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Ned Newton stood for several seconds intently gazing at his chum and business associate after Tom Swift’s emphatic rejoinder. Then, feeling that as financial manager of the Swift plant he ought not too easily give up a chance for making money, Ned remarked:

“Well, Tom, I suppose you know your own business best, but you ought to have something to back up your opinion that Cunningham isn’t straight.”

“I’ve got enough to convince myself, Ned, though maybe not enough to make you see things the way I do. In fact, I haven’t any documentary evidence, but I still maintain that Cunningham is a crook.”

“In that case, of course we don’t want anything to do with him,” agreed Ned. “But what sort of evidence have you, Tom?”

“I may be mistaken,” replied Tom, who was willing to give any man the benefit of a doubt; “but I have a very strong suspicion that the delicate machinery Cunningham wanted us to manufacture for him would infringe on the patents of certain English machines used for scientific and optical work.”

“Infringement!” exclaimed Ned.

“That’s what it would be if we undertook it, and if it were found out we would be liable to prosecution,” stated Tom. “Even if we weren’t found out, of course I wouldn’t undertake such work.”

“Of course,” agreed Ned heartily. “But are you sure? You have been making some strong assertions against Cunningham.”

“I don’t believe I’ll be called on to prove them in court, for this is just between us,” said Tom. “But I looked over the preliminary sketches of the machinery this Englishman wanted us to make for him. At first I was inclined to go on with it. But the other day I saw a notice in an English publication concerning some new scientific machinery just completed and it was almost identical with the blue prints and specifications Cunningham showed me. If we turned out the machinery for him he’d set up a shop over here for making those instruments and it would get us in Dutch once it came out.”

“That’s right, Tom. I guess you acted wisely in turning him down. He’s mad, mad as a wet hen, but let him splutter. That’s what he was doing to the Queen’s taste when he got in the auto with that rat-faced individual.”

“Yes, let him splutter,” agreed Tom. “He can’t harm us.”

However, later on, he was to revise that opinion of the Englishman.

“Of course it’s too bad to lose all that good money,” mused Ned. “On a hundred-thousand-dollar contract we could probably knock down twenty per cent. at least.”

“Yes,” agreed Tom, “it would have been picking up a nice bunch of cash. But I’m not going to make patent imitations under cover for anybody. I want nothing to do with fraudulent stuff. We can get enough good contracts, I think.”

“Well,” remarked Ned, with a shrug of his shoulders, “good contracts aren’t going around these days begging some one to take them into their shop. But I dare say we shall pull through.”

“Maybe I can get a lot of orders for my House on Wheels when I get it completed,” chuckled Tom.

“Nothing doing!” declared Ned, with a laugh. “You’ll make only one House on Wheels and I can see you and Mary rolling off in that to the music of——”

“Hey! Where do you get that stuff?” exploded Tom, making an ineffectual reach to punch his chum. “That’s the second crack to-day. Dad made one and now you. Where do you get it?”

“Well, since you turned down the Cunningham contract,” went on Ned somewhat hastily, producing some papers from his pocket, “suppose we go into this Blakely matter. It isn’t such a big thing, but we want to keep the wheels turning.”

“Sure,” agreed Tom, and the two were soon deep in calculations.

To the old readers of these books Tom Swift needs no introduction. But those to whom this volume comes as their first venture, it may be necessary to say that Tom Swift was a brilliant young inventor who lived with his father in the town of Shopton on Lake Carlopa.

The initial volume, entitled “Tom Swift and His Motorcycle,” related how Tom became possessed of a machine that was damaged when Mr. Wakefield Damon, its rider, tried to climb a tree.

That was the beginning of Tom’s mechanical activities, for he bought the motorcycle cheap, repaired it, and had some wonderful adventures on it. The tree-climbing incident also served to start the friendship of Tom and Mr. Damon, a friendship that had lasted, though the eccentric man, who blessed everything from his fountain pen to his boots, was much older than Tom Swift.

After his experience with the motorcycle, the young inventor had many startling and dangerous experiences in aircraft, submarines, and in turning out, with the help of his father and with Ned Newton as financial adviser, many strange machines.

Tom’s latest invention is told of in the volume just before this one you are now reading, entitled “Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures.” He made a machine which brought the images and voices of public performers directly into the home. The making of this machine had taken considerable cash, and though Tom had sold certain rights to a syndicate, the money would not be coming in for some time.

“And that’s one reason I was so anxious for this Cunningham contract to go through,” remarked Ned, who was talking business matters over with Tom following the departure of the Englishman.

“We’ll get other work to do,” declared Tom. “To tell you the truth, I’m not over anxious to clutter the shop up with any other stuff until I get my House on Wheels well out of the way.”

“Say, just what is this new invention, anyhow?” asked Ned. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t paid much attention to it.”

“Well, the name tells just what it is,” said Tom. “Briefly, it is a glorified auto—a veritable house that one can not only live in but travel in.”

“You mean a house with rooms and a bath and—and—everything?” asked Ned.

“That’s it—a bath and everything. Of course, the rooms aren’t large, and the beds are to be folded back against the wall when they aren’t in use.”

“What about eats?” asked Ned.

“There’s to be a kitchen with an electric stove,” replied Tom.

“Run a stove from a storage battery?” exclaimed Ned. “Say, it can’t be done! You’d have to have such a big battery that it would be a job to cart it around.”

“Not a storage battery,” explained Tom. “My House on Wheels is to be operated like some of the new, big jitneys, by a gas-electric motor. There’s a gasolene engine of twelve cylinders, and, by the way, it’s just arrived from Detroit, so Koku told me. Well, that motor operates a dynamo which furnishes the current that drives the auto, operates the stove and other appliances.”

“Then you don’t take power directly from the gasolene engine?” asked Ned.

“Only in case of emergency; that is, if the electric motor goes on the fritz. By using my gasolene motor to generate the current to run the car I get a much smoother flow of power, and there are other advantages.”

“Does the dingus look anything like a house?” asked Ned.

“I object to your calling it a ‘dingus,’ ” laughed the young inventor. “But in outward appearance it is like a small house.”

“With doors and windows?”

“Yes, and even window shutters. Aside from an entrance back of the driver’s seat, there is only one door, however, and that is at the rear.”

“How about a pair of steps?” asked Ned, thinking to stump his chum.

“I’ve provided for those, too. There are steps at the rear for easy access to the interior, as my catalogs will say. Only, to keep small boys from hitch-hiking on them, the steps fold up out of the way when the House on Wheels is moving.”

“Then you’re really going to tour in it?” asked Ned.

“Sure!”

“Going to be pretty heavy, isn’t it?”

“Oh, around two tons, I guess.”

“It’s no flivver, at any rate. But won’t it move like a canal boat?”

“Canal boat! Do you want to insult me?” cried Tom. “On good roads she’ll do fifty or sixty miles an hour.”

“Whew!” whistled Ned. “Guess I’d better go and take a look at this thing.”

“Come on,” invited Tom.

He was preparing to lead the way out of his private office to that part of the shop where he was constructing the new invention, when Mr. Jackson, the manager, entered with an air that caused Tom suddenly to ask:

“What’s the matter?”