Chapter 5 Tom Swift and His Sky Train by Victor Appleton
HOT WATER
Only by skillful handling of his automobile did Tom Swift avert what might have been a bad accident. As it was he managed to skim the edge of the roadside ditch, the sight of which gave Mary a fright. Then he had the car back on the highway again, brought it to a stop and looked back for a sight of the offending driver.
The other motorist was not to be seen. He had kept on in his careening roadster, not stopping to see what damage he might have caused the car coming around the curve, which curve he, himself, took at dangerous speed.
“Road hog!” muttered Tom, whose nerves were not easily disturbed. “Did you notice the license number of that car, Mary?”
“No, I didn’t. I got so excited, thinking you were turning out into the ditch, that I didn’t notice anything. Did you know the driver?”
“I wouldn’t want to be too sure,” said Tom, “but he looked like a young fellow from my shop who is a new employee.”
“One of your men?” asked Mary in surprise.
“I think so—his name is Davis Daniel—he came to me well recommended. He’s sort of an office assistant, draws working plans and is a good mechanic, though he doesn’t really work in the shop. I’m not sure it was Daniel, but from the hasty look I had, it seemed to be him.”
“Whoever it was, he gave me a scare,” said Mary whose heart, even yet, had not resumed its normal beat. “Oh, I could see us all piled up in the ditch!” and she gave a little shudder.
“I guess I could have jumped it in this car,” Tom said with a smile. “It’s pretty sturdy.”
Tom left Mary at the house, and when she asked him if he weren’t coming in, he said:
“I must go to the office and have a talk with Ned. We’ve got to do something about raising money.”
“Oh, Tom, I wish I could help you!”
“You do help me a lot, Mary!”
“Do I? How?” she asked with a pleased smile.
“Just by being my wife!”
“Oh, Tom! Don’t be silly!” and with a blush she ran in.
Tom proceeded to his office after putting his car in the garage. He found Ned waiting anxiously for him.
“Is Daniel here?” was Tom’s first question.
“Why, no,” Ned replied. “He came to me a while ago, said he had finished up all you asked him to do and, as it was nearly five, asked if he could go. I didn’t see any reason for keeping him so I said he could. Why?”
“Did he go off in his car?” asked Tom.
“Didn’t know he had a car. Why, what’s the matter?”
Tom briefly explained about the near collision and Ned agreed that if Daniel was that kind of a driver he wasn’t safe to have around.
“I’ll make some inquiries tomorrow, Tom,” his financial manager said, “and see if he left here in a roadster of the make you saw. If we can pin it on him, you’d better let him go. But what about the money? Did you get it from Willam?”
“No, I didn’t, and a queer thing happened. He was tipped off, by telephone, about the accident we had here, and just in time to kill my chances for having him make the loan.” Tom detailed all the circumstances at the golf club.
“Whew!” Ned whistled. “That looks bad! Some underhand work is going on around here. We must try to get at the bottom of this.”
“Surest thing you know, Ned. And now about money. I guess you’ll have to try Mr. Damon’s bank in Waterfield.”
“I will, first thing in the morning. But what are you going to do now?”
“Work on that coupling jigger. There’s something wrong with it or that glider wouldn’t have cut loose. I’ve got to change it. I think I know what the trouble is, it’s in the shackle bolts and wrist pins. They need to be a bit larger and stronger. And the magnetic switch is too sensitive. I’ll change it so it takes a more powerful current to release it and I think that will fix things. Now you can give all your attention to the financial end, Ned. I’ll work on the mechanical part. I have great hopes of my sky train!”
“That’s good, Tom. I wonder if——”
But before Ned could finish his sentence there was the noise of some one approaching along the outside corridor that led to Tom Swift’s private office and laboratory.
“I told them not to let anybody in here!” Tom exclaimed, a bit put out. But when he heard a voice saying: “Bless my rice pudding, Rad, you needn’t go ahead to announce me!” Then Tom and Ned smiled and murmured together:
“Mr. Damon!”
“Bless my front door, Tom Swift, but what’s this I hear about you?” exclaimed the jolly, eccentric man as he pushed open the office door. “Oh, you’re not killed—either of you!” he went on in relieved tones, as he looked from Tom to Ned. “But what happened?”
“What did you hear happened?” asked Tom.
“Why, I just read, in the last edition of the Waterfield Times that there was some sort of an accident out at your plant, Tom.”
“Only a little one. What did the paper say? Hang these reporters, anyhow!” exclaimed Tom with a smile. “They get stuff in spite of me—and not always the stuff I want them to have. But I can’t blame them.”
“It didn’t give many details,” Mr. Damon went on. “Just said an airplane crashed on your testing grounds, Tom, and that one man was hurt. I was afraid it might be you.”
“It was Northrup, one of my pilots,” Tom said, “and he wasn’t much hurt—just bruised and shaken. And it wasn’t a plane that crashed—only a glider, which is quite a different sort of horse. It wasn’t really much of an accident.”
“I’m glad to hear that!” murmured Mr. Damon. “I can go back slower than I came over.”
“Are you in a hurry to go back?” Tom asked.
“Why, bless my apple pie, I’m not, really, Tom Swift! My wife is away from home, as it happens,” said Mr. Damon with a wink at the two young men, “so it doesn’t matter whether I stay out the rest of the night or not. But what’s doing? Have you a new sort of flying machine I can go up in?”
“We have a new sort of flying machine,” said Tom with a smile, “but you can’t go up in it just yet.”
“Bless my excursion ticket, why not?” demanded Mr. Damon.
“Because it’s going to cost you money!” added Ned with a laugh. And then, in response to the questioning looks of their odd friend, the young men explained matters to him, stressing the need of a bank loan and the refusal of Lester Willam of the Shopton bank to make it.
“So you want me to put in a good word for you at the Waterfield bank, do you?” asked Mr. Damon. “Well, bless my adding machine, I’m a director in that bank and if they don’t make you a loan, Tom Swift, I’ll resign, that’s what I’ll do!”
“Let’s hope there will be no need of that,” Ned remarked. “Now here’s what we want and the approximate dates when we’ll need the different sums. We don’t want it all at once, but will require some cash at different times as Tom gets on with the work.”
“You see,” Tom explained, “I have, already, the big towing airplane. But I’m pushed for time in getting this sky train ready for the World Exposition, so I’ve got to have the passenger gliders built outside.”
“You mean in another plant?” asked Mr. Damon.
“That’s it, yes. And you can tell your bank that we’ll give them good security for the loan.”
“Oh, bless my ledger, Tom Swift, they won’t worry about that! I’ll take care of it for you. And now when can I see this wonderful sky train of yours?” he asked eagerly.
“I’m not so sure as I was that it’s wonderful,” Tom said with a smile. “But I’ll be ready for another trial in a few days and you can go up with us—I mean in the airplane, Mr. Damon. I won’t let you risk yourself in a glider yet.”
“That’s fine, Tom—I mean it’s fine of you to take me up. I haven’t had an exciting ride since you rescued me and your folks from the forest fire, Tom, and took us aboard the Silver Cloud.”
“That sure was exciting!” exclaimed Ned.
Then he and Mr. Damon became busy over financial matters and Tom Swift began an examination of some of the damaged parts of the wrecked glider and the coupling device.
For many months Tom had worked hard in his shop, building a new kind of plane, powerful enough to pull several gliders. The gliders he used for experimental trips were crude affairs, as yet, small and holding only a few passengers at best. So far only the guiding pilots had gone up and cut loose in them, and this not always safely, as we have seen.
When he had his sky train perfected, particularly the coupling and uncoupling arrangement, so that a glider could be dropped from the rear and another, pulled up from the ground by a small plane, could be hooked on, Tom intended to use much larger “cars” or gliders for his train. These he had tentatively contracted for with the National Aircraft Company, and Tom hoped they would be finished in time to be shown at the World Exposition. The coupling device was Tom’s special patent and that would be made in his own shop.
“Well, Ned,” remarked Mr. Damon as he put some papers of memoranda in his pocket, “I’ll attend to this for you as soon as I can, and let you know. You can make yourself easy about the money, Tom.”
“That’s good. I’ve got enough else to think of,” Tom said, for he had been working hard since coming back from the club, to discover what was wrong with the coupler. It was a baffling problem.
“See you again, soon,” Mr. Damon said, as he took his leave.
“And I guess I’ll be getting along,” Ned added. “I’ll be over early in the morning, Tom. How late you going to work here anyhow?”
“Eh? What’s that?” Tom asked in a voice that showed his thoughts were not on what had been said. He held part of a coupler in his hand. “I said,” repeated Ned with a smile, “how much longer you going to stay here and putter away? It’s late!”
“Oh, is it?” asked Tom, still uncomprehendingly. “Well, I guess——”
At that moment the telephone rang and Tom, answering it, lost his distracted manner as he said:
“Oh, all right, Mary! I’ll be right over to supper! I sort of forgot about it.”
“Good thing you have Mary to remind you,” Ned remarked with a laugh. “Skip along, Tom. I’ll lock up here. Don’t keep the wife waiting.”
“All right, I’ll go. And, by the way, Ned, better have the night watchman keep a special eye on this place.”
“I’ll tell him, Tom. But what’s the idea?”
“Well, there are some things going on that I don’t just like. It won’t do to take any chances with my new patent, sky train glider coupler. So we’ve got to keep watch.”
“All right. I’ll give him the order. Now skip or Mary will be telephoning again.”
Tom laid aside the device that was proving such a problem and went out of the shop to get his auto for the short drive home. As he was entering the shop garage, he saw Davis Daniel, the new man coming out, just having put his car in.
“Oh, Daniel!” Tom exclaimed, “I didn’t know you had a car. Been out for a spin?”
“No, sir. I just went in to look and see if it was all right. Mr. Jackson said it would be all right for me to park in here. I have only a second-hand roadster.”
“It’s quite all right to leave it in here,” Tom said, and the more he looked at the young man the more sure he was that he was the driver who had nearly collided with him and Mary. “I thought perhaps you had been for a ride after you left the office.”
“Oh, no. I got through a bit early, Mr. Newton said I might go, so I took a walk. Then I just happened to think I might perhaps have left the ignition turned on in my car and, as I didn’t want to run the battery down, I thought I’d come over and look to make sure.”
“Yes, it’s best to be sure,” Tom said. “Well, good-night!”
“Good-night, Mr. Swift. I’ll help you on those coupler drawings in the morning.”
“All right, Daniel.”
Tom watched him leave the plant premises and then went in to get his own car. The garage held several machines used by different managers and foremen of the works. At one end was a roadster.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the same roadster that nearly ran into us,” Tom murmured. “But I’m not positive enough to make an accusation. And I’m also not sure enough it was Daniel driving to accuse him of that.”
He went over and put his hand on the radiator of the roadster. Tom Swift started in surprise, as he said:
“But I’m sure of one thing and that is you weren’t telling the truth, Mr. Davis Daniel, when you said you hadn’t been out in this car. Maybe you haven’t, but some one has. The water’s still hot! I’m going to keep an eye on you, Davis Daniel!”