Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Television Detector - Howard R Garis - Страница 7
ОглавлениеTHE TWISTING FOOT
Slowly the section of the floor moved into the recess prepared for it, and Tom and Ned stood on the edge of the opening leading by way of the iron stairs to the secret vault below.
“Can there be anyone down there, Tom?” asked Ned in a low voice.
“I don’t see how it’s possible. Yet the alarm indicates it. Look!”
He pointed to the moving hand on the dial. It was still vibrating slightly.
“We’ll take no chances!” went on the young inventor in a low voice, locking the door of his office so that no one could come in and discover the secret of the vault by observing the hole in the floor. Then cautiously they went down.
Tom paused before the steel door that gave access to the vault proper. It was closed and locked.
“Listen!” cautioned Ned as Tom was about to work the mechanism.
“Did you hear something?” asked the young inventor, pausing.
“No. But I think we ought to listen before opening that door. There may be someone in the vault, Tom.”
“I don’t see how he could possibly get in.”
“By tunneling from below, perhaps.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Tom. Yet so many strange things had happened of late that he did as Ned directed and placed his ear against the steel door. No sound came from within and when the portal was swung back no intruder was visible nor was there any sign of a disturbance.
“I wish someone had been in here,” remarked Tom Swift with a grim smile as he opened the secret niche that had held the deadly formula.
“Why?” asked Ned in surprise.
“He might have brought back that foreign box containing the formula papers. But no such luck. The place is empty.”
“If no one was here how did the alarm go off?” asked Ned.
“That’s what I must find out,” Tom answered, “and you’ll have to help me. I don’t want to bring anyone else down into this place. We’ll have to work on the problem ourselves.”
This the two young men did late that night when the plant was deserted except for the watchmen, as no night force was on duty at this particular time. Descending into the secret vault by the iron stairway, having placed Koku on guard out in the corridor, the young inventor and his chum sought the reason for the mysterious setting off of the alarm. Koku was instructed to be on the alert against anyone who, in spite of the vigilance of the watchmen, might sneak in on him.
“No make fool of me two times,” said the giant with a meaning laugh. “I watch careful.”
It took some little time, and not a little expert work on the part of Tom and Ned, before they found what was wrong with the vault alarm. Then they discovered where the insulation had worn off a small wire, causing a short circuit under certain circumstances. And the circumstances occurred whenever there was sufficient vibration to cause the wire to tremble enough to make a connection.
“But what caused the vibration today?” asked Ned.
“I remember now,” Tom answered. “Just before the hand on the dial in my office moved one of the trucks went through the yard carrying some of the new giant magnets we’re turning out for the navy. The ground trembled. Even down in this vault there must have been some vibration which jiggled the wire and set off the alarm. There was no one in here at all.”
“Not now, but there was before,” said Ned.
“Oh, yes,” Tom quickly agreed. “There was an intruder here who stole that formula and nothing more, it seems, for I haven’t missed anything else.” They had made a checkup while seeking the cause of the alarm going off.
“And maybe that black-bearded foreigner, who was here to steal the formula, monkeyed with the alarm wires,” Ned stated.
“Perhaps,” agreed the young inventor. “That insulation has been scraped off—it isn’t worn. There’s nothing to wear it. Ned, I’m afraid we’re up against a deep plot here.”
“It looks so, Tom. But at least this was a false alarm.”
“It was, but it’s one of the exceptions that are falsely said to prove the rule. It means my vault isn’t secure any more unless I do something about it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“For one thing, as I said before, change the alarm system here and put on new locks. That ought to keep out whoever has solved the secret of my present kind of safeguards.”
“And for the second thing?”
“We’re going to scout around and follow up the clue of the man with the twisting left foot. I’m convinced he’s somewhere in this neighborhood, hiding until he can either steal something else from me or until he can safely travel away with that deadly gas formula.”
“What’s to prevent him from skipping out whenever he pleases, Tom?”
“There’s only one reason I can think of now. He may be working with a gang of plotters, such as some of the bands that are so common in Europe—bands of terrorists and bombers. This man may be only one of many and may have conceived the idea, all by himself, of stealing the formula of Korbis Alhazar.”
“Korbis Alhazar!” repeated Ned. “Who’s he?”
“The man from whom I purchased the gas formula to prevent it from falling into the hands of unscrupulous men,” Tom answered. “I guess I didn’t mention his name before.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Ned. “But go on. You were forming a theory as to the reason this thief might be in hiding for a time. Why?”
“Because he may have broken with the gang of plotters and may be trying something on his own. In that case he’d want to evade them, but they may be close after him so he’d have to make a getaway as best he could. Perhaps he’s being watched so closely that he can’t get out of Shopton, and in that case we may pick up his trail by scouting around.”
“I see. Say, Tom, it’s something fierce if we have a gang of terrorists in Shopton!”
“We may have, though I don’t believe they have any designs on our town.”
“What, then?”
“I think they’re trying to get some more of my secrets. I must take better precautions, Ned.”
The next few days were busy ones for Tom Swift and those associated with him. He and Ned, working alone, changed the alarm system in the secret vault and put on different locks. An inspection showed that no tunneling had been attempted, so it was decided that the intruder must have got in through the laboratory to steal the gas formula. The locks and fastenings, as well as the alarm wires connected with the building, were altered.
Meanwhile the fence about the Swift plant had been made more impregnable and the guards had been changed about. Some who were regarded as inefficient were dispensed with and new ones were substituted.
Then Tom and Ned started in to comb Shopton and its environs for a trace of the twisting footed foreigner. They made cautious inquiries and followed many clues. Most of these were false and led nowhere. During his spare moments Ned worked on his new secret code, and after many days perfected the machine for sending messages—a small, portable radio set. What he wanted to do was to communicate with Tom, through the ether, so that regardless of the interception of the signals he could make sense of it.
“And that wasn’t easy,” Ned remarked.
“I believe you,” agreed Tom. “I must take time soon to try it out with you.”
It was one day, about two weeks after the theft of the deadly gas formula, that Tom and Ned were out in the electric runabout, scouting in the suburbs for some possible clue to the twisting footed foreigner. They had inspected many footprints in soft ground, seemingly a hopeless task, looking toward tangible results, when at last they found what they thought they wanted.
They were near a section of the outskirts of Shopton where many foreigners lived. Some of them were laborers in Tom’s plant and the locality was partly made up of what are termed “slums.” There were drab and dreary tenements and several old factory buildings that had been made into barracks for groups of men who shifted about from place to place, working a few days or weeks in one plant and then moving on.
It was after a rain, and as Tom and Ned were driving in the electric car past a tumble-down, old brick barrack, they saw, plainly imprinted in the soft mud of a path leading to a side door, several footprints. Why he stopped to examine them Tom never knew, but he did. He and Ned had looked over so many without result that they had nearly given up. But at the sight of these Tom pointed and exclaimed:
“Ned! We’ve found him!”
“What do you mean—found him!”
“Look! The twisting foot!”
The two boys bent over the marks in the red mud.
“Yes,” murmured the young manager, “there it is! The twisting foot!”
