Chapter 3 Tom Swift and His Sky Train by Victor Appleton
TURNED DOWN
Meanwhile Tom Swift, having telephoned to his private garage to have his speedy car ready for a dash to the Country Club, looked over some papers in his office and was about to leave, when he was stopped by a rather sullen faced young fellow.
“Well, what is it, Daniel?” asked Tom. Davis Daniel was the name of a new clerical assistant whom Tom had engaged when the office duties became extra heavy, because of the work on the new sky train.
“About this accident, Mr. Swift,” Daniel went on. “I hope you didn’t get hurt.”
“Not at all,” Tom said, not any too well pleased to have the mishap spoken of by this new clerk. “You heard about it very quickly.”
“Oh, yes, sir. I was out on the field, waiting for you to come down so I could find out what you wanted done about that dirigible matter. You haven’t let the World Exposition people know whether they can have her for an exhibit. What did you decide?”
“That’s so, it did slip my mind,” Tom admitted, recalling that the management of the big air carnival, to be held soon on the Pacific coast, had asked for the Silver Cloud, the immense, Swift dirigible for exhibition purposes. This was the craft in which Tom made rescues from the hotel menaced by the great forest fire, as told in the preceding book.
The Silver Cloud had been sold to the firm of Jardine Brothers, but Tom planned to borrow back, for a time, his unique air traveler that it might be shown in connection with his sky train.
“I’ll take that up with you as soon as I get back, Daniel,” went on the young inventor. “I have to go now to the Country Club. No, the accident to my sky train didn’t amount to much—Northrup was only bruised. The men are bringing in some of the damaged parts, the coupler and so on. See that they are carefully put away in my private laboratory and that no one disturbs them, Daniel.”
“Yes, Mr. Swift, I’ll do that,” Daniel said, as Tom saw his big car swing into the drive in front of his office. “So you are going to the Country Club, are you?” Daniel murmured, as Tom left the place “Well, I can guess what for.” And laying aside the letter from the World Exposition secretary, Daniel took up a telephone directory, and began to thumb its pages.
Tom Swift was a member of the Country Club but, of late, he had not been out to sit in the pleasant house or follow after an elusive white ball, over the well-laid-out golf links. Tom’s wife went, however, quite frequently out to the place and Tom had ascertained, by a telephone call to his home, that Mary was out there now. Tom had promised to meet her there and drive her home, as she had gone out to play golf with Helen Morton and some other friends.
“Yes, this certainly is a beautiful place,” Tom murmured, as he drove along the winding road that skirted Lake Carlopa and then wound up a wooded eminence to the club grounds. “I wish I had more time to spend out here. But you can’t play golf and invent sky trains,” he added with a little regretful laugh.
He parked his car, learned from a servant that Mary was still out on the links with her friends, and that Mr. Willam was expected in shortly from his foursome.
“Just tell Mr. Willam I’m outside here on the verandah, Edgar,” Tom said to the boy, “and ask him to let me know when I can talk to him.”
“Yes, I’ll do that, Mr. Swift.”
Tom was busy with many thoughts, chiefly about what needed to be done to the coupler device of his sky train to make it trouble proof, when he saw a shadow move near his chair and a gruff voice said:
“You are looking for me, Tom Swift?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Willam!” exclaimed the young inventor, quickly arising from his chair to shake hands with a heavy-set, heavy-jowled man, with a coarse, unresponsive face, and a pair of cool, appraising gray eyes. “If you have a few moments to spare, I’d like to talk business with you. Hope I didn’t interrupt your game.”
“Huh! It wasn’t much of a game!” grunted Lester Willam, as he took out a thick, black cigar and viciously bit off the end, calling as he did so: “Here, boy! Bring me some matches and don’t be all day about it! Game! I never played worse in my life! Bah!”
For the sake of what he was about to propose, Tom Swift wished Mr. Willam had done better on the links, but there was no help for it. Tom must have money.
“Perhaps you can guess what I have come to see you about, Mr. Willam,” Tom went on, when the bank president’s cigar was drawing well. “My financial man, Ned Newton——”
“Oh, yes, Newton was in to see me,” said the gruff voice, with little encouragement in it. “About a loan—I said I’d have to talk to you, Mr. Swift.”
“Yes. Well, I’m glad to talk over the matter with you. In brief, I need a considerable sum to perfect my new sky train.”
“Huh! Sky train! Sounds foolish to me, but go on!
“Well, it isn’t quite as foolish as it may sound,” Tom said, trying to keep his temper. “As you probably have heard, there is to be held, shortly, on the Pacific coast one of the biggest air meets in history. I have sent some exhibits out there and I am planning to send another, my big dirigible, Silver Cloud. All those are perfected inventions—they all work—and so does my experimental sky train. But I need a large sum in cash, right away, to perfect it and build an actual train that I can send out to the coast and back and demonstrate it at the World Exposition. Perhaps Mr. Newton explained that we had used up much of our ready cash, which is why we need more. We can give you good security—a mortgage on the sky train patents, in fact.”
“Hum! Are they any good?”
“They are and will be more valuable,” Tom said.
“Well, explain it to me—just what is a sky train, anyhow?” Mr. Willam bit viciously on his black cigar and emitted a cloud of white smoke.
“In brief, my sky train will consist of a powerful airplane, of a cabin type, capable of carrying say a score of passengers,” Tom said. “If this was all there was to it I wouldn’t be troubling you. But while planes carrying passengers from coast to coast are not uncommon, my plan of attaching to the towing plane a number of smaller planes, without motors, which are called gliders, is new. And my plan of having the towing plane pick up gliders, filled with passengers, at various flying fields between here and the coast, and taking them along, dropping them off as a railroad train drops off coaches at local points, is also new.”
“Do you mean to say,” burst out the bank president, “that you propose to fly a train of gliders through the air, starting here in the east, pick up other gliders at intermediate points, dropping off some, picking up others and like that?”
“That’s exactly what I propose to do,” said Tom, smiling.
“It can’t be done!”
“Excuse me, but it has been done,” Tom said. “I have just come from a test of my new invention. You realize, Mr. Willam, that it is comparatively easy for a towing plane to start from the ground, towing motorless gliders—any reasonable number of them. But by my plan, the last glider in the train can be cut loose at any determined point, and will go down to the ground say at Chicago, Denver, or any place between here and the Pacific coast.”
“You mean you just cut loose those gliders filled with passengers and let them drop?” asked Mr. Willam. “That’s foolishness! Dangerous! They’ll all be killed.”
“No,” went on Tom. “The gliders will land as gently as any regular airplane. Each glider will be in charge of a competent pilot who will ease it down to earth. But that is only half my plan. I want to make my coast to coast sky train a sort of express, without stops. And I plan to have it pick up loaded gliders at certain points and pull them out to the coast.”
“You mean you’re going to dip down in that big airplane of yours, with a string of gliders for a tail, like a kite, and hook on to some other glider, or gliders, waiting on the ground? That can’t be done! There would be a grand smash! You needn’t think I’ll lend you money on such a wild scheme!”
“You don’t quite understand,” Tom went on, patiently. “I don’t propose to pick up gliders from the ground with my sky train. The glider, or gliders, at intermediate points, filled with passengers, will be hauled into the air by an auxiliary motored plane at each landing field, and will be coupled to the rear of my sky train while it is in full flight.”
Mr. Willam thought this over for a few seconds, meanwhile rolling his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Let me see if I get you,” he said to Tom. “You propose to start a sky train, consisting, first, of a big motored airplane, say from New York, and head for San Francisco. Towed by the big plane will be several gliders, carrying passengers. One glider will have in it passengers who, we’ll say, want to land at Chicago. When your sky train gets there, you’ll drop off the last glider. Is that it?”
“I won’t exactly drop it off,” Tom said with a smile. “I will simply uncouple it, as a brakeman would uncouple a railroad coach from the rear of a train. The glider, guided by a pilot, will make the landing safely. At the same time an auxiliary motored plane on the Chicago field will soar aloft, towing a glider of passengers who want to go to San Francisco. This glider will be coupled to the rear of my sky train in place of the one let off over Chicago, and the plane that brought it up will circle back to the field.”
“Well, I can understand the principle of the thing,” grudgingly admitted the bank president. “It sounds all right in theory and I’ll admit that we’re getting to be quite an air-minded country. But will your plan work and will it pay?”
“It will work,” said Tom, with more confidence than he felt since the accident. “And I’m sure it will pay. There is a growing demand for rapid transportation between here and the Pacific coast.”
“Yes, I admit that. But a sky train! All nonsense, I should say!”
“The Acton Aviation Works in Pleasantville don’t think it’s nonsense,” said Tom quickly.
“What do you know of the Acton works?” demanded Mr. Willam suddenly and sharply, as he blew out a big cloud of smoke.
“Not much,” Tom had to admit. “However I understand they are working on something like my sky train, but on a different principle.”
“Bosh!” exploded the bank president. “It will never amount to anything. And I don’t believe your scheme will, either. But I know you have been successful in many of your inventions, Tom Swift. I might be willing to consider making a loan, but I should have to ask better security than just a mortgage on your sky train and the patents covering it. That’s too visionary for a bank loan. If you could arrange to give me a mortgage covering your plant, or part of it, and put up as security say your big dirigible—I understand that really works—why I might consider—yes, what is it?” he interrupted himself to snap at a boy in the club livery who came out to stand deferentially by the big man’s chair. “What is it?”
“Telephone, Mr. Willam.”
“Oh, all right! Why didn’t you say so at first? I’ll be back in a moment,” said the bank president to Tom, who was rather dazed by the large security demands. “I’m not at all in favor of this—but wait until I see who wants me.”
He went inside the clubhouse, while Tom waved to Mary and her friends, who, just then, appeared coming in from the golf field. Before Mary could come up on the verandah to greet Tom he saw Mr. Willam hurrying back. There was now a different look on the bank president’s face.
“It’s all off! Nothing doing!” he exclaimed. “I’ll not loan you a dollar of the bank’s money on your sky train, Tom Swift!” Then, tossing aside the smouldering cigar, Lester Willam again went into the clubhouse.
“Well,” murmured Tom, with a grim smile, “that’s that! Turned down! I wonder if his telephone message could have had anything to do with it? I thought I had the idea of a sky train sold to him before that. I wonder what’s wrong?”