Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Big Dirigible, or, Adventures Over the Forest of Fire - Howard R Garis - Страница 3
ОглавлениеSPOUTING FIRE
“Such a big dirigible would cost a barrel of money, Mr. Jardine.”
“I know it, Mr. Swift. But my company is prepared to go the limit. We want the finest and fastest dirigible ever built, capable of carrying at least fifty passengers and enough supplies to travel ten thousand miles.”
A short, stout, fussy man, attired in a natty gray business suit, arose and nervously paced the office of the Swift Construction Company as he uttered these specifications. Tom Swift and his aged father looked at their visitor, but neither spoke. Tom’s face had just the suggestion of puzzled doubt. Mr. Swift was interested, but not unusually so. He was approaching the twilight of life and even great projects did not interest him as they once had done. He left them to Tom.
“Yes, it must be the biggest dirigible ever built!” exclaimed Martin Jardine. “And you must build it, Tom Swift!”
“That’s easier said than done,” returned Tom, with a smile.
“Oh, you can do it if anybody can,” snapped Mr. Jardine. That was his way of talking—snappily. He seemed to be all business from his brightly polished tan shoes to the top of his crisp, brown hair. As he continued to pace up and down, now and then shooting a glance at the Swifts, father and son, who were seated, he pulled out a cigar, snapped off the end, flicked out a pocket lighter, set it aglow with an impatient movement of his thumb and, a moment later, was puffing a cloud of smoke about the office.
“Oh, excuse me!” he exclaimed a moment later, his right hand slipping to the left upper pocket of his vest. “Have a cigar.”
He held out two, twins to the one he was smoking, and offered one to Mr. Swift.
“No, thank you,” said the aged inventor. “I don’t smoke.”
“Then you, Mr. Tom?” The cigars went in that direction.
“Thanks, but I don’t indulge,” Tom answered, with a smile. “And if I did I’d be afraid to tackle one of yours. They look particularly deadly, if you’ll excuse my saying so.”
“Well, they are a bit strong,” said the fussy little business man, who appeared to have called on a very important errand. “But I like to taste something when I smoke. It quiets my nerves.”
However, his nerves did not appear to be under very good control just then, for, in spite of his notion of a quieting smoke, this devotee of my Lady Nicotine was having all he could do to repress himself.
“Well, what about this proposition?” he asked, coming back to his seat and brushing aside a cloud of his own smoke.
“Do you really want us to undertake a big, expensive dirigible like this?” asked Tom, tapping some papers on his desk, papers of which the top one bore a rough sketch of a great airship, in shape like the Graf Zeppelin, but larger and differing radically in some of its parts.
“Of course! Why not?” demanded Mr. Jardine. He was out of his chair again, and had taken a fresh cigar from his pocket, though the one he had lighted only a few minutes before still contained much smokable material. “You haven’t any doubt of the ability of my company to foot the bills, have you, Mr. Swift?”
“Oh, no,” Tom answered. He had taken the precaution of having a commercial agency look up the rating of the Jardine company before one of its heads called on him, and the report was satisfactory. “But you don’t seem to realize, Mr. Jardine, that an airship of this size would take a long time to construct and you are evidently in a hurry.”
“I’m always in a hurry!” snapped the fussy little man. “But this is to be an all metal plane, and, as I told you, we can supply the metal. Have a cigar!” he shot at Mr. Swift who was examining some sketches and blue prints the visitor had brought with him.
“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”
“Oh, so you don’t! I forgot! Excuse me! Then you, Mr. Tom.”
He held another out to the young inventor.
“I am still not smoking,” chuckled Tom.
“Oh, yes! Well, now let’s get down to business. When can you finish this dirigible for me?”
He sat down in the chair again and leaned back as if for a protracted visit, but as Tom paused before answering Mr. Jardine was up again and pacing the floor, while smoke came from his mouth like a small furnace under forced draft.
“Ten thousand miles,” murmured Tom, his gaze concentrated on nothing in particular, a trick he had when intently thinking.
“At least that,” stipulated Mr. Jardine.
“And fifty passengers,” went on Tom.
“More, if possible,” snapped the caller.
“Well——” began Tom Swift, but he was interrupted by the ringing of a telephone bell. His father picked up the receiver, he being nearest the instrument, and spoke into the transmitter while Tom reached out to take up one of the blue prints.
“It’s your wife, Tom,” said old Mr. Swift, handing the instrument to his son.
“Oh, hello, Mary!” Tom called into the mouthpiece. “Yes! No, I’m not too busy to talk. Oh, yes, about our Mt. Camon trip. It’s all arranged. I just got word about the hotel reservations. Yes, I’ll have the House on Wheels thoroughly gone over. Of course! Yes, my dear. All right! I’ll be over in a little while and show you the choice of rooms we can have. Good-bye.”
During this interruption Mr. Jardine had tried not to show his impatience, but it was difficult. He paced the floor more nervously and faster than before, while lighting another cigar, the third in less than fifteen minutes, and not one of them smoked more than half way.
“Excuse me,” said the young inventor to his caller. Tom put the phone back on the desk and added: “That was my wife, and we have just completed our plans for a summer vacation. We are going to Mt. Camon. Hope to get off next week.”
“Mt. Camon. I know it! Beautiful spot. Wonderful hotel there, but in the middle of a great wilderness. Wonderful food, though! Best meals I ever ate! How they manage it I don’t know. But you can’t be going there!”
“Why not?” asked Tom Swift with a half smile.
“Because you are going to undertake the construction of this big dirigible for us and that will take all your time and attention.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Tom easily. “I haven’t fully decided to undertake the work.”
“Oh, but you must!” insisted Mr. Jardine. “Excuse me for being so emphatic,” he went on, tossing the almost fresh cigar aside, “but you are the only one who can do it. You must do it!”
“Well, I’ll think about it,” said Tom, once more reaching for some blue prints. “But I must also take my wife on a vacation.”
“Tom hasn’t been married long,” observed old Mr. Swift, smiling.
“Congratulations,” murmured Mr. Jardine. “It’s a big contract, I know.”
“Do you mean marriage?” asked Tom, with a smile.
“No, I’m speaking of this big dirigible. When can you let me know?”
Tom was doing some mental calculations, having as much to do with the individual who had called on him as on the actual construction of the giant of the air. There had been some correspondence prior to the visit. Martin Jardine had first written guardedly of what he wanted the Swift Construction Company to undertake. Tom had had Ned Newton, his financial manager, look up the concern’s rating and, finding they were big producers of metals and machinery, at last consented to an interview which was now taking place.
At this talk Mr. Jardine had gone more into details than in his letters, and for the first time had given some definite idea of what he desired as to the size of the dirigible, the number of passengers and crew she could carry, and her cruising range. These figures rather surprised Tom Swift, accustomed as he was to gigantic undertakings.
“Now let’s go over it all again,” proposed Mr. Jardine, as Tom finished some hasty calculations in pencil. “There are one or two points I must insist on.”
Tom raised his eyebrows slightly at the word “insist,” but politely inquired:
“What are they?”
“This must be an all metal ship,” said Mr. Jardine.
“That is not impossible,” replied Tom. “We have made some ourselves for experimental work, and the United States Government has proved that a metal dirigible is feasible.”
“Another point,” went on Mr. Jardine, in his rather snappy manner.
“What is it?” Tom asked.
“The metal used for the gas bag—envelope I should say, as it will not be a fabric bag—this metal must be oralum.”
“Oralum?” questioned Tom.
“Yes,” went on Mr. Jardine. “That is a new, secret-process metal we have developed in our works. One of my objects in having you build this big dirigible for us is to advertise our oralum. It is much lighter and stronger than duralumin which, up to the present, was the only metal sheets that could be used in constructing dirigible envelopes. Aside from these points, you can use your own ideas on the craft, Mr. Swift.”
“Thank you,” said Tom, and if his caller had not been busy lighting another cigar he might have noticed a tinge of sarcasm in the words.
“When can you start?” snapped Mr. Jardine, puffing out more smoke.
“Well,” said Tom slowly, “I haven’t exactly made up my mind to start at all. Oh, I’m not turning down your order,” he was quick to add to forestall a vehement objection. “It’s just that my father and I must talk this over further before reaching a decision.”
“Then you can’t let me know now?”
“No, we must have a further conference. I will let you know when. And now, if you will excuse me, I must run over to the house to see my wife. She is anxious about our vacation plans.”
“Tom is just married,” said Mr. Swift, again, as if to excuse to the caller the young man’s rather precipitate closing of the interview.
“Oh, that’s all right. I understand,” and Mr. Jardine smiled. “The ladies first, always. I’m quite fond of ’em myself. Well, be sure to let me know when I can see you again, Mr. Swift.”
“I will. Good day!”
Mr. Jardine had not long left the office, hurrying away with his nervous air, his cigars and his smoke, when Ned Newton came in as Tom was about to depart for the Swift mansion where his wife, who had been Mary Nestor, was waiting for him.
“Hello, Ned!” Tom greeted his financial manager.
“Hello, Tom. Wasn’t that Martin Jardine I passed in the hall?”
“I suppose so. He just left here. Came in to have me sign that contract for building him a big dirigible.” Tom tossed a sheaf of typewritten sheets to Ned.
“Oh, yes, from the Jardine company. Um!” Ned picked up the documents.
“You’ve seen them before,” Tom reminded him. “You said the contract was well drawn, legal in every way, and properly safeguarded us.”
“Yes, I did,” Ned admitted. “It’s a perfectly legal contract as far as it goes.”
“Doesn’t it go far enough?” asked Tom.
“Well, yes,” Ned had to admit. “Oh, the contract is all right. It’s this Martin Jardine I was thinking about.”
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Tom.
“He smokes too much,” broke in Mr. Swift, with a chuckle. “Not that I object to smoking, though.”
“That isn’t it,” Ned stated slowly. “It’s just that to me Jardine seems to strike a false note. He’s snappy, businesslike, and up to snuff. For all that, I think there is something not quite true about him.”
“He’s eccentric, I’ll admit,” said Tom musingly. “But so is Mr. Damon.”
“Mr. Damon doesn’t want you to sink hundreds of thousands of dollars in building a freak dirigible,” remarked Ned.
“No, that’s true. But the Jardine company assumes half the risk and expense—even more,” Tom added, “for they will supply the oralum metal plates, and that’s a big item.”
“All the same, Tom,” went on Ned, “I’d go a bit slow about this, if I were you.”
“I intend to,” Tom said, looking out of the window of his office into the April sunshine. It was this warm, early spring sunshine that had set his blood and that of his wife tingling, so they had made plans for an early vacation. “Yes,” went on the young inventor, “nothing is settled yet. We are to have another conference and then——”
There came a sudden interruption in the shape and form of a veritable giant of a man who burst into the private office without any warning.
“What’s the matter, Koku?” asked Tom, for, obviously, something was wrong.
“O, Master!” cried the giant in a booming voice. “Him House on Wheels all bust up! Him spout fire! All blaze! Look!”
Tom, Mr. Swift, and Ned Newton peered from a back window. They saw a cloud of smoke and spurting streaks of fire near the garage where the wonderful traveling auto, a small house in itself, was kept. As they looked, they heard a sharp explosion.
