Chapter 12 Tom Swift and His Airline Express by Victor Appleton
A DANGEROUS SEARCH
Immediately after receiving the mysterious message from Tom, a message that seemed to come out of the air, Ned Newton made a frantic effort to get the operator at central to trace the call. But if one has ever tried to do this he knows how difficult it is. Unless one can give the telephone number of the party to whom he has been talking, and who made the call, if one is cut off there is little chance of the communication being re-established. Ned found this out to his sorrow.
“What is his number?” asked the telephone girl in a matter-of-fact way.
“His number? Great Scott, didn’t I tell you——”
“I’ll give you the manager,” went on the bored operator.
But the manager could give no more satisfaction than his helper. He promised to trace the call and let Ned know what success he had.
“But I know what the answer is already,” Ned remarked in disgusted tones as he gave up vainly rattling the hook. “We won’t hear another word from Tom until he calls us himself. But we are sure of one thing—he’s alive.”
“Did he give you any particulars?” asked Mr. Swift.
“Bless my telephone book, who’s been treating him this way?” demanded Mr. Damon.
Ned repeated the message as it came to him:
“Just escaped! Watch the plant! Get Father to safety! Look out for bombs! I’ll try——”
Then the voice had died away.
“It’s as we suspected,” commented Ned. “He has been captured by some of his enemies and held a captive up to a little while ago. Then he got away. Good old Tom! You can depend on him for that!”
“But it seems to me we should do something,” declared Mary, very much in earnest.
“Bless my eyeglasses, that’s what I say!” cried Mr. Damon. “Come on—we’ll get in my airship—it must be repaired by this time—and we’ll rescue Tom! Don’t lose any more time!”
“But we don’t know where he is,” said Ned. “It would be worse than useless to go scouring around the country looking for Tom in an airship. He might be only five miles from here or he might be five hundred.”
“Yes,” agreed Mary Nestor. “The thing for us to do is to follow Tom’s advice—watch the plant, get Mr. Swift to a place of safety, and look out for bombs.”
“Are you actually going to hunt through the plant for hidden bombs?” demanded Mr. Damon.
“Certainly,” Ned answered. “It’s the only thing to do after Tom’s warning message. While I don’t know what the game is, I think it likely that his enemies kidnapped Tom to get him out of the way so they could have a free run of the plant to search for and take away his models and papers of the newest invention—the airline express. Well, they got Tom, but he managed to escape, and their first attempt to sneak into the plant was a failure.
“Now they may have secreted some time bombs around the place. These may go off any minute, but, it is probable, they have been set to explode after dark. They hope to throw the place into confusion, and then to rush in and get what they want. But Tom has put us on guard.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Damon. “Then, as I understand it, we are now going to search for bombs that may go off at any minute?”
“That’s right,” assented Ned.
“Well, I’m glad I carry a large accident insurance,” said the eccentric man, forgetting to bless anything just then.
“Oh, there may not be much danger,” Ned stated. “If the plotters hope to get Tom’s models and papers it isn’t likely they would use bombs of very great force. To do so would be to blow things so much apart that they couldn’t get anything out of the ruins.
“So I think they will use bombs with only a small charge of explosive—enough to make a lot of noise, smoke, and confusion. But if we can find them first—the bombs, I mean—and put them out of business, we’ll be all right.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Damon, “providing they don’t find us first and put us out of business. It doesn’t take much of a bomb to blow a man sky-high.”
“No,” grimly admitted Ned. “But that’s the chance we have to take.”
“Yes, it’s a chance,” said the odd man, and then he and Ned began their perilous work—for it was perilous in spite of what the young manager had said—while Mr. Swift and Mary Nestor returned to the house.
The heads of the various factory departments were called into consultation and instructions given them to search their respective quarters with minute care to discover any possible bombs. Koku and Eradicate were also called in and with Ned and Mr. Damon formed a separate searching party.
It was Koku who found the first bomb. The giant was looking in a pile of rubbish in one corner of a certain shop when he made a dive for something and cried:
“Cannon ball—like strong man throw in circus. I stronger than circus man—I toss cannon ball!”
Ned was just in time to stop him, for the giant had picked up a round iron object and was about to use it to exhibit his great strength when the manager cried:
“Hold it, Koku! That’s a bomb!”
And so it proved to be—a bomb with a time arrangement for firing it, set to go off in about two hours. Ned quickly disconnected the firing arrangement and the bomb was put in a pail of water.
Efforts were redoubled to find the dangerous “cannon balls,” as Koku called them, and in a short time three more were discovered in various parts of the plant. They were all set with time fuses which had more than an hour yet to run, so the bombs were rendered harmless with no ill effects to the searchers.
But it was when the shadows of evening were falling, and Ned and the others had about given up expectation of finding more bombs, that Ned unexpectedly came across one hidden in a refuse box outside of Tom’s private office.
It needed but an instant’s look to show that this was timed to go off almost immediately, which fact, when Ned discovered it, caused him to shout:
“Look out! This is a live one!”
He hurled it from him, toward a pile of lumber in the shop yard. There was a deafening report—a shower of planks and boards rose in the air and settled back again with a crash, while a cloud of smoke filled the air.
“Just in time!” cried Ned. “If that had gone off here it would have killed all of us.”
And as the echoes of the explosion died away a voice was heard shouting:
“Is any one hurt? Father, are you there? Ned, is any one hurt?”