“Oh, Tom! isn’t that fun?” cried Mary, likewise much amused.
“I can remember everything we said there in the library,” Tom continued. “I’ll see Ned tonight on my way home from here, and he will draw a contract the first thing in the morning.”
“You are a smart fellow, Tom!” said Mary, her laughter trilling sweetly.
“Many thanks, Ma’am! Hope I prove your compliment true. This two-mile-a-minute stunt—”
“It seems wonderful,” breathed Mary.
“It sure will be wonderful if we can build a locomotive that will do such fancy lacework as that,” observed Tom eagerly. “It will be a great stunt!”
“A wonderful invention, Tom.”
“More wonderful than Mr. Bartholomew knows,” agreed the young fellow. “An electric locomotive with both great speed and great hauling power is what more than one inventor has been aiming at for two or three decades. Ever since Edison and Westinghouse began their experiments, in truth.”
“Is the locomotive they are using out there a very marvelous machine?” asked the girl, with added interest.
“No more marvelous than the big electric motors that drag the trains into New York City, for instance, through the tunnels. Steam engines cannot be used in those tunnels for obvious, as well as legal, reasons. They are all wonderful machines, using third-rail power.
“But that Jandel patent that Mr. Bartholomew is using out there on the H. & P. A. is probably the highest type of such motors. It is up to us to beat that. Fortunately I got a pass into the Jandel shops a few months ago and I studied at first hand the machine Mr. Bartholomew is using.”
“Isn’t that great!” cried Mary.
“Well, it helps some. I at least know in a general way the ‘how’ of the construction of the Jandel locomotive. It is simple enough. Too simple by far, I should say, to get both speed and power. We’ll see,” and he nodded his head thoughtfully.
Tom did not stay long with the girl, for it was already late in the evening when he had arrived at her house. As he got up to depart Mary’s anxiety for his safety revived.
“I wish you would take care now, Tom. Those men may hound you.”
“What for?” chuckled the young inventor. “They have the notes they wanted.”
“But that very thing—the fact that you fooled them—will make them more angry. Take care.”
“I have a means of looking out for myself, after all,” said Tom quietly, seeing that he must relieve her mind. “I let that fellow get away with my wallet; but I won’t let him hurt me. Don’t fear.”
She had opened the door. The lamplight fell across porch and steps, and in a broad white band even to the gate and sidewalk. There was a motor-car slowing down right before the open gate.
“Who’s this?” queried Tom, puzzled.
A sharp voice suddenly was raised in an exclamatory explosion.
“Bless my breakshoes! is that Tom Swift? Just the chap I was looking for. Bless my mileage-book! this saves me time and money.”
“Why, it’s Mr. Wakefield Damon,” Mary cried, with something like relief in her tones. “You can ride home in his car, Tom.”
“All right, Mary. Don’t be afraid for me,” replied Tom Swift, and ran down the walk to the waiting car.
“Bless my vest buttons! Tom Swift, my heart swells when I see you—”
“And is like to burst off the said vest buttons?” chuckled the young fellow, stepping in beside his eccentric friend who blessed everything inanimate in his florid speech.
“I am delighted to catch you—although, of course,” and Tom knew the gentleman’s eyes twinkled, “I could have no idea that you were over here at Mary’s, Tom.”
“Of course not,” rejoined the young inventor calmly. “Seeing that I only come to see her just as often as I get a chance.”
“Bless my memory tablets! is that the fact?” chuckled Mr. Damon. “Anyway, I wanted to see you so particularly that I drove over in my car tonight—”
“Wait a minute,” said Tom, hastily. “Is this important?”
“I think so, Tom.”
“Let me get something else off of my mind first, then, Mr. Damon,” Tom Swift said quickly. “Drive around by Ned’s house, will you, please? Ned Newton’s. After I speak a minute with him I will be at your service.
“Surely, Tom; surely,” agreed the gentleman.
The automobile had been running slowly. Mr. Damon knew the streets of Shopton very well, and he headed around the next corner. As the car turned, a figure bounded out of the shadow near the house line. Two long strides, and the man was on the running board of the car upon the side where Tom Swift sat. Again an ugly club was raised above the young fellow’s head.
“You’re the smart guy!” croaked the coarse voice Tom had heard before. “Think you can bamboozle me, do you? Up with ’em!”
“Bless my spark-plug!” gasped Mr. Wakefield Damon.
Either from nervousness or intention, he jerked the steering wheel so that the car made a sudden leap away from the curb. The figure of the stranger swayed.
Instantly Tom Swift struck the man’s arm up higher and from under his own coat appeared something that bulked like a pistol in his right hand. He had intimated to Mary Nestor that he carried something with which to defend himself from highwaymen if he chose to. This invention, his ammonia gun, now came into play.
“Bless my failing eyesight!” exclaimed Mr. Damon, as he shot the motor-car ahead again in a straight line.
The man who had accosted Tom so fiercely fell off the running board and rolled into the gutter, screaming and choking from the fumes from Tom’s gun.
“Drive on!” commanded the young inventor. “If he keeps bellowing like that the police will pick him up. I guess he will let us alone here-after.”
“Bless my short hairs and long ones!” chuckled Mr. Damon. “You are the coolest young fellow, Tom, that I ever saw. That man must have been a highwayman. And it is of some of those gentry that I drove over to Shopton this evening to talk to you about.”
CHAPTER IV
MUCH TO THINK ABOUT
Although it was now nearing ten o’clock on this eventful evening, Tom knew that he would find Ned Newton at home. When Mr. Damon’s car stopped before the house there was a light in Ned’s room and the front door opened almost as soon as Tom rang. Mr. Damon left the car and entered with the young inventor at his invitation.
“What’s up?” was Ned’s greeting, looking at the two curiously as he ushered them in. “I see this isn’t entirely a social call,” and he laughed as he shook the older man’s hand.
“Bless my particular star!” exclaimed the latter excitedly. “Of all the thrilling adventures that anybody ever got into, it is this Tom Swift who cooks them up! Why, Newton! do you know that we have been held up by a highwayman within two blocks of this very house?”
“And that of course was Tom’s fault?” suggested Ned, still smiling.
“It wouldn’t have happened if he had not been with me,” said Mr. Damon.
“I am curious,” said Ned, as they seated themselves. “Who was the footpad? What drew his attention to you two? Tell me about it.”
“Bless my suspender buckles!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. “You tell him, Tom. I don’t understand it myself, yet.”
“I think I can explain. But whatever I tell you both, you must hold in secret. Father and I have been entrusted with some private information tonight and I am going to take you, Ned, and Mr. Damon, into the business in a confidential way.”
“Let’s have it,” begged Newton. “Anything to do with the works?”
“It is,” answered Tom gravely. “We are going to take up a proposition that promises big things for the Swift Construction Company.”
“A big thing financially?”
“I’ll say so. And it looks as though we were mixing into a conspiracy that may breed trouble in more ways than one.”
Tom went on to sketch briefly the situation of the Hendrickton & Pas A
los Railroad as brought to the attention of the Swifts by the railroad’s president. First of all his two listeners were deeply interested in the proposition Mr. Richard Bartholomew had made the inventors. Ned Newton jotted down briefly the agreement to be incorporated in the contract to be drawn and signed, by the Swift Construction Company and the president of the H. & P. A. road.
“This looks like a big thing for the company, Tom,” the young manager said with enthusiasm, while Mr. Damon listened to it all with mouth and eyes open.
“Bless my watch-charm!” murmured the latter. “An electric locomotive that can travel two miles a minute? Whew!”
“Sounds like a big order, Tom,” added Ned, seriously.
“It is a big order. I am not at all sure it can be done,” agreed Tom, thoughtfully. “But under the terms Mr. Bartholomew offers it is worth trying, don’t you think?”
“That twenty-five thousand dollars is as good as yours anyway,” declared his chum with finality. “I’ll see there is no loophole in the contract and the money must be placed in escrow so that there can be no possibility of our losing that. The promise of a hundred thousand dollars must be made binding as well.”
“I know you will look out for those details, Ned,” Tom said with a wave of his hand.
“That is what I am here for,” agreed the financial manager. “Now, what else? I fancy the building of such a locomotive looks feasible to you and your father or you would not go into it.”
“But two miles a minute!” murmured Mr. Damon again. “Bless my prize pumpkins!”
“The idea of speed enters into it, yes,” said Tom thoughtfully. “In fact electric motor power has always been based on speed, and on cheapness of moving all kinds of traffic.
“Look here!” he exclaimed earnestly, “what do you suppose the first people to dabble in electrically driven vehicles were aiming at? The motor-car? The motor boat? Trolley cars? All those single motor sort of things? Not much they weren’t!”
“Bless my glove buttons!” exclaimed Mr. Damon, dragging off his gauntlets as he spoke. “I don’t get you at all, Tom! What do you mean?”
“I mean to say that the first experiments in the use of electricity as a motive power were along the electrification of the steam locomotive. Everybody realized that if a motor could be built powerful enough and speedy enough to drag a heavy freight or passenger train over the ordinary railroad right of way, the cost of railroad operation would be enormously decreased.
“Coal costs money—heaps of money now. Oil costs even more. But even with a third-rail patent, a locomotive successfully built to do the work of the great Moguls and mountain climbers of the last two decades, and electrically driven, will make a great difference on the credit side of any rails road’s books.”
“Right-o!” exclaimed Ned. “I can see that.”
“That was the object of the first experiments in electric motive power,” repeated Tom. “And it continues to be the big problem in electricity. The Jandel locomotive is undoubtedly the last word so far as the construction of an electric locomotive is concerned. But it falls down in speed and power. I thought so myself when I saw that locomotive and looked over the results of its work. And this Mr. Bartholomew has assured father and me this evening that it is a fact.
“It has a record of a mile a minute on a level or easy grade; but it can’t show goods when climbing a real hill. It slows up both freight and passenger traffic on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos road. That range of hills is too much for it.
“So the Swift Construction Company is going to step in,” concluded the young inventor eagerly. “I believe we can do it. I’ve the nucleus of an idea in my head. I never had a problem put up to me, Ned and Mr. Damon, that interested me more. So why shouldn’t I go at it? Besides, I have dad to advise me.”
“That’s right,” agreed Ned. “Why shouldn’t you? And with such a contract as you have been offered—”
“Bless my bootsoles!” ejaculated Mr. Damon, getting up and tramping about the room in his excitement. “I thought the trolley cars that run between Shopton and Waterfield were about the fastest things on rails.”
“Not much. The trolley car is a narrow and prescribed manner of using electricity for motive power. The motor runs but one car—or one and a trailer, at most,” said Tom. “As I have pointed out, the problem is to build a machine that will transmit power enough to draw the enormous weight of a loaded freight train, and that over steep grades.
“A motor for each car is a costly matter. That is why trolley car companies, no matter how many passengers their cars carry, are so often on the verge of financial disaster. The margin of profit is too narrow.
“But if you can get a locomotive built that will drag a hundred cars! Ah! how does that sound?” demanded Tom. “See the difference?”
“Bless my volts and amperes!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. “I should say I do! Why, Tom, you make the problem as plain as plain can be.”
“In theory,” supplemented Ned Newton, although he meant to suggest no doubt of his chum’s ability to solve almost any problem.
“You’ve hit it,” said Tom promptly. “I only have a theory so far regarding such a locomotive. But to the inventor the theory always must come first. You understand that, Ned?”
“I not only appreciate that fact,” said his chum warmly; “but I believe that you are the fellow to show something definite along the line of an improved electric locomotive. But, whether you can reach the high mark set by the president of that railroad—”
“Two miles a minute!” breathed Mr. Damon in agreement. “Bless my wind-gauge! It doesn’t seem possible!”
Tom Swift shrugged his shoulders. “It is the impossible that inventors have to overcome. If we experimenters believed in the impossible little would be done in this world, to advance mechanical science at least. Every invention was impossible until the chap who put it through built his first working model.”
“That’s understood, old boy,” said Ned, already busily scratching off the form of the contract he proposed to show the company’s legal advisers early in the morning.
When he had read over the notes he had made Tom O.K.’d them. “That is about as I had the items set down myself on the sheet that fellow stole from me.”
“Wait!” exclaimed Ned, as Tom arose from his chair. “Do you know what strikes me after your telling me about your second hold-up?”
“What’s that?” asked his chum.
“Are you sure that was the same fellow who stole your wallet?”
“Quite sure.”
“Then his second attack on you proves that he got wise to the fact that your notes were in shorthand. He had a chance to study them while you visited with Mary Nestor.”
“Like enough.”
“I wonder if it doesn’t prove that the fellow has somebody in cahoots with him right here in Shopton?” ruminated Ned.
“Bless my spare tire!” ejaculated Mr. Damon, who had already started for the door but now turned back.
“That’s an idea, Ned,” agreed Tom Swift. “It would seem that he had consulted with some superior,” said the young manager of the Swift Construction Company. “This hold-up man may be from the West; but perhaps he did not follow Bartholomew alone.”
“I’d like to know who the other fellow is,” said Tom thoughtfully. “I would know the man who attacked me, both by his bulk and his voice.
“Me, too,” put in Mr. Damon. “Bless my indicator! I’d know the scoundrel if I met him again.”
“The thing to do,” said Ned Newton confidently, “is to identify the man who robbed you tonight as soon as possible and then, if he hangs around Shopton, to mark well anybody he associates with.”
“Perhaps they will not bother me any more,” said Tom, rather carelessly.
“And perhaps they will,” grumbled Mr. Damon. “Bless my self-starter! they may try something mean again this very night. Come on, Tom. I want to run you home. And on the way, I tell you, I’ve got something to put up to you
myself. It may not promise a small fortune like this electric locomotive business; but bless my barbed wire fence! my trouble has more than a little to do with footpads, too.”
He led the way out of the house and to the motor car again. In a minute he had started his engine, and Tom, jumping in beside him, was borne away toward his own home.
CHAPTER V
BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS
“This gets us to your particular trouble, Mr. Damon,” Tom Swift said, while the motor car was rolling along. “You intimated that you had something to consult me about.”
“Bless my windshield! I should say I had,” exclaimed the eccentric gentleman, swinging around a corner at rather a fast clip.
“And has it to do with highwaymen?” asked Tom, much amused.
“Some of the same gentry, Tom,” declared Mr. Damon. “I haven’t any peace of my life, I really haven’t!”
“Who is troubling you, sir?”
“Why, what nonsense that is, to ask that!” ejaculated the gentleman. “If I knew who they were I wouldn’t ask odds of anybody. I’d go after them. As it is, I’ve left my servant with a gun loaded with rock-salt watching for them now.”
“Burglars?” exclaimed Tom, with real interest.
“Chicken-house burglars! That’s the kind of burglars they are,” growled Mr. Damon. “Two or three times they have tried to get my prize buff Orpingtons. Last night they got me out of bed twice fooling around the chicken house and yard. Other neighbors have lost their hens already. I don’t mean to lose mine. Want you to help me, Tom.”
“Is that all that is worrying you, Mr. Damon?” laughed the young fellow.
“Bless my radiator! isn’t that enough?”
“I know you set your clock by those buff Orpingtons,” agreed Tom.
“That’s right. That ten-months cockerel, Blue Ribbon Junior, never fails to crow at three-thirty-three to the minute. Bless my combs and spurs; a wonderful bird!”
“But let’s see how I can help you regarding the chicken thieves,” Tom said, as they sighted the lights of the Swift house beyond the long stockade fence that surrounded the Construction Company’s premises.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 313
