Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Television Detector - Howard R Garis - Страница 5
ОглавлениеKOKU SEES A MAN
Tom Swift and his chum reached the corridor outside the laboratory in time to see a man leap through the outer door. It was late afternoon and the cloudy day produced, inside, a gloom that did not make for easy visibility. In a glance Tom and Ned decided that the intruder was a man they had not seen before, or at least one whom they had not seen often.
“Get him, Ned!” cried Tom. “I’ll look after Koku!”
“The giant is hurt!” gasped Ned as he saw the prostrate form of the big man lying on the floor. There was wonder as well as alarm in Ned’s voice, for he and Tom had regarded Koku as almost invincible. Yet he had been felled by this stranger—this unknown man who had made his way into the laboratory building while Tom and Ned were below in the secret vault making the momentous discovery of the theft of the terrible gas formula.
“Koku seems to be knocked out!” spoke Tom, bending over his big and faithful servant. “I can’t see how it happened. That fellow is not much more than ordinary size, yet he knocked out a giant. See if you can catch him, Ned. But look out! Evidently he’s a dangerous customer!”
“I’ll be careful! I’ll get help! You see to Koku!”
Ned dashed out into the yard of the plant, calling an alarm as he went. The watchman at the big gate, one of the main entrances to the Swift works, heard him and came up on the run. Ned caught a glimpse of the intruder who had fled from the laboratory leaping along, jumping over piles of lumber and discarded machinery.
“Get that man!” cried the manager to the guard and several workmen who had joined him. “He hurt Koku!”
“He must be some fellow to do that!”
The light of the fading day was fast disappearing as the chase started. Then the pursuit ended almost as quickly as it had begun. For one moment the man was in sight amid a conglomeration of material in the yard, and two seconds later he had disappeared from view. There was no outlet, at this point, in the big fence that surrounded the plant. To climb over it without a ladder was impossible and there was no sign of a ladder. Even with that help it would have been dangerous to try to pass the barrier, for it was protected by electrically-charged wires.
“I don’t know whether or not the current is on now,” Ned remarked to some of the men who had come up to join him in the chase.
“No, it isn’t,” said one. “Mr. Swift hasn’t had the juice on lately as there hasn’t been any trouble.”
“There’s been plenty of trouble this afternoon,” thought Ned. “And I guess from now on we’ll keep the wire charged. Let’s see if we can dig this fellow out,” he went on. “Scatter, men, and look for him!”
“He disappeared mighty suddenly, Mr. Newton,” remarked the gate watchman. “What did he do?”
“I don’t know just what he did, except to knock out Koku,” was the answer, and there were murmurs of surprise at this statement. “Mr. Swift and I were discussing some private business in the laboratory a little while ago,” went on Ned. “We had Koku out in the hall on guard. All at once he yelled and Mr. Swift and I rushed out to see the giant down and this man running off.”
“Did he get away with anything, I mean any of Mr. Swift’s papers or machines?” asked a workman.
“We don’t know yet for sure,” was Ned’s cautious answer. The secret of the vault and the formula must be maintained at all hazards, even from Tom Swift’s own men.
“He probably was trying to sneak in and steal something,” was one man’s comment. “It’s happened before.”
“Well, I don’t believe he can get out of this place,” said another. “Even if the fence isn’t protected by the juice, it’s too high to climb and all the gates are guarded.”
“All except the one I just left!” exclaimed the guard as he happened to recall how suddenly he had rushed away. “I forgot to get anybody to take my place.”
“That was the natural thing to do,” remarked the manager. “But you’d better get right back to it, Perkfeld. We’ll look for this chap.”
Perkfeld hastened back to the unguarded gate while Ned and the workmen, some with powerful flashlights, began looking around for the fleeing intruder. They did not find him, but that was not surprising, for the yard at this point was cluttered up with supplies and discarded machinery.
“I’d better be getting back to Mr. Swift,” Ned remarked after a few minutes of unproductive search. “You men keep on looking for this chap and if you get him——”
“We’ll know what to do with him, Mr. Newton!” significantly remarked one of them with a grim chuckle.
“I guess you will,” Ned answered.
He hurried back to the laboratory, where he found that Tom and some men from the dynamo shop nearest the experiment room had carried Koku to a couch in Tom’s private office. The giant seemed to be reviving under the strong whiffs of ammonia being given him. The air of the office was pungent with the odor of the stimulant.
“Did you find out anything, Tom?” Ned asked.
“Not much of value. Did you get that man?”
“No! He seems to have disappeared, but the boys are looking for him around the yard. He was a fast runner.”
“He couldn’t get over the fence,” Tom argued. “Not without a ladder, and he didn’t have one.”
“Unless it was a rope one under his coat,” Ned stated. “Too bad you didn’t have the juice on the fence wire.”
“That’s so!” exclaimed the young inventor. “I’ll put it on now and keep it on after what happened,” and his look at Ned was significant. Quickly he went to a telephone and gave the order to the electrical department. In a few moments the Swift plant was protected by a powerful, though not deadly, current circulating through wires on top of the high fence. In addition, lights gleamed all along the lengths of the barrier. A general alarm was given that all strangers were to be excluded or apprehended as the case might be.
“Though I’m afraid it’s too late,” remarked Tom as he came back.
“The boys may get him,” voiced Ned, referring to the fleeing intruder who had so mysteriously vanished. “But what happened to Koku?”
“That’s just what we’re trying to get at,” Tom said. “He was completely knocked out.”
“By a blow or some injury?” Ned inquired.
“No, we can’t find a mark on him and he says he isn’t hurt. I guess he can answer questions now. What happened, Koku?”
“Me on guard as Master tell,” rumbled the giant. “Then Koku see man walk in like big cat. Koku ask him what for. Then Koku feel queer and he call and yell and then he fall down.”
“Chloroformed!” exclaimed Ned.
“Or doped in some way,” agreed Tom. “I shouldn’t say it was chloroform, for there aren’t any burns around Koku’s face which a chloroformed rag would produce, and there was no odor of the drug when I got to him. But he was overcome all right, and not by physical force, either.”
“What then?” asked Ned in a low voice.
“Some kind of gas,” was Tom’s whispered reply. “We’ll talk of that later. Feel better now, Koku?”
“Yes, Master. Much better. Koku go get man what knocked him down. Koku make him—so!” and the giant made a motion of breaking something in his powerful hands.
“You take it easy now,” Tom suggested with a smile. “Rest up a bit. We’ll look for that stranger and if we catch him we may let you guard him, Koku.”
There was suddenly a little commotion in the corridor outside the private office and a quavering voice was heard to say:
“Am Massa Tom in dere?”
“Oh, yes, Rad, what is it?” inquired the young inventor as he recognized the voice of the old Negro, Eradicate Sampson.
“Yo’ Pa done sent me t’ see whut was de mattah. He say he heah some ruction in heah.”
“Come in, Rad,” invited Tom kindly. “There’s nothing much wrong. Just another attempt at theft. You go back and tell my father everything is all right. Then you take Koku to his quarters and see that he goes to bed. He has been knocked out.”
“Ho! Dat big giant knocked out!” chuckled Eradicate, and it seemed that he received the news with pleasure. There was always a rivalry between the two servitors of Tom Swift. “Come along wid me, Koku!” went on the Negro.
For once in his life the giant was content to follow his pygmy rival, much to the delight of Eradicate, who led the way on tottering legs. Koku was really much weakened by the effect of the gas or some knock-out poison that had been used on him.
“This is very strange, Tom,” remarked Ned when they were alone in the laboratory.
“Yes, it surely is. When they get Koku they’re playing dangerously near our goal line. Poor Rad!” he murmured.
“Why, he wasn’t hurt, was he?” asked Ned.
“No, but I can’t help noticing how old and feeble he’s growing. I guess it won’t be long now before he follows his mule, Boomerang, to the happy hunting grounds, or wherever it is good mules go. Poor Rad!”
“He’s a faithful old soul,” commented Ned. “But Tom, what’s the next move in this mystery?”
“Mystery is right, Ned. I must find out who it was that got into my vault, and how. And I’ll get back that formula if it’s the last thing I do. That gas is more dangerous than T. N. T.”
“I’ll go out and see if the men have any trace of that fellow. Do you think he might be the one who took the formula?”
“I don’t see how he could be. He didn’t come out of the vault.”
“He may have been there before to get the box containing the formula papers and this time returned to see what else he could steal.”
“Maybe. Well, see if there’s any news.”
Ned hurried out. That a search of the yard was still going on but without result, was the news the manager brought back to Tom’s office.
“Well, we can’t do any more today,” Tom decided. “I must think this thing out if I can. We’ll make a fresh start tomorrow. Meanwhile I’ll set a guard about this place.”
“And I’m going to work at perfecting my secret code,” declared Ned. “We may need it, Tom, sooner than you think.”
“We may, Ned. Go to it! I’m going home. My wife and Dad must be anxious or they wouldn’t have sent Rad to find out the news. See you in the morning.”
“Right, Tom!”
Tom Swift and Ned Newton sat up late that night. The young inventor after assuring his pretty wife that he was quite unhurt, labored over the mysterious problem of who had robbed his secret vault. On his part, Ned was working out a simple but puzzling secret code with which he could communicate with Tom by means of a portable wireless set in case there should ever be need for it.
“And there may be need any time,” mused Ned as he pored over his work.
As for Tom, his problem was still unsolved when he went to bed long past midnight.
There was no news the next morning. The night force had been unable to find any trace of the intruder and there had been no further disturbance at the plant. The guards around the office and laboratory had seen no intruders.
Tom and Ned met in the office about nine o’clock, and after the former had told the manager he had not thought of any solution of the problem, he added:
“We’ll make an inspection of the whole plant today. There may be a leak somewhere. Ask Martin to bring up the electric runabout. We can cover a lot of ground in that and it’s small enough to negotiate in narrow quarters. We’ll take Koku with us.”
“Koku?”
“Yes. He’s all right this morning. It may be this rascal is still in hiding and if Koku should see him he’d know him.”
“That’s right. I’ll get Martin to run the car over.”
A little later the two young men and Koku were making a tour of the big manufacturing plant in Tom’s electric runabout, an improved model of one in which Tom and Ned had had some surprising adventures. It was easy to handle and could make short turns.
In and out, up and down the big plant yard the three rode, Koku as much on the alert as were his companions. They were approaching the south gate, little used, which gave access to the storage section of the plant, and were swinging around a big pile of lumber, when suddenly the giant cried:
“Koku see a man!”
“What man?” asked Tom quickly.
“Man from yesterday—man what blow smoke in Koku’s face! Look! Him got here!”
