“Perhaps you may recall the combinations,” suggested Ned. “Or can’t you get them from that Frenchman?”
“He is dead,” answered the chemist. “Everything seems to be against me!”
“Well, it’s always darkest just before daylight,” said Tom. “So let us hope for the best. We both have had a bit of bad luck. But when I think of Rad, who may lose his eyesight, I can stand my losses smiling.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Baxter, “you have big assets when you have your health and eyesight.”
Three days later the eye specialist looked at Rad. Tom stood by anxiously and waited for the verdict. The doctor motioned to the young inventor to follow him out of the room, while Mrs. Baggert replaced the bandages on the colored man’s eyes and Koku stood near him, sympathetically patting Rad on the back.
“Well?” asked Tom nervously, as he faced the physician.
“I am sorry, Mr. Swift, that I can not hold out much hope that your man will ever regain his sight,” was the answer.
Tom could not repress a gasp of pity.
“I do not say that the case is altogether hopeless,” the doctor went on; “but it would be wrong to encourage you to hope for much. I may be able to save partly the sight of one eye.”
“Poor Rad!” murmured Tom. “This will break his heart.”
“There is no need for telling him at once,” Dr. Henderson said. “It will only make his recovery so much the slower. It will be weeks before I am able to operate, and, meanwhile, he should be kept as comfortable and cheerful as possible.”
“We’ll see to that,” declared Tom. “Is he otherwise injured?”
“No, it is merely his eyesight that we have to fear for. And, as I said, that is not altogether hopeless, though it would not be honest to let you look for much success. I shall see him from time to time until his eyes are ready to operate on.”
Tom and his friends were forced to take such comfort as they could from this verdict, but no hint of their downcast feelings were made manifest to Eradicate.
“Whut de doctor man done say, Massa Tom?” asked Eradicate when the young inventor went back into the sick room.
“Oh, he talked a lot of big Latin words, Rad—bigger words than you used to use on your mule Boomerang,” and Tom forced a laugh. “All he meant was that you’d have to stay in bed a while and let Koku wait on you.”
“Huh! Am dat—dat big—dat big nice man heah now?” asked Rad, feeling around with his bandaged hand; and a smile showed beneath the cloth over his eyes.
“I here right upsidedown by you, Rad,” said Koku, and his big hand clasped the smaller one of the black man.
“Koku—yo’—yo’ am mighty good to me,” murmured Eradicate. “I reckon I been cross to yo’ sometimes, but I didn’t mean nuffin’ by it!”
“Huh! me an’ you good friends now,” said the giant. “Anybody what hurt my Rad, I—I—bust ’im! Dat I do!” cried the big fellow.
“Come on,” whispered Tom to Ned. “They’ll get along all right together now.”
But Eradicate caught the sound of his young employer’s footsteps and called:
“Yo’ goin’, Massa Tom?”
“Yes, Rad. Is there anything you want?”
“No, Massa Tom. I jest wanted to ast if yo’ done ’membered de time mah mule Boomerang got stuck in de road, an’ yo’ couldn’t git past in yo’ auto? Does yo’ ’member dat?”
“Indeed I do!” laughed Tom, and Eradicate also chuckled at the recollection.
“That laugh will do him more good than medicine,” declared the doctor, as he took his leave. “I’ll come again, when I can make a more thorough examination,” he added.
For Tom the following days, that lengthened into weeks, were anxious ones. There was a constant worry over Eradicate. Then, too, he was having trouble with his latest invention—his aerial fire-fighting apparatus. It was not that Tom was financially dependent on this invention. He was wealthy enough for his needs from other patented inventions he and his father owned.
But Tom Swift was a lad not easily satisfied. Once embarked on an enterprise, whether it was the creation of a gigantic searchlight, an electric rifle, a photo telephone or a war tank, he never rested until he had brought it to a successful consummation.
But there was something about this chemical fire extinguishing mixture that defied the young inventor’s best efforts. Mixture after mixture was tried and discarded. Tom wanted something better than the usual carbonate and sulphuric combination, and he was not going to rest until he found it.
“I think you’ve struck a blind lead, Tom,” said Ned, more than once.
“Well, I’m not going to give up,” was the firm answer.
“Bless my shoe laces!” cried Mr. Damon, when he had called on Tom once at the Baxter laboratory and had been driven out, holding his breath, because of the chemical fumes, “I should think you couldn’t even start a fire with that around, Tom, much less need to put one out.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem to work,” said the young inventor ruefully. “Everything I do lately goes wrong.”
“It is that way sometimes,” said Mr. Baxter. “Suppose you let me study over your formulae a bit, Mr. Swift. I haven’t given much thought to fire extinguishers, but I may be able, for that very reason, to approach the subject from a new angle. I’ll lay aside my attempt to get back the lost formulae and help you.”
“I wish you would!” exclaimed Tom eagerly. “My head is woozie from thinking! Suppose I leave you to yourself for a time, Mr. Baxter? I’ll go for an airship ride.”
“Yes, do,” urged the chemist. “Sometimes a change of scene is of benefit. I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“Will you come along, Ned—Mr. Damon?” asked Tom, as he prepared to leave the improvised laboratory, the repairs on his own not yet having been finished.
“Thank you, no,” answered Ned. “I have some collections to make.”
“And I promised my wife I’d take her riding, Tom,” said the jolly, eccentric man. “Bless my umbrella! she’d never forgive me if I went off with you. But I’ll run you to your first stopping place, Ned, and you to your hangar, Tom.”
His invitation was accepted, and, in due season, Tom was soaring aloft in one of his speedy cloud craft.
“Guess I’ll drop down and get Mary Nestor,” he decided, after riding about alone for a while and finding that the motor was running sweetly and smoothly. “She hasn’t been out lately.”
Tom made a landing in a field not far from the home of the girl he hoped to marry some day, and walked over to her house.
“Go for a ride? I just guess. I will!” cried Mary, with sparkling eyes. “Just wait until I get on my togs.”
She had a leather suit, as had Tom, and they were soon in the machine, which, being equipped with a self-starter, did not need the services of a mechanician to whirl the propellers.
“Oh, isn’t it glorious!” said Mary, as she sat at Tom’s side. They were in a little enclosed cabin of the craft—which carried just two—and, thus enclosed, they could speak by raising their voices somewhat, for the noise of the motor was much muffled, due to one of Tom’s inventions.
Other rides on other days followed this one, for Tom found more rest and better refreshment after his hours of toil and study in these rides with Mary than in any other way.
“I do love these rides, Tom!” the girl cried one day when the two were soaring aloft. “And this one I really believe is better than any of the rest. Though I always think that,” she added, with a slight laugh.
“Glad you like it,” Tom answered, and there was something in his voice that caused Mary to look curiously at him.
“What’s the matter, Tom?” she asked. “Has anything happened? Is Rad’s case hopeless?”
“Oh, no, not yet. Of course it isn’t yet sure that he will ever see again, but, on the other hand, it isn’t decided that he can’t. It’s a fifty-fifty proposition.”
“But what makes you so serious?”
<
br /> “Was I?”
“I should say so! You haven’t told me one funny thing that Mr. Damon has said lately.”
“Oh, haven’t I? Well, let me see now,” and he sent the machine up a little. “Well, the other day he—”
Tom suddenly stopped speaking and began rapidly turning several valve wheels and levers.
“What—what’s the matter?” gasped Mary, but she did not clutch his arm. She knew better than that.
“The motor has stopped,” Tom answered, and the girl became aware of a cessation of the subdued hum.
“Is it—does it mean danger?” she asked.
“Not necessarily so,” Tom replied. “It means we have to make a forced landing, that’s all. Sit tight! We’re going down rather faster than usual, Mary, but we’ll come out of it all right!”
CHAPTER VIII
STRANGE TALK
There was a rapid and sudden drop. Mary, sitting beside Tom Swift in the speedy aeroplane, watched with fascinated eyes as he quickly juggled with levers and tried different valve wheels. The girl, through her goggles, had a vision of a landscape shooting past with the speed of light. She glimpsed a brook, and, almost instantly, they had skimmed over it.
A jar, a nerve-racking tilt to one side, the creaking of wood and the rattle of metal, a careening, and then the machine came to a stop, not exactly on a level keel, but at least right side up, in the midst of a wide field.
Tom shut off the gas, cut his spark, and, raising his goggles, looked down at Mary at his side.
“Scared?” he asked, smiling.
“I was,” she frankly admitted. “Is anything broken, Tom?”
“I hope not,” answered the young inventor. “At least if it is, the damage is on the under part. Nothing visible up here. But let me help you out. Looks as if we’d have to run for it.”
“Run?” repeated Mary, while proving that she did not exactly need help, for she was getting out of her seat unaided. “Why? Is it going to catch fire?”
“No. But it’s going to rain soon—and hard, too, if I’m any judge,” Tom said. “I don’t believe I’ll take a chance trying to get the machine going again. We’ll make for that farmhouse and stay there until after the storm. Looks as if we could get shelter there, and perhaps a bit to eat. I’m beginning to feel hungry.”
“It is going to rain!” decided Mary, as Tom helped her down over the side of the fusilage. “It’s good we are so near shelter.”
Tom did not answer. He was making a hasty but accurate observation of the state of his aeroplane. The landing wheels had stood the shock well, and nothing appeared to be broken.
“We came down rather harder than I wanted to,” remarked Tom, as he crawled out after his inspection of the machine. “Though I’ve made worse forced landings than that.”
“What caused it?” asked Mary, glancing up at the clouds, which were getting blacker and blacker, and from which, now and then, vivid flashes of lightning came while low mutterings of thunder rolled nearer and nearer. “Something seemed to be wrong with the carburetor,” Tom answered. “I won’t try to monkey with it now. Let’s hike for that farmhouse. We’ll be lucky if we don’t get drenched. Are you sure you’re all right, Mary?”
“Certainly, Tom. I can stand a worse shaking up than that. And you needn’t think I can’t run, either!”
She proved this by hastening along at Tom’s side. And there was need of haste, for soon after they left the stranded aeroplane the big drops began to pelt down, and they reached the house just as the deluge came.
“I don’t know this place, do you, Tom?” asked Mary, as they ran in through a gateway in a fence that surrounded the property. A path seemed to lead all around the old, rambling house, and there was a porch with a side entrance door. This, being nearer, had been picked out by the young inventor and his friend.
“No, I don’t remember being here before,” Tom answered. “But I’ve passed the place often enough with Ned and Mr. Damon. I guess they won’t refuse to let us sit on the porch, and they may be induced to give us a glass of milk and some sandwiches—that is, sell them to us.”
He and Mary, a little breathless from their run, hastened up on the porch, slightly wet from the sudden outburst of rain. As Tom knocked on the door there came a clap of thunder, following a burst of lightning, that caused Mary to put her hands over her ears.
“Guess they didn’t hear that,” observed Tom, as the echoes of the blast died away. “I mean my knock. The thunder drowned it. I’ll try again.”
He took advantage of a lull in the thundering reverberations, and tapped smartly. The door was almost at once opened by an aged woman, who stared in some amazement at the young people. Then she said:
“Guests must go to the front door.”
“Guests!” exclaimed Tom. “We aren’t exactly guests. Of course we’d like to be considered in that light. But we’ve had an accident—my aeroplane stopped and we’d like to stay here out of the storm, and perhaps get something to eat.”
“That can be arranged—yes,” said the old woman, who spoke with a foreign accent. “But you must go to the front door. This is the servant’s entrance.”
Mary was just thinking that they used considerable formality for casual wayfarers, when the situation dawned on Tom Swift.
“Is this a restaurant—an inn?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered the old woman. “It is Meadow Inn. Please go to the front door.”
“All right,” Tom agreed good-naturedly. “I’m glad we struck the place, anyhow.”
The porch extended around three sides of the old, rambling house. Proceeding along the sheltered piazza, Tom and Mary soon found themselves at the front door. There the nature of the place was at once made plain, for on a board was lettered the words “Meadow Inn.”
“I see what has happened,” Tom remarked, as he opened the old-fashioned ground glass door and ushered Mary in. “Some one has taken the old farmhouse and made it into a roadhouse—a wayside inn. I shouldn’t think such a place would pay out here; but I’m mighty glad we struck it.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Mary.
The old farmhouse, one of the best of its day, had been transformed into a roadhouse of the better class. On either side of the entrance hall were dining rooms, in which were set small tables, spread with snowy cloths.
“In here, sir, if you please,” said a white-aproned waiter, gliding forward to take Tom’s leather coat and Mary’s jacket of like material. The waiter ushered them into a room, in which at first there seemed to be no other diners. Then, from behind a screen which was pulled around a table in one corner, came the murmur of voices and the clatter of cutlery on china, which told of some one at a meal there.
“Somebody is fond of seclusion,” thought Tom, as he and Mary took their places. And as he glanced over the bill of fare his ears caught the murmur of the voices of two men coming from behind the screen. One voice was low and rumbling, the other high-pitched and querulous.
“Talking business, probably,” mused Tom. “What do you feel like eating?” he asked Mary.
“I wasn’t very hungry until I came in,” she answered, with a smile. “But it is so cozy and quaint here, and so clean and neat, that it really gives one an appetite. Isn’t it a delightful place, Tom? Did you know it was here?”
“It is very nice. And as this is the first I have been here for a long while I didn’t know, any more than you, that it had been made into a roadhouse. But what shall I order for you?”
“I should think you would have had enough experience by this time,” laughed Mary, for it was not the first occasion that she and Tom had dined out.
Thereupon he gave her order and his own, too, and they were soon eating heartily of food that was in keeping with the appearance of the place.
“I must bring Ned and Mr. Damon here,” said Tom. “They’ll appreciate the quaintness of this inn,” for many of the quaint appointments of the old farmhouse had been retained, making it a charming resort for a mea
l.
“Mr. Damon will like it,” said Mary. “Especially the big fireplace,” and she pointed to one on which burned a blaze of hickory wood. “He’ll bless everything he sees.”
“And cause the waiter to look at me as though I had brought in an escaped inmate from some sanitarium,” laughed Tom. “No use talking, Mr. Damon is delightfully queer! Now what do you want for dessert?”
“Let me see the card,” begged Mary. “I fancy some French pastry, if they have it.”
Tom gazed idly but approvingly about as she scanned the list. The sound of the rumbling and the higher-pitched voices had gone on throughout the entire meal, and now, as comparative silence filled the room, the clatter of knives and forks having ceased, Tom heard more clearly what was being said behind the screen.
“Well, I tell you what it is,” said the man whom Tom mentally dubbed Mr. High. “We got out of that blaze mighty luckily!”
“Yes,” agreed he of the rumbly voice, whom Tom thought of as Mr. Low, “it was a close shave. If it hadn’t been for his chemicals, though, there would have been a cleaner sweep.”
“Indeed there would! I never knew that any of them could act as fire extinguishers.”
Tom seemed to stiffen at this, and his hearing became more acute.
“They aren’t really fire extinguishers in the real sense of the word,” went on the other man behind the screen. “It must have been some accidental combination of them. But in spite of that we put it all over Josephus Baxter in that fire!”
“What’s this? What’s this?” thought Tom, shooting a glance at Mary and noting that apparently she had not heard what was said. “What strange talk is this?”
CHAPTER IX
SUSPICIONS
“What’s that?” exclaimed Mary Nestor, giving such a start as she sat opposite Tom at the restaurant table that she dropped the bill of fare she had been looking over.
A crash had resounded through the room, but it spoke well for the state of Tom’s nerves that he gave no indication that he had heard the noise. It was caused by a waiter when he dropped a plate, which was smashed into pieces on the floor. The noise was startling enough to excuse Mary for jumping in her chair, and it seemed to put an end to the strange talk of “Mr. High” and “Mr. Low” back of the screen, for after the crash of china only indistinct murmurs came from there. But Tom Swift did not cease to wonder at the import of the talk about chemicals, fire, and the mention of the name of Josephus Baxter.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 302
