Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Television Detector - Howard R Garis - Страница 3
ОглавлениеIN THE SECRET VAULT
“What are you doing, Ned?”
“Listen to this, Tom.”
The youthful manager of the Swift Construction Company, of which the eminent but equally youthful Tom Swift was the head, touched some part of a small but complicated mechanism on the desk in front of him. At the other end of the room, seated at a table on which were piled numerous papers and blueprints and several strange looking models, was Tom Swift. He glanced with an amused smile toward his chum and helper.
“Well, I’m listening,” said the young inventor. “Go on, Ned.”
“Just a moment. This connection is a bit loose. If you had given me more help on this jigger—it’s the only one I’ve ever tried to invent, Tom—it would work the first time, but as it is——”
The silence of the room which formed the entrance to Tom Swift’s experimental laboratory was suddenly broken by a strange zizzing, buzzing and snapping sound. There was also a spitting of purplish-blue sparks, followed by a succession of broken impulses which anyone familiar with telegraphy would have translated into dots, dashes and spaces. Tom smiled a bit indulgently and asked:
“What are you doing with that old spark coil I rigged up for you, Ned?”
“You’ll see what I’m trying to do as soon as it gets warmed up. As I said, if you’d given me more help on it——”
“I didn’t mean to turn you down, Ned, when you asked me to look over some jigger you were working on. In the first place, I’ve a lot on my mind.”
“I know it, Tom. You generally have. I’m not kicking. Only I say this would work better if you had given me some help. I’m not much on inventing. However, I think I have it going now.”
“And in the second place,” went on Tom, as if determined to justify his lack of interest in Ned’s “invention” at which the young manager was tinkering, “there’s something very special that I must figure out, so——”
“There she goes, Tom! I have it working now!” Ned interrupted, apparently with little regard for Tom’s remarks. “See if you can pick it up.”
Once more came those staccato snappings, buzzings and zizzings, separated into long and short impulses with spaces between them. Tom listened intently.
“It’s some sort of a message, Ned,” Tom said after a few seconds, “but it doesn’t make sense. It’s Morse code—dot and dash—and sounds like commercial coming in over the radio.”
“That’s right, Tom! I haven’t forgotten how to send, I guess, nor you how to receive. Could you get the words, Tom?”
“Of course! But they’re balderdash! No sense at all.”
“Write ’em down, Tom, as you take them again and see what it makes,” begged Ned.
More to please his manager than because he thought what Ned was doing would amount to anything, Tom took pencil and paper while his chum waited, preparing to send the strange message again. Though it seemed at the time to be but a scientific experiment, the hour was to come when it was to mean the difference between life and death.
“Ready, Tom?”
Again the blue and purple sparks, again the zizzling, the snapping and cracking. Tom Swift listened intently and then jotted down some words on the paper. As they formed before him his smile broadened though it was a tolerant manifestation of mirth. Ned Newton was a fine financial manager, but as an inventor of a new form of wireless sending apparatus—well, Tom Swift had his doubts. Nevertheless, the young inventor complied with his chum’s wish.
The sparks ceased and the echoes of the snapping dots and dashes died away. Tom picked up the paper on which he had written the words that came to him through the air of the room in telegraphic fashion.
“What is it?” asked Ned, now smiling in his turn.
“Balderdash, just as I told you. There must be something mixed or scrambled somewhere, Ned. This is what I got: Blime zax fernmo apentish wacko lushford.”
“That’s it, Tom! I see you haven’t forgotten your Morse.”
“Oh, that part is all right, though I’m not used to taking Welsh.”
“Welsh!” repeated Ned.
“Yes, it reads like Welsh, or maybe it’s Greek.”
“No, it’s English, Tom.”
“English! Why, there’s no sense in the words, Ned.”
“Of course there isn’t any as they stand,” chuckled his chum. “It’s a new code I’m getting up, just for use between you and me. Translated, my message would read: I am in trouble—help me.”
Tom studied over this for a moment. He looked at the strange words, then came over to Ned’s desk to inspect the apparatus.
“Not a bad idea,” admitted the young inventor. “A private code that you can use to communicate with me and I with you. You’ll have to show me the system, though.”
“Sure I will, Tom, as soon as it’s perfected. This jigger seems to work all right now,” and he indicated the machine on his desk.
“Oh, that’s the small portable wireless set you had me make for you, Ned. I recognize it now. But what’s the use of it? I mean, just at present. You aren’t in trouble.”
“No, but I might be some day—kidnapped, you know. If I then had my pocket wireless set with me, or could get at the key in a private station, I could send you a call for help in this code and you could come and rescue me.”
“If I knew where you were, maybe I could,” Tom chuckled. “But I’d have to invent some sort of detector to locate you, a kind of television detector, I guess we could call it. But why all this bosh about being kidnapped?”
“There’s more of it going on, Tom, than you have any idea of,” and Ned’s voice was serious. “Now that my sending jigger works, I’m going to perfect the secret code.”
“Go ahead. It isn’t a bad idea, though I don’t believe we’ll have much use of it in rescuing you from kidnappers.”
“You never can tell, Tom. I hope I haven’t bothered you too much with this little experiment of mine. You said you had something to puzzle over and——”
“I have, Ned. Something very important. I think this is the time to let you in on a secret that has been kept from you and everybody else for a long while. Now I’m going to tell you. It’s a mighty important secret, Ned, so please see that all the doors and windows are secured. I don’t want anyone to know about this. And you’d better send word to have Koku come and stand guard at the outer door.”
“Gosh, you are getting spooky, Tom,” chuckled Ned. “Well, I’ll ’phone for your giant and then I’ll be ready for the secret. I hope it will justify the veil of mystery you are draping about it.”
“I think you will agree with me that it does, Ned. You shall judge as soon as Koku comes.”
Koku, whose devotion to Tom Swift was slave-like, had been brought back from one of Tom’s strange trips to a queer land, and though Koku the giant was as simple as a child in some matters, he had a herculean strength which had stood Tom in good stead more than once. A telephone message from Ned to the quarters of Koku brought the big man to the laboratory.
“Master want?” he asked, grinning broadly.
“Yes, Koku,” answered the young inventor. “Stand outside the laboratory door and don’t let anyone in unless I tell you to. It’s very important,” and Tom, to make sure Koku understood, added a few emphatic words in the giant’s own tongue. Koku responded likewise and Ned asked:
“What did he say, Tom?”
“Well, it doesn’t sound exactly pretty in English,” was the answer, “but in effect Koku said if anyone tried to get in he would make his head grow where his feet are now.”
“Bend him double, eh?”
“Something like that, yes. Well, now I guess we’re ready, Ned.”
Having made sure that no unauthorized person could gain access to the laboratory, and having convinced himself as to the security of doors and windows, and having looked out to note if Koku was on guard, Tom Swift slowly walked toward a picture of his father which hung on the wall of the laboratory. Lifting the portrait to one side, he pressed on a part of the panel exposed. There was a slight clicking noise and the floor beneath Ned’s feet seemed to rumble and tremble.
“What’s all this, Tom?” asked the manager in a loud voice. Though he and Tom were chums of many years’ standing, Ned could not help but be impressed at this time with the young inventor’s unusually solemn manner.
“I am opening the secret vault, Ned,” Tom answered in a low voice.
“The secret vault! I didn’t know you had one.”
“No, I didn’t intend that you should until the right time came. Now it has. It isn’t that I didn’t trust you, Ned,” Tom went on earnestly, “but the fewer who know a secret the safer it is kept.”
“Oh, I know that. I’m not at all put out. But a secret vault! Where?”
“Beneath the floor of this laboratory. I have started the mechanism working. You’ll see the concealed staircase in a moment.”
“Golly, Tom! This is like a movie!”
“That floor where you’re standing is going to be moving in another second,” Tom chuckled. “Better step back a bit, Ned.”
The young manager did so, the wonder on his face growing as he felt the rumbling and trembling increasing. Suddenly part of the floor slid back, and there was revealed a flight of iron steps leading down into a dark hole.
“Why, Tom!” Ned exclaimed in astonishment, “I had no idea that this laboratory was over a secret staircase and vault. You have certainly hidden it well.”
“I needed to, Ned. Some of my most important secrets are in this underground vault. I had it made the time the plant was temporarily shut down and you were on a vacation. Except for the few men who did the actual constructing and who are to be trusted, my father and I are the only ones who know about this vault. Now you know the secret, Ned, or you will when you go down these stairs. Come on. Don’t be afraid. They’re safe.”
“But dark as a pocket, Tom.”
Tom snapped a switch just under the edge of the opening in the floor and the staircase was illuminated. Wondering more and more, Ned followed his chum down, their heels clanking on the iron treads of the stairs.
The flight ended in a small, square vestibule made of solid concrete, and in the centre was a heavy steel door. Tom stood in front of this, touched a spring, or lever, which Ned did not notice, and the door slid back, revealing a small vault lined with shining steel like the strong room of a bank. On three sides were small niches, some closed with steel doors like those behind which renters of safety deposit boxes hide their valuables. A few of the niches were larger, and these contained models of strange machines which Ned Newton had never before seen.
“A few things I am working on,” Tom remarked as he observed Ned’s gaze on these models. “Some of them will be valuable in the course of years. The time isn’t ripe yet to spring them.”
“A lot of plans there, Tom,” Ned remarked, pointing to some blueprints on a table at one side of the vault.
“Yes, some of them are valuable, too. But I didn’t bring you down here to show you those. They’re in the regular course of work, or will be some day. This is a greater and more terrible secret. I have kept it to myself long enough. I need to share it with someone. I’ll make it all clear to you in a moment.”
Tom Swift took a little key from his pocket and walked to a steel-doored niche in one corner of the vault. He opened the outer door, and revealed another within. This, too, swung back when a second key was inserted. Tom thrust his hand inside, felt around, then started back in surprise and consternation.
“It’s gone!” he exclaimed. “Gone!”
“What?” asked Ned.
“The box containing the secret formula of one of the most deadly gases ever known! Oh, there’ll be terrible trouble over this! Who could have robbed my secret vault?”
