent spoke in the landing wheels. For all that could be told by an inspection of the craft she might never have been out of the hangar.

  “Hello, here’s something!” cried Tom, as he got up from the operator’s seat, where he had taken his place to test the various controls.

  “What is it?” asked Ned.

  “A button. A queer sort of a button. I never had any like that on my clothes, and I’m sure you didn’t. Look!” and Tom held out a large, metal button of curious design.

  “It must have come off the coat of one of the men who had your airship, Tom,” said his chum. “Save it. You may find that it’s a clue.”

  “I will. No telling what it may lead to. Well, I guess that’s all we can find.”

  And it was. But Tom little realized what a clue the button was going to be. Nothing more could be learned by staring at the returned airship, so he and Ned went back to the house.

  Tom Swift had many things to do, but his chief concern was for the photo telephone. Now that he was near the goal of success he worked harder than ever. The idea Ned had given him of being able to take the picture of a person at the instrument—without the knowledge of that person—appealed strongly to Tom.

  “That’s going to be a valuable invention!” he declared, but little he knew how valuable it would prove to him and to others.

  It was about a week later when Tom was ready to try the new apparatus. Meanwhile he had prepared different plates, and had changed his wiring system. In the days that had passed nothing new had been learned concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Damon, nor of the men who had so mysteriously taken away Tom’s airship.

  All was in readiness for the trial. Tom sent Ned to the booth that he had constructed in the airship hangar, some distance away from the house. The other booth Tom had placed in his library, an entirely new system of wires being used.

  “Now Ned,” explained Tom, “the idea is this! You go into that booth, just as if it were a public one, and ring me up in the regular way. Of course we haven’t a central here, but that doesn’t matter. Now while I’m talking to you I want to see you. You don’t know that, of course.”

  “The point is to see if I can get your picture while you’re talking to me, and not let you know a thing about it.”

  “Think you can do it, Tom?”

  “I’m going to try. We’ll soon know. Go ahead.”

  A little later Ned was calling up his chum, as casually as he could, under the circumstances.

  “All right!” called Tom to his chum. “Start in and talk. Say anything you like—it doesn’t matter. I want to see if I can get your picture. Is the light burning in your booth?”

  “Yes, Tom.”

  “All right then. Go ahead.”

  Ned talked of the weather—of anything. Meanwhile Tom was busy. Concealed in the booth occupied by Ned was a sending plate. It could not be seen unless one knew just where to look for it. In Tom’s booth was a receiving plate.

  The experiment did not take long. Presently Tom called to Ned that he need stay there no longer.

  “Come on to the house,” i
nvited the young inventor, “and we’ll develope this plate.” For in this system it was necessary to develope the receiving plate, as is done with an ordinary photographic one. Tom wanted a permanent record.

  Eagerly the chums in the dark room looked down into the tray containing the plate and the developing solution.

  “Something’s coming out!” cried Ned, eagerly.

  “Yes! And it’s you!” exclaimed Tom. “See, Ned, I got your picture over the telephone. Success! I’ve struck it! This is the best yet!”

  At that moment, as the picture came out more and more plainly, someone knocked on the door of the dark room.

  “Who is it?” asked Tom.

  “Gen’man t’ see you,” said Eradicate. “He say he come from Mistah Peters!”

  “Mr. Peters—that rascally promoter!” whispered Tom to his chum. “What does this mean?”

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE

  Tom Swift and his chum looked at one another strangely for a moment in the dim, red light of the dark room. Then the young inventor spoke:

  “I’m not going to see him. Tell him so, Rad!”

  “Hold on a second,” suggested Ned. “Maybe you had better see him, Tom. It may have something to with Mr. Damon’s lost fortune.”

  “That’s so! I didn’t think of that. And I may get a clue to his disappearance, though I don’t imagine Peters had anything to do with that. Wait, Rad. Tell the gentleman I’ll see him. Did he give any name, Rad?”

  “Yas, sah. Him done say him Mistah Boylan.”

  “The same man who called to see me once before, trying to get me to do some business with Peters,” murmured Tom. “Very well, I’ll see him as soon as this picture is fixed. Tell him to wait, Rad.”

  A little later Tom went to where his caller awaited in the library. This time there were no plans to be looked at, the young inventor having made a practice of keeping all his valuable papers locked in a safe.

  “You go into the next room, Ned,” Tom had said to his chum. “Leave the door open, so you can hear what is said.”

  “Why, do you think there’ll be trouble? Maybe we’d better have Koku on hand to—”