“You know I have a barbed wire entanglement around the whole yard and hen-house. I don’t take any more chances than I can help. Those prize buff Orpingtons are a great temptation to chicken lovers—both blond and brunette,” and in spite of his anxiety, Mr. Damon could chuckle at his own joke. “Even your old Eradicate’s friend fell for chickens, you know.”
“And Rad promptly cured him of the disease,” laughed Tom.
“And I’m trying to cure these others. I’ve charged my shotgun with rock-salt—as he did. My servant has orders to shoot anybody who tampers with my chicken house tonight.
“But bless my shirt!” exclaimed Mr. Damon, “I’ll never be able to sleep comfortably until I know that no thief can get at my buff Orpingtons. I want you to fix it so I can sleep in peace, Tom.”
He slowed to a stop in front of the Swift’s door. Tom stared at his eccentric friend questioningly.
“Bless my gaiters!” ejaculated Mr. Damon, “don’t you see what I want? And your head already full of this electrified locomotive you are going to build?”
“Hush!” murmured Tom, with his hand upon his companion’s arm. “But what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to fix it so that I can turn a current of electricity into that barbed wire chicken fence at night that will shock any thief that touches the wires. Not kill ’em—though they ought to be killed!” declared the eccentric man. “But shock ’em aplenty. Can’t you do it for me, Tom Swift?”
“Of course it can be done,” said the young fellow. “You use electricity in your house. There is a feed cable in the street. We will have to change your lighting switch for another. Fix it with the Electric Supply Company. It will cost you more—”
“Bless my pocketbook! I don’t care how much it costs. It will be ample satisfaction to see just one low-down chicken thief squirming on those wires.”
Tom laughed again. He meant to help his friend; but he did not propose to rig the wires so that anybody, even a chicken thief, would be seriously injured by the electric current passing through the strands.
“I’ll come down to Waterfield tomorrow in the electric runabout and fix things up for you. Get a permit from the Electric Supply Company early in the morning. Tell them I will rig the thing myself. They can send their inspector afterward.”
“That’s fine, Tom! What—Ugh! what’s this? Another footpad?”
Out of the darkness beside the fence a bulky figure started. For a moment Tom thought it was the same man who had attacked him twice. Then the very size of this new assailant proved that suspicion to be unfounded.
“Koku!” exclaimed Tom. “What’s the matter with you, Koku?”
The huge and only half-tamed giant gained the side of the car in seemingly a single stride. In the dark they could not see his face, but his voice distinctly showed excitement.
“Master come good. ’Cause there be enemy. Koku find—Koku kill!”
“Bless my magnifying glass!” ejaculated Mr. Damon. “That fellow is the most bloodthirsty individual that I ever saw.”
“All in his bringing up,” chuckled Tom who knew, as the saying is, that Koku’s bark was a deal worse than his bite. “Killing and maiming his enemies used to be Koku’s principal job. But he has his orders now. He doesn’t kill anybody without consulting me first.”
“Bless my buttons!” murmured Mr. Damon. “That is certainly a good thing too. What’s the matter with him now?”
That is exactly what Tom himself wanted to know. He had dropped a hand upon the arm of the giant as he stood beside the car.
“Who is the enemy, Koku?” he asked.
“Not know, Master. See him footmarks. Follow him footmarks. Not find. When do find—kill!”
“That is, after first obtaining my permission,” said Tom dryly.
“It is so,” agreed the imperturbable Koku. “See! Show Master footmarks. Him look in at window. See! Koku have got the wonder lamp.”
He flashed the electric torch in his hand. He left the car and strode into the yard. Tom followed him, and Mr. Damon’s curiosity brought him along.
The giant pointed the ray of the flashlight at the ground below the porch. Several footprints—the marks of boots at least number twelve in size—were imbedded in the soil. Koku went around the house to the other side, following repeated marks of the same boots.
“How came you to find them, Koku?” asked Tom softly.
“Me look. All around stockade,” and he waved a generous gesture with his free hand including the fence about the works. “Enemy may come. Anytime he come. Now he come.”
“Bless my slippery shoes!” exclaimed Mr. Damon, who had hard work to keep up both physically and mentally with the giant. “What does he mean?”
“Koku has always had it in his head,” explained Tom, “that we built that fence about the works to keep out enemies. And, to tell the truth, we did! But all that is over—”
“Is it?” asked Mr. Damon pointedly. “Enemy here,” added Koku, flashing the lamplight upon the footprints on the ground.
“Those bootmarks,” added Mr. Damon, “are doubtless those of that fellow who jumped upon the running board of the car.”
“Humph! And who robbed me of my wallet,” added Tom musingly. “Well, it might be. And, if so, Koku is right. The enemy has come.”
“Me kill!” exclaimed the giant, stretching himself to his full height.
“We’ll consider the killing later,” said Tom, who well knew his influence with this big fellow. “You are forbidden to kill anybody, or chase anybody away from here, until I have a talk with them. Enemy or not—understand?”
“Me understand,” said Koku in his deep voice. “Master say—me do.”
“Just the same,” Tom said, aside to Mr. Damon, “there has been somebody around here. I guess Mr. Bartholomew was right. He is being spied upon. And now that we Swifts are going to try to do something for him, we are likely to be spied upon too.”
“Bless my statue of Nathan Hale!” murmured the eccentric gentleman. “I believe you. And you’ve been already attacked twice by some thug! You are positively in danger, Tom.”
“I don’t know about that. Save that the fellow who robbed me was sore because I fooled him. Naturally he might like to get square about those shorthand notes. He knows no more now about Mr. Bartholomew’s business with us than he did before he held me up.”
“That is a fact,” agreed Mr. Damon.
“And that brings me to another warning, Mr. Damon,” added Tom earnestly, as his friend climbed into the motor car again. “Keep all that has happened, and all that I told you and Ned about the H. & P. A. railroad, to yourself.”
“Surely! Surely!”
“If Mr. Bartholomew’s rivals continue to keep their spies hanging around the works here, we’ll handle them properly. Trust Koku for that,” and Tom chuckled.
“And don’t forget my barbed wire entanglements,” put in Mr. Damon, starting his engine. “I want to fix those chicken thieves.’’
“All right. I’ll be over tomorrow,” promised Tom Swift.
Then he stood a minute on the curb and looked after the disappearing lights of Mr. Damon’s car. The latter’s problem dovetailed, after all, into this discovery of possible marauders lurking about the Swift premises. Koku had made no mistake in bringing his attention to the matter of the footprints. Tom had seen somebody dodging into the darkness outside the house when he had come out on his way to visit Mary Nestor.
“And sure as taxes,” muttered Tom, as he finally turned toward the front door again, “the fellow who twice attacked me this evening wore the boots the prints of which Koku found.
“Those fellows, whoever they are, whether Montagne Lewis and his associates, or not, have bitten off several mouthfuls that they may be unable to chew. Anyhow, before they get through they may learn something about the Swifts that they never knew before.”
CHAPTER VI
THE CONTRACT SIGNED
Tom Swift went to bed that night w
ithout the least fear that the man who had twice attacked him in the streets of Shopton would be able to trouble him unless he went abroad again. Koku was on guard.
The giant whom Tom had brought home from one of his distant wanderings was wholly devoted to his master. Koku never had, and he never would, become entirely civilized.
He was naturally a born tracker of men. For generations his people had lived amid the alarms of threat and attack. He could not be made to understand how so many “tribes,” as he called them, of civilized men could live in anything like harmony.
That somebody should prowl about the Swift house at night with a desire to rob his young master or injure him, did not surprise Koku in the least. He accepted the fact of the marauder’s presence as quite the expected thing.
But the man who had robbed Tom and later tried to repay him for playing what appeared to be a practical joke on the robber, did not trouble the Swift premises with his presence before morning. Koku, thrusting Eradicate Sampson aside and striding to his bedroom to report this fact, was what awoke Tom at eight o’clock.
“Hey! What you want, tromping in here for, man?” demanded old Rad angrily. “An’ totin’ that spear, too. Where you t’ink yo’ is? In de jungle again? Go ’way, chile!”
Both Rad and Koku were rapidly outliving the sudden friendship of Rad’s sick days, when it was thought he might be blind for life, and were dropping back into their old ways of bickering and rivalry for Tom’s attention.
“I report to the Master,” declared the giant, in his deep voice.
“You tell me, I tell him,” Rad said pompously. “No need yo’ ’sturbing Massa Tom at dis hour.”
“Koku go in!” declared the giant sternly.
“Jes’ stay out dere on de stair an’ res’ yo’self,” said Rad.
Koku lost his temper with old Rad. There was a feud between them, although deep in their hearts they really were fond of each other. But the two were jealous of each other’s services to young Tom Swift.
Suddenly Tom heard the old negro utter a frightened squeal. The door which had been only ajar, burst inward and banged against the door-stop with a mighty smash.
Rad went through the big bedroom like a chocolate-colored streak, entered Tom’s bathroom, and the next moment there was the sound of crashing glass as Eradicate Sampson went through the lower sash of the window, headfirst, out upon the roof of the porch!
“What do you mean by this?” shouted Tom, sitting up in bed.
Koku paused in the doorway, bulking almost to the top of the door. His right arm was drawn back, displaying his mighty biceps, and he poised a ten foot spear with a copper head that he had seized from a nest of such implements which was a decoration of the lower hall.
Had the giant ever flung that spear at poor Rad’s back, half the length of the staff might have passed through his body. Little wonder that the colored man, having roused the giant’s rage to such a pitch, had given small consideration to the order of his going, but had gone at once!
“You want to scare Rad out of half a year’s growth?” Tom pursued sternly, slipping out of bed and reaching for his robe and slippers. “And he’s broken that window to smithereens.”
“Koku come make report, Master,” said the giant.
“You go put that spear back where you found it and come up properly,” commanded the young fellow, with difficulty hiding his amusement. “Go on now!”
He shuffled into the bathroom while the giant disappeared. He peered out of the broken window. It was a wonder Rad had not carried the sash with him! The broken glass was scattered all about the roof of the porch and the old colored man lay groaning there.
“What did you do this for, Eradicate?” demanded Tom. “You act worse than a ten-year-old boy.”
“I’s done killed, Massa Tom!” groaned Rad with confidence. “I’s blood from haid to foot!”
There was a scratch on his bald crown from which a few drops of blood flowed. But with all his terror, Eradicate had put both arms over his head when he made his dive through the window, and he really was very little injured.
“Come in here,” repeated Tom. “Fix something over this broken window so that I can take my bath. And then go and put something on that scratch. Don’t you know better yet, than to cross Koku when he is excited?”
“Dat crazy ol’ cannibal!” spat out Rad viciously. “I’ll fix him yet. I’ll pizen his rations, dat’s what I’ll do.”
“You wouldn’t be so bad as that, Rad!”
“Well, mebbe not,” said the colored man, crawling in through the bathroom window. “It would take too much pizen, anyway, to kill that giant. Take as much as dey has to give an el’phant to kill it. Anyways, I’s bound to fix him proper some time, yet.”
These quarrels between Eradicate and Koku were intermittent. They almost always arose, too, because of the desire of the two servants to wait upon Tom or his father. They were very jealous of each other, and their clashes afforded Tom and his friends a good deal of amusement.
While the young inventor was in his bath the giant strode back into the bedroom, out of which Rad had scurried by another door, and proceeded to report the result of his night watch about the premises.
He had not much to tell. In fact, after Tom had gone into the house Koku had seen nobody lurking about at all. The fact remained that, earlier in the evening, somebody had made a close surveillance of the Swift house, but the mysterious marauder had not come back.
“All right, Koku. Keep your eyes open. I expect that enemy may return sometime. Too bad,” he added to himself, “that I didn’t get a better look at him.”
“Koku know him next time,” declared the giant.
“Why! you didn’t even see him this time,” cried Tom.
“See him boots. See marks him boots make. Know him boots. Waugh!”
“‘Waugh!’ yourself,” returned Tom, shaking his head. “You are altogether too sure, Koku. You couldn’t tell a man from his bootprints in the mud.”
“Koku know,” said the giant, just as confidently. “Wait. Him catch—see—show Master.”
“Don’t you go to grabbing every stranger who comes around the house or the works for a spy, and make me trouble. Remember now.”
Koku nodded gravely and went away. When he met Rad suddenly in the hall with Mr. Swift’s breakfast tray, the giant said “boo!” and almost cost the old colored man the loss of the tray.
“Dat big el’phant ought to be livin’ in a barn,” declared Rad. “Look at dat spear he come near runnin’ me t’rough wid! If he had, yo’ could ha’ driv a tipcart full o’ rubbish in after it. Lawsy me!”
But an hour later when Tom and his father started for the offices of the Swift Construction Company down the street, Rad and Koku were sitting before an enormous breakfast in the back kitchen and chatting together as companionably as ever.
The old inventor and his son arrived at the offices of the Swift Construction Company not long ahead of Mr. Richard Bartholomew. Tom had merely found time to read over the contract that had been jointly prepared by Ned Newton and the firm’s legal advisers, before the railroad man came.
“No getting out of the provisions of that paper, Tom,” Ned had whispered, when he saw Mr. Bartholomew coming into the outer office. “Is this your man?”
“Yes.”
“A sharp looking little fellow,” commented Ned. “But even if he were bent on tricking us, this contract would hold him. He is solvent and so is his road—as yet. If it has a bad name in the market that is more because of slander by the Montagne Lewis crowd than from any real cause. I’ve found that out this morning.”
“Faithful Nero!” chuckled Tom. “Aren’t going to let the Swifts get done, are you?”
“Not if I can help it,” declared Ned Newton emphatically.
A clerk brought Mr. Bartholomew into the private office and he was introduced to Newton. If he considered the financial manager of the Swift Construction Company very young for his responsible position, after
he had read the contract he felt considerable respect for Ned Newton.
“You’ve got me here, young man, hard and fast,” Mr. Bartholomew said. “If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance of it. But I don’t. You have set forth here exactly my meaning and intent. I want your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift, and if you give them to me I’ll foot the bill as agreed.”
“You’ve got me interested, I confess,” said Tom. “By the way, were your friends following you when you came here this morning?”
“My friends?” repeated Mr. Bartholomew, for a moment puzzled.
“The spy that you mentioned,” said Tom, smiling.
“That Andy O’Malley?” exclaimed Bartholomew. “Haven’t spotted him today.”
“He spotted me last night,” said Tom grimly, and proceeded to relate what had happened.
“You fooled ’em that time, young man!” exclaimed the railroad president, with satisfaction. “I am convinced that Montagne Lewis is behind it. Look out for these fellows when you get to work, Mr. Swift. They will stop at nothing. I tell you that the fight is on between the Hendrickton & Pas Alos and the Hendrickton & Western. I have either got to break them or they will break me.”
“You seem very sure that there is a conspiracy against you, Mr. Bartholomew,” said the senior Swift reflectively.
“I am sure,” was the reply. “And I am likewise sure that this scheme of electrification of my road through the Pas Alos Range is the only salvation for my railroad.”
“I should call it a big contract,” Ned Newton said, thoughtfully.
“You have said it! But it is not a visionary scheme I have in mind. You must know—you Swifts—how successful such an electrification through the Rockies has been made by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway.”
“I’ve looked that up,” confessed Tom, with enthusiasm. “That was a great piece of work.”
“It is. It is. But I hope for even a greater outcome of your experiments, Mr. Swift. Of course, I do not expect to compete with that great road. They had millions to spend, and they spent them. Those Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotives the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul built in nineteen hundred and nineteen are wonderful machines. They have got forty-two freight locomotives, fifteen passenger locomotives and four switchers of that new type.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 314
