Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Chest of Secrets; Or, Tracing the Stolen Inventions - Howard R Garis - Страница 4

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Tom Swift and Ned Newton glanced at each other. In spite of the apparent gravity of the situation the young men could not help smiling. For well they knew that voice, and they could judge what had happened.

“It’s Mr. Damon!” exclaimed Ned.

“And he must have made a forced landing from an aeroplane on the roof above us!” added Tom. “Lucky for us he didn’t come through.”

“Lucky for him, too, I should say!”

Ned made a dash for a stairway leading to the broad, flat roof of the building that housed Tom’s executive offices and also one of the shops of the Swift Construction Company. The young inventor followed his financial manager. Others of the plant—workmen, machinists, and apprentices—were also on their way to the roof.

Tom and Ned, going up a private stairway and through a scuttle, were the first to reach the scene. There a curious sight met their eyes. Seated in a small monoplane—a kind invented by Tom Swift himself—was Mr. Wakefield Damon, a friend of the family, a very eccentric but lovable character, forever “blessing” any and everything that took his fancy.

“Hello, boys!” he greeted Tom and Ned, blinking his eyes at them in a curious fashion.

“Well, for the love of spark plugs!” cried Ned. “What happened?”

“Are you hurt?” Tom asked more practically, though a quick glance assured him that the plane was whole, though one landing wheel was slightly out of true, and that the solitary passenger was still in the small cockpit.

“Bless my porous plaster, Tom, I don’t know whether I’m hurt or not!” answered Mr. Damon. “I came down so suddenly! I was aiming to land in your regular flying field, but something went wrong with the controls—it’s a new plane, I haven’t had it long—and I find myself here.”

“Mighty lucky you are to find yourself, I’ll say,” murmured Ned, as a crowd of Tom’s men gathered about the plane on the roof.

“This smash,” remarked Tom, as he and Ned were helping the odd man from his aeroplane, “reminds me of the first time I ever saw you, Mr. Damon. You were riding a motorcycle.”

“And it tried to climb a tree with me! Bless my rubber boots, well do I remember that!”

It was owing to Mr. Damon’s disgust over the accident to his motorcycle that Tom had been able to secure it for a small sum. As related in the first volume of this series, “Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle,” the young inventor was started on his sensational career by the possession of this battered machine, which he repaired and got in running order. On it he had some exciting rides.

Tom was in his early manhood. He, and his aged and somewhat invalid father, an inventor of note, lived in the Swift homestead in the town of Shopton on Lake Carlopa. Tom’s mother was dead, but he and his father were well looked after by Mrs. Baggert, an efficient housekeeper. Of late years Barton Swift had not taken much active part in the rapidly growing business, though Tom always consulted his father on matters of importance.

It was at the suggestion of Mary Nestor, for whom Tom had a very great admiration, that the young inventor engaged his friend and boyhood chum, Ned Newton, to look after the business matters of the Swift Construction Company. Tom never had reason to regret that decision. For with Ned to look after money matters, see to contracts, and the like, Tom and his father were left free to exercise their inventive ability.

The Swift Company had gone into many lines of activity, from building airships and aeroplanes to constructing submarines and giant cannon for the government. These brought Tom and his associates money and fame, and also hard work.

Just prior to the opening of this story Tom had developed a new drill and a system of sinking shafts for oil wells, and when, as related in “Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher,” he successfully demonstrated how quickly he could get down to the oil-containing sand, he made another big amount of money, not only for the Swift Company, but for the Goby family as well.

It was after this that he began to think of getting together in one central place all his drawings, patent rights, secret formulae and the like. To this end he had had constructed the strong chest, and he and Ned had barely finished putting into it most of the valuable documents when the crash on the roof came.

“He doesn’t seem to be hurt, Tom,” remarked Garret Jackson, Tom’s shop manager, as he laid Mr. Damon on a pile of coats and jackets which some workmen hastily spread on the roof.

“Hurt! Bless my doctor’s bill, I’m not hurt at all!” exclaimed the odd man. “I’m shaken up, but I’m more worried about the plane than about myself. Is it all right, Tom? I tried to avoid the chimney, but I’m afraid one wheel grazed it.”

“Yes, that’s what happened,” replied the young inventor, as soon as he had made sure his friend was not hurt and had had time to inspect the craft. “You damaged it a little. But I can easily put on another wheel. I have some spare ones for that model.”

“Have you, Tom? That’s fine! Put one on and I’ll fly off your roof. You may charge me storage if I stay here too long,” and Mr. Damon laughed in a way which showed, better than anything else, that he had suffered no ill effects from the sudden ending of his flight.

“Are you going to trust yourself again to that plane?” asked Mr. Jackson.

“Of course I’m going to fly again!” cried the odd man. “A little bump like this doesn’t disturb me. I’ve been in worse smash-ups; haven’t I, Tom?”

“Off hand, I should say you had,” was the smiling answer.

“Besides, I want to learn how to run this jigger!” cried Mr. Damon, sitting up on the pile of workmen’s garments while the men gathered smilingly about him, for they all knew him. “What did I do wrong, Tom? Or is the steering gear out of order?”

“It seems to be all right,” answered the young inventor, who had been looking at the mechanism. “Tell me just what happened.”

“Well, as I say, I was coming over to see you. Or, if I didn’t say that before, I tell you now. I have a big offer for you, Tom Swift, a most important offer. I’ll get to that in a moment. But I was coming over in this plane, which I bought only yesterday, and I decided to fly across your shop and land in the meadow.

“But, just as I got here, I felt the machine dip suddenly. First I thought I had struck an air pocket, but I didn’t have time really to decide what it was before I came down with a crash. Luckily I was able to straighten her out a little before I struck, so I made a slanting landing. Otherwise I might have gone through the roof.”

“And right down on our heads!” exclaimed Ned. “Mighty glad you didn’t!”

“So am I,” said Mr. Damon. “But what’s wrong, Tom? I want to know so that the same thing won’t happen again.”

“I guess you forgot that you were in a monoplane instead of a biplane, Mr. Damon,” he answered. “You banked too much on the turn.”

“That’s it, Tom! I remember now! I was making the curve to head straight for the meadow, and it was then a sort of side slip came.”

“Yes,” remarked the young inventor, “you spilled too much air from beneath your wing tips. You see in a biplane, with two surfaces, the air is held in a sort of pocket and you can afford to make a sharper bank on the turn. But in monoplanes you must be more careful.”

“I will, after this,” promised Mr. Damon, as he arose and walked about, albeit a bit gingerly as though making sure he had no broken bones or strained tendons.

“Here, Koku!” called Tom to his giant helper. “Hold up this plane while some of the men take off the damaged wheel.”

“Sure, Master, Koku do,” was the reply.

“Go on!” cried another voice. “It doan need no big fat giant to lift a li’l machine like dat! I’ll do it fo’ you, Massa Tom!”

An old colored man with a fringe of white hair around his black pate pushed through the crowd of workmen toward the giant who was already preparing to tilt the plane so the wheel could be removed.

“You go or Koku push you!” warned the giant with a threatening look at Eradicate Sampson.

“Huh! You go on!” was the contemptuous response, and there might have been a battle then and there had not Tom interposed.

“Rad,” he said, “you let Koku attend to lifting the plane. It’s a bit heavy in spite of its small size. You go down to the storeroom and bring up the extra wheel.”

“Hah, you ain’t so smart as you t’inks you is!” taunted the colored man as he departed on his errand, satisfied now that he could help his young master.

“They’ll soon have the machine in shape for you, Mr. Damon, if you insist on trusting yourself to it again,” said Tom, as he gave instructions to his men. “And while you are waiting, came on down and talk to dad. He’s always glad to see you.”

“All right, Tom, I’ll do that. At the same time I can attend to the matter that brought me over here. Bless my Liberty Bonds, Tom, but it’s very important! Big business, you know!”

“Ned and dad and I are always ready to talk business,” remarked Tom, as he led the way to his office in which stood the new chest of secrets. Mr. Swift was there, looking over some papers. At the sight of the chest Mr. Damon exclaimed:

“Packing up to move, Tom?”

“No, just taking precautions so I won’t lose any of my secrets,” replied the young inventor. “There are so many of these plans and patents now that dad and I thought we ought to have them in one place, where we could easily get at them in a hurry if need be.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Mr. Swift. “You know I’m not as young as I once was, Damon. I can’t expect to live much longer, and I want everything in shape for Tom when I go.”

“Nonsense! Bless my life insurance policy!” laughed Mr. Damon, “you’ll be here for many years, Mr. Swift. And lest you may be losing interest in life, listen to this offer that I bring you.

“Tom, you remember Mr. Blythe?” he asked, turning to the young inventor.

“Surely! The man who got so excited when he found what my oil well drill had done?”

“The same, yes. Well, he called on me yesterday. He introduced some capitalists—big men they are, too, moneyed interests of New York and all that. Mr. Blythe introduced them to me, and the upshot of it was, Tom Swift, that they authorized me to make you a big offer for certain rights in your tidal engine and mill machinery patents. Now look here, Tom, there are millions in it for you—millions! Why, bless my bank book, it’s the biggest offer you ever listened to, Tom Swift!”