Chapter 14 Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures by Victor Appleton
KOKU IS DRUGGED
The young inventor, hastening along the corridor between his broadcasting studio and the laboratory where the new machine was set up, passed the giant Koku who sat on a stool not far from Tom’s door. Here the big man had taken his place each night while the testing was going on. With him on guard, Tom felt secure against intrusion by any of the plotters.
“Getting tired, Koku?” asked Tom, pausing on the threshold of his laboratory. “It isn’t much fun for you to be sitting there.”
“Not much tired. Master,” was the reply, “But Koku like do something—smash somebody—fight. No fun sit here nodding do.”
“No, it isn’t much fun doing nothing, I’ll admit,” said Tom. “And if it ever comes to a fight, Koku, you shall have a share in it. But it looks now as though the rascals would leave us alone. It won’t be much longer now, I think, I’m on the verge of success.”
“That good,” Koku answered. He did not, perhaps, understand all Tom had said, but he had been associated with the young inventor long enough to know when Tom spoke of success that it meant pleasure for the “Master.” For this Koku was glad. “Maybe you make new airship go back Koku’s country?” the giant asked.
“No, this isn’t an airship I’m working on now,” Tom said, knowing it would be of no use to explain to the simple mind of the giant what the invention really was. “But would you like to go back to your own land of giants, Koku?”
“Sometimes Koku think maybe he like to go,” was the slow answer. “But Koku like it here, too. Sometimes get hungry for fash,” and he named a peculiar fruit that the giants of his land were especially fond of. Tom and Ned, on their voyage which had resulted in the capture of Koku, had seen how passionately eager the big men were for this fruit. They would go to almost any length to get it. And Tom had an idea how Koku must long for some now and then in a land where no fash was to be had. It Was a species of melon with a peculiar taste and odor. Neither Tom nor Ned had any liking for fash, but the giants seemed to thrive upon it.
“Some day, Koku,” the young inventor half promised as he stepped into his laboratory to start anew the test, this time under different circumstances, “I may take another airship trip to your country and let you have all the fash you want.”
“By golly, Master, that be good time for me!” cried the giant with a happy laugh.
As Tom walked over to the apparatus by which he hoped to produce such startling results, the telephone bell on the instrument that connected the laboratory with the broadcasting studio rang hard.
“Hello! What’s the matter?” Tom asked, over the wire.
“How long do you want us to keep at this thing?” asked the laughing voice of Ned Newton. “I—oh, dear—whew—I can’t stand this much longer, Tom!” and he went off into another fit of merriment.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the wondering inventor.
“Oh, it’s my partner in the red suit!” chuckled Ned. “He’s cutting up such funny antics that I can’t dance or sing for laughing. How is it coming through?”
“I haven’t connected up yet,” Tom answered. “I will in a minute. I was talking to Koku. He’s hungry for fash.”
“For fash!” exclaimed Ned wonderingly.
“Yes. Don’t you remember those peculiar melons that had such a funny smell and taste? The giants were crazy about them.”
“Oh, yes,” Ned answered. “I’d forgotten all about them. But get on with the show. I happen to have a date with Helen to-night.”
“I’ll soon release you,” promised Tom. “So Mr. Damon is cutting loose, is he?”
“You ought to see him!” chuckled the other performer, and even then Tom caught, over the telephone, snatches of comic songs Mr. Damon was practicing—recollections of his amateur minstrel days.
“All right—get set!” advised the inventor. “I’m going to turn on the power now. Keep toward the middle of the stage, for I haven’t got a very wide screen and the focus is narrow. If you get too far to either side I may lose the image and can’t tell whether I’m getting you or not.”
“Sure!” was the succinct answer of Ned. Then Tom made the adjustments, turned on the power, and waited.
A moment later there came from his loud speaker the tones of Ned and Mr. Damon singing a selection from one of the latest comic operas. The musical accompaniment came from an electrical piano in the studio.
“That’s the best and clearest broadcasting I’ve gotten yet!” said Tom, with satisfaction.
“But that’s the easiest part of it. Now will the images of the performers come on the screen clearly? That’s the decisive test.”
Anxiously, he turned the switch that controlled the projection of moving objects. There was a hissing sound, a slight humming, and then a soft glow illuminated the metallic glass screen in front of Tom Swift. It suffused to a milky whiteness and then, as upon the silver screen in a moving picture theater, but in miniature size, there was projected before Tom’s eyes the figures of Ned and Mr. Damon going through the movements of an eccentric dance as they sang.
For a moment Tom wanted to shout in delight, for, perhaps due to the fact that the performers wore contrasting garments of red and violet, the images projected were clearer than any Tom had yet succeeded in getting through by means of his new wireless apparatus.
“I believe I’ve struck it!” he whispered.
Then he began to laugh, for Mr. Damon certainly was funny. He even seemed to know that Tom, in a distant room, could see him, for the odd man winked one eye and made gestures at Tom as though the young inventor were personally before him.
“Ha! Ha!” chuckled Tom. “I must get dad in to see this. He’ll believe in it now.” For, up to this time, Mr. Swift had been rather skeptical, though he was fully in sympathy with Tom’s aims. “And I’d like to show it to Mary,” mused the young inventor, as he sat there enjoying what really was a team vaudeville sketch without either of the artists being in the room with him. Their song, the music, and even the shuffling of their feet came plainly to him through the loud speaker, while the image was shimmering on the metallic glass screen almost as plainly as though Tom had been in the studio. Of course the image was in reduced size. The screen was about three feet square, and life-sized figures cannot be shown on that.
“But in time I can get them full size,” Tom decided. “Oh, but this is good! I can see success now, though it still must be a little clearer to make it a positive thing and in natural colors.”
Then he bethought him that Ned and Mr. Damon must be tired, for they had been keeping steadily at it for nearly an hour while Tom tried different combinations of lights and currents of various intensities in order to get the best effects.
“Guess I’ll ’phone them that they can let up now,” decided the young inventor. “They must be tired. And Ned wants to go see Helen. By the same token I’d better give Mary a call, I guess. I’ve been rather neglecting her of late—too busy over this invention.”
Then another thought came to Tom—that he would have the girls and perhaps their parents come to the studio to take a look at the result he had accomplished. True, it was not yet perfected; but he knew his friends would keep his secret until he could complete the patent applications.
“Yes, I’ll give the girls a show,” decided Tom. “They sure will enjoy Mr. Damon’s singing and dancing. Gosh, but he’s funny!”
Tom shut off the power. The image faded from the screen which turned from milky whiteness to the blackness of pitch. Then the voices of the performers died away as Tom cut off the radio.
He was about to step to the telephone to advise his friends of his almost complete success and to tell them to cease their efforts when a noise out in the corridor attracted his attention.
“Maybe they’ve decided to quit of their own accord,” mused Tom.
He opened the door of his laboratory and stepped into the hall. He saw nothing of Ned or Mr. Damon approaching and at once became aware of a peculiar odor. At first he could not account for it, thinking, for a moment, that his father might be at work in the chemical laboratory farther down the corridor. But after a second deep breath Tom knew it was no chemical he smelled.
“It—it’s—fash!” he murmured. “The peculiar melon fruit that Koku was wishing for. But how in the world could that smell get here? There isn’t any fash within hundreds of miles—yes, even thousands! How Koku could get any——”
He paused. There was a dark object on the floor near where the giant had been sitting on guard. Tom switched on a brilliant overhead light. It illuminated the place where Koku had been sitting, but the giant was no longer in his chair. He was sprawled on the floor, an inert lump of flesh, while, not far from him, was one of those peculiar melons, or fash fruits, of which the giants of that far-off, strange land were so fond.
“Can I be dreaming?” gasped Tom. “How did this happen? Koku must be drugged! How did he get that fash? And what does it all mean?”
As he started forward a noise behind him attracted his attention.