Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Television Detector - Howard R Garis - Страница 6
ОглавлениеA SLENDER CLUE
Speeding out from amid the lumber piles was a man—a tall, powerfully built fellow with a face, as Tom and Ned could see when he turned it partly toward them, almost covered by a black beard.
“There he go!” cried Koku.
And literally the man went. One moment he was in plain sight, the next he was gone. He had been speeding toward the fence. The south gate was not only closed but a man was on guard there as was the case at the other portals.
“We’ll get him, Ned!” cried Tom as he turned more power into the electric runabout.
“But he’s gone!” echoed Ned.
And gone the fellow was. He seemed to have evaporated as if he had turned into vapor or smoke.
“We must follow him!” shouted Tom.
Though the electric runabout could do many things, it could not with safety charge through a heavy wooden fence. To continue the chase, since it was evident that the man had run out of the yard, the runabout must pass beyond the fence.
“How he ever got out is a mystery,” Ned remarked.
“We’ll soon solve it,” said Tom Swift grimly.
He had to turn his car about and make for the gate, an evolution that lost him nearly a minute, for the watchman had left his keys in the gate-house while he was cultivating a small patch of tomatoes. Since the south gate was little used, he was growing the fruit to occupy his spare time. When the car finally emerged into the highway which ran along the part of the Swift property where the black-bearded intruder had disappeared, the stranger was not within sight.
“He’s gone!” murmured Ned in disappointed tones.
“Maybe we can trace him,” said Tom hopefully. “We’ll run up and down the road a ways and make some inquiries.”
This they did, but without result. They described the foreigner, for such he evidently was, to persons they met, but no one had any information. Then, giving up reluctantly, Tom and Ned, with Koku, returned to the south gate.
“No, Mr. Swift, I didn’t see anything of a man with a black beard,” the south gate watchman answered in response to an inquiry. “He didn’t come in this way and he didn’t go out this way. My gate hasn’t been unlocked in nearly a week.”
“Well, he got in and he got out—somehow!” declared Tom. “I’m going to inspect the fence near the place where he disappeared.”
When this was done it was at once seen how entrance had been gained and how the man had been able to get out so quickly. There was a hole beneath the fence large enough for even the big body of the foreigner to slip through. That the man was a foreigner both Tom and Ned agreed, though his nationality, save that it was European or Asiatic, was not so certain.
“So he got out this way,” mused Ned as he and Tom stood looking at the hole beneath the fence.
“And in this way, too, probably,” agreed Tom ruefully. “That’s no doubt how he made his escape yesterday, though it doesn’t explain how he got into my vault.”
“Wires cut and cleverly joined so as not to set off the alarm,” went on Ned as he and his chum made a closer inspection of the hole. “He must be clever, all right.”
“Too clever!” muttered the young inventor. “And dangerous! If he has that gas formula——” Tom Swift did not finish the sentence but Ned could guess his meaning.
It must not be supposed that Tom Swift would so carefully guard his plant with a high fence protected on top by a wire carrying a high voltage charge of electricity, and neglect the ground section. Almost any fence is easily tunneled, and knowing this the young inventor had buried in the earth, all along the lower edge of the barrier, a series of fine electrical wires. The breaking of any one of these would ring an alarm in the central guard house, at the same time indicating what section of the fence protection had been severed.
“But there was no alarm,” Ned declared, for supervision of this department was one of his duties. “I’ve checked the reports for the past week and not a wire was cut.”
“There wouldn’t be an alarm the way this fellow worked it,” said Tom with a grim smile. “Look!”
There were several wires beneath the fence, buried at varying depths in the earth. The lowest one was six feet down, and the others separated from it by one foot spaces, a space too narrow to permit the passage of a man’s body. The wires were insulated, of course, and the cutting of any one of them would sound an alarm. Tom figured that if anybody should try to dig down below six feet it would be such a major operation, and take so long, that the work would be seen by men who made a circuit of the fence several times a day.
“Here’s what this fellow did,” stated Tom, reconstructing what he believed had happened. “He made a shallow hole beneath the fence, taking in the first two wires. If he could prevent an alarm from coming when either of those were cut he would be safe for a time. He scraped the insulation off these two wires in two places, far enough apart to permit the passage of his body through the space and also through the hole under the fence. He joined the bare places of the wires with insulated wire loops he had with him. Then he did the cutting. There was no interruption of the current flowing in the wires because it went around the loop and kept on going. The cut made no difference, or, if it did, it was such a slight and momentary interruption that it did not register on the alarm apparatus.
“So this foreigner had a safe place to crawl through the wires without breaking them and he could also get beneath the fence. And that’s what he did, escaping the same way,” said Tom.
“But why didn’t the guard, who walks along this fence every day, see the dirt from the hole?”
“I don’t believe it was the guard’s fault,” Tom said. “You notice there’s no dirt around here, Ned.”
“But how could he dig a hole without leaving a pile of dirt?”
“There probably was dirt at first when he did his digging. But he disposed of the earth as prisoners do when they’re tunneling to get out. He carried it away with him and probably covered the hole with a light covering of sticks, with some grass and a scattering of dirt, so that when the guard passed, it looked like natural ground. That’s only a theory, but it’s possible. Anyhow, we can see how he monkeyed with the alarm wires.”
“Yes, that’s plain enough,” agreed Ned. “Well, maybe it wasn’t the guard’s fault. But we’ll have to do something about these wires, Tom.”
“You’re right. If they can be cut and joined this way our present alarm system is no good. I never figured that we’d be beset by enemies clever enough to think of this. I’ll arrange a new alarm system for the bottom of the fence at once. I may have to do as I have done at the top—run a knock-out, but not deadly, current through the wires.”
“I think you’d better, Tom. What are you looking for?” asked Ned, as he observed his chum carefully inspecting the earth around the hole.
“Footprints,” answered the young inventor. “Don’t come too close, Ned. I think I’ve something here.”
“What’s that?”
“A clearly marked footprint that shows somebody, with a strong tendency to walk by throwing or twisting out the left foot, has been here. These marks were made by none of us. Look!”
Ned saw what Tom pointed out: the marks of shoes with new rubber heels, for the holes showed plainly. The mark of the left one had a peculiar swirl where the ball of the foot came.
“It’s just as if the man did a sort of pivot motion on his left foot, turning it inward as he went along. That may be a clue for us, Ned,” said the young inventor.
“I hope so. We’ll have to look for a big foreigner with a black beard who pivots and turns on his left foot. That ought to be easy.”
“Not necessarily. He may shave off his beard. But of course if that foot-swirling act is natural he can’t change it. I’m beginning to have some hope.”
“You’d better get busy with that television detector of yours,” Ned advised. “Can’t tell when you may want it.”
“I don’t believe very soon, Ned, any more than you’ll need that secret code to communicate with me when you’re kidnapped.”
“That won’t be long, Tom.”
“You mean you expect to be kidnapped?”
“No. But I was working on my code last night. I’ll soon have it ready. Then you and I will practice.”
“I don’t mind doing that. Now I want to find out what Koku meant when he said this man puffed smoke in his face.”
“Yes, that was a queer statement.”
Since there was nothing to be gained by remaining longer at the hole in the fence, and as they proved, by casting about, that they could not trace the peculiar footprint very far, Tom and Ned rode back with Koku to the office. Men were sent to readjust the doctored wires and fill up the hole. Orders were given to start work at once on a new type of alarm for the lower part of the fence. Then Tom and Ned had time to question the giant.
“You are sure this was the intruder, Koku?” asked Tom.
“Him same man—yes. Blow smoke—knock Koku down.”
“What do you mean—smoke?” asked Tom.
Thereupon the giant explained, partly in his own language when he was puzzled for the English word, that when he approached the black-bearded man who had so suddenly appeared in the corridor, the intruder had made a motion with one hand toward Koku’s face. There was something like a puff of smoke and Koku had gone down and out.
“Smoke!” murmured Ned, puzzled.
“Some sort of tear gas, I believe,” Tom said. “It didn’t leave any odor and it wasn’t tear gas, of course, or we’d have noticed the effects of it not only on Koku but on ourselves. It must be some new kind of knock-out vapor, quick-acting, which leaves no trace or after-effects. And that fits in with the other things that happened.”
“Meaning what?” asked Ned.
After Koku had been sent back to his quarters, Tom explained.
“That the man who tried to sneak into my laboratory is an expert chemist or an associate of one, and that’s why he took the deadly formula from my vault. He knows how to make use of it. We must surely catch that scoundrel, Ned!”
“I agree with you. But how?”
“We’ll have to go scouting around. We have a clue now, a slender one, but still a clue.”
“You mean the queer foot mark?”
“Yes. By it we may be able to trace this man. I’m going to devote all my time to recovering the stolen formula.”
“And to do that, Tom, you’ll need that television detector. You’ll see if you won’t!”
“You’ve television detectors on the brain, Ned,” Tom laughed.
“Well, maybe I have. That and my secret code.”
Tom and Ned had been sitting in the private office talking over what had happened and speculating on the future. Tom Swift was plainly worried, as his face showed. Now he arose and paced about the room, as persons will when they are trying to think out a problem. Suddenly he came to a stop in front of a dial on the wall. It was like that of a thermostat and Ned saw the hand of it moving slightly.
“Look!” cried Tom suddenly. “Someone’s trying to get into my secret vault again! That’s the alarm going off!”
He sprang toward the picture of his father—the portrait that concealed the mechanism which controlled the flooring above the access to the vault.
