Chapter 20 Tom Swift and his Chest of Secrets by Victor Appleton
MANY STRANGE CLEWS
“Come on, Rad! Hop in! Show us where Koku is and we’ll soon have him loose!” cried Tom, as he motioned to the rear of the runabout, for he and Ned were seated in front.
“How is Koku taking being tied up?” asked Ned while the colored man climbed in as quickly as his rheumatic joints would allow. “Is Koku mad?”
“Mad? He done froth at de mouth!” cried the old servant. “By golly, I wouldn’t like to be de one whut done tied him up after he gits free!”
“Koku would be one of the best fellows in the world to take along on the search for the robbers, Tom,” suggested Ned. “He’ll be so angry he can easily handle half a dozen with one hand—if there should prove to be that many in the gang.”
“Shouldn’t wonder but what there are more than that in the plot,” agreed Tom. “It’s a queer game! But come on. We must help Koku. Where is he, Rad?”
“Over by Lake Carlopa—dat place where you and me used to go fishin’.”
“You mean Chestnut Point?”
“Dat’s de place, Massa Tom.”
“A lonely region,” remarked the young inventor, as he started the runabout. “They couldn’t have picked out a better—or rather, a worse—place to leave poor Koku. How’d you happen to think of looking there, Rad?”
“Well, Massa Tom, I t’ought maybe Koku might go there of his own se’f. Onct I kotched a big fish there, an’ I was tellin’ him ’bout it. He always said he could kotch a bigger fish’n whut I did. So I t’ought maybe he was tryin’ to beat me, an’ maybe de robbers didn’t tuk him after all. So I looked an’ I done see him tied to a tree!”
The run to Chestnut Point did not take long, and, following the directions of Eradicate, Tom guided his machine along a lonely road. They had traversed this a short distance when Ned cried:
“Hark!”
“What did you think you heard?” asked Tom, shutting off the motor to render the machine silent.
“Some one calling,” answered Ned. “Listen!”
A loud voice was borne to their ears by the wind, and Tom had no sooner heard it than he cried:
“That’s Koku! And he sure is mad!”
The giant was like an enraged bull, but so securely was he bound to a tree with many strong ropes and straps that even his great strength was of no avail, especially as he was so cunningly bound that he was unable to exert his full strength.
“Good you come, Master Tom,” grunted Koku, as he saw his friends approaching in a run. “You friend of mine from now on, Rad—you bring help to me.”
“Cou’se I’s you’ friend,” chuckled Eradicate. “De only time when we has any disputations is when you tries to take my place wif Massa Tom.”
It was the work of some time for Ned and Tom, even with their sharp knives, to cut the straps and the ropes, the knots of which had proved too hard for the colored man to loosen. Then, working his great arms and striding up and down amid the trees to restore his stagnant circulation, the giant cried:
“Where are ’um? Where are ’um mans that tied me? Once I git ’um—I mince pie ’um!”
“Guess he’s heard the expression ‘make mince meat of them,’ ” remarked Ned to Tom.
“Very likely. But I’ve got to get him quieted down so I can question him. He will be the best one to give us clews by which we may trace these fellows.”
Accordingly Tom talked to his giant helper and finally got an account of what had happened. Tom could do more with Koku and understand his peculiar English better than any one else. Also Tom knew something of the giant’s own language.
Gradually a coherent story emerged. Koku had been left on guard the previous night in Tom’s private office building, following the attack on the young inventor. The early part of the evening had passed without anything to disturb the giant’s sleep. Later, however, the alarm bell over his bed rang. Tom had not trusted altogether to his giant remaining awake when on guard, and, as old readers know, the whole place was wired in burglar alarm fashion.
So that, even though the door was opened with a skeleton key, as was proved later to have been done, the swinging of the portal set off one signal, the wire to which had remained intact, and Koku awakened.
He had been awakened some months before by the alarm bell, but that time it was Tom himself who entered the place late at night to make notes on a certain plan before he should forget the idea that occurred to him. Tom forgot about the burglar alarm, and set it off, bringing Koku running with a gun in his hands.
Of course Tom laughed at the incident, but Koku now remembered this, and, thinking it might be another false alarm, he did not at once rush to the floor below, but proceeded cautiously. If the intruder should prove to be some one with a right to enter, Koku would go back to bed again.
Going down softly, and looking in the room where the big oak box was kept, the giant saw several strange men trying to force the locks. This being beyond them, one of the men had cried, as Koku understood it:
“Let’s take the whole shooting match along! The Blue Bird will carry it and we can open it in the woods.”
So they had picked up Tom Swift’s chest of secrets and carried it out of the office. Even then Koku did not give the alarm, for his brain did not work as fast as the brain of an ordinary person. Then, too, the giant thought he had plenty of time, and could, when he got ready, sweep the robbers off their feet and take the chest away from them.
But he delayed too long. Following the men—there were eight of them, he counted on his fingers—Koku went out of the office building into the darkness. The men carried the chest to a large automobile that was waiting in the road, the motor running and the lights off. Then, just as they loaded it in and Koku was about to spring on them, the men discovered his presence and jumped on the giant before he could get into action.
Even a little man will have the advantage of a much larger and more powerful fellow if the little man gets started first, and this was what happened in the case of Koku. Besides, there were eight of the robbers, and though under some circumstances Koku might have been able to fight eight, or even ten men, taken as he was by surprise, he was knocked down.
He struggled, but the men threw “something into his face” that stung and made him “feel funny” and he was gagged, bound and lifted into the auto, though his weight made the men “grunt like pigs,” as the giant expressed it.
So the thing happened, and Koku, helpless, a little stunned, and silent, was driven off in the night, no struggle at all having taken place in the office.
Where he was taken the giant did not know in the darkness. But after a while he was lifted out of the car and tied to the tree where Eradicate found him.
“But what became of the robbers and Tom’s chest?” asked Ned.
“ ’Um robbers go off in Blue Bird with chest of secrets,” answered the giant.
“What does he mean—Blue Bird?” asked the manager.
“It’s a big aeroplane painted blue,” explained Tom. “The men had it hidden in a cove on the lake. It must be a hydroplane, though possibly it’s a combination of both types of machine. Koku had a glimpse of it because the robbers used pocket flashlights. They put the chest in the blue aeroplane and soared off with it. Koku said he could hear the throb of the motors for a long time after they were gone.”
“What’s the next thing to be done?” asked Ned. “We can’t do anything here, and it’s getting late. Did Koku see any of the faces of these fellows?”
“They all wore masks,” Tom said. “Yes, Koku, what is it?” the young inventor asked, for he noticed that his giant wanted to tell him something in addition.
Followed then more of the queer, jumbled talk of the big man, who, now and then, used some of his own words, which Tom alone could translate. Then came silence.
“He says,” interpreted Tom, “that one of the men walked with a slight limp and had a queer habit of throwing his left elbow out from his side.”
“Limping! Throwing out his elbow!” excitedly cried Ned.
“Does that mean anything to you?” asked Tom.
“Does it? I should say it does. Why, that’s the very thing Renwick Fawn does!”
“Renwick Fawn!” exclaimed Tom. “You mean——”
“The man who accused my father of taking the Liberty Bonds!” fairly shouted Ned. “I always thought that fellow was a crook, and now I know it. Tom, he’s in with the scoundrels that robbed you!”
“Maybe,” assented the young inventor. “I wouldn’t put it past him, since I’ve had a look at his face. But if this is the case, we have several clews to work on now, Ned. The limping man with the queer elbow action, the blue aeroplane, and some other things that Koku told me. Let’s go back and get busy!”