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+Project Gutenberg's Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive, by Victor Appleton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive
+       or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails
+
+Author: Victor Appleton
+
+Posting Date: July 17, 2008 [EBook #1364]
+Release Date: June, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SWIFT AND ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anthony Matonac
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
+
+or
+
+Two Miles a Minute on the Rails
+
+
+By
+
+VICTOR APPLETON
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I  A TEMPTING OFFER
+    II  TROUBLE STARTS
+   III  TOM SWIFT'S FRIENDS
+    IV  MUCH TO THINK ABOUT
+     V  BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS
+    VI  THE CONTRACT SIGNED
+   VII  THE MAN WITH BIG FEET
+  VIII  AN ENEMY IN THE DARK
+    IX  WHERE WAS KOKU?
+     X  A STRANGE CONVERSATION
+    XI  TOUCH AND GO
+   XII  THE TRY-OUT DAY ARRIVES
+  XIII  HOPES AND FEARS
+   XIV  SPEED
+    XV  THE ENEMY STILL ACTIVE
+   XVI  OFF FOR THE WEST
+  XVII  THE WRECK OF FORTY-EIGHT
+ XVIII  ON THE HENDRICKTON & PAS ALOS
+   XIX  PERIL, THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
+    XX  THE RESULT
+   XXI  THE OPEN SWITCH
+  XXII  A DESPERATE CHASE
+ XXIII  MR. DAMON AT BAT
+  XXIV  PUTTING THE ENEMY TO FLIGHT
+   XXV  SPEED AND SUCCESS
+
+
+
+
+TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+A Tempting Offer
+
+
+"An electric locomotive that can make two miles a minute over a
+properly ballasted roadbed might not be an impossibility," said Mr.
+Barton Swift ruminatively. "It is one of those things that are coming,"
+and he flashed his son, Tom Swift, a knowing smile.  It had been a
+topic of conversation between them before the visitor from the West had
+been seated before the library fire and had sampled one of the elder
+Swift's good cigars.
+
+"It is not only a future possibility," said the latter gentleman,
+shrugging his shoulders. "As far as the Hendrickton and Pas Alos
+Railroad Company goes, a two mile a minute gait--not alone on a level
+track but through the Pas Alos Range--is an immediate necessity. It's
+got to be done now, or our stock will be selling on the curb for about
+two cents a share."
+
+"You do not mean just that, do you, Mr. Bartholomew?" asked Tom Swift
+earnestly, and staring at the big-little man before the fire.
+
+Mr. Richard Bartholomew was just that--a "big-little man." In the
+railroad world, both in construction and management, he had made an
+enviable name for himself.
+
+He had actually built up the Hendrickton and Pas Alos from a
+narrow-gauge, "jerkwater" road into a part of a great cross-continent
+system that tapped a wonderfully rich territory on both sides of the
+Pas Alos Range.
+
+For some years the H. & P. A. had a monopoly of that territory.  Now,
+as Mr. Bartholomew intimated, it was threatened with such rivalry from
+another railroad and other capitalists, that the H. & P. A. was being
+looked upon in the financial market as a shaky investment.
+
+But Tom Swift repeated:
+
+"You do not mean just that, do you, Mr. Bartholomew?"
+
+Mr. Bartholomew, who was a little man physically, rolled around in his
+chair to face the young fellow more directly. His own eyes sparkled in
+the firelight. His olive face was flushed.
+
+"That is much nearer the truth, young man," he said, somewhat harshly
+because of his suppressed emotion, "than I want people at large to
+suspect. As I have told your father, I came here to put all my cards on
+the table; but I expect the Swift Construction Company to take anything
+I may say as said in confidence."
+
+"We quite understand that, Mr. Bartholomew," said the elder Swift,
+softly. "You can speak freely. Whether we do business or not, these
+walls are soundproof, and Tom and I can forget, or remember, as we
+wish. Of course if we take up any work for you, we must confide to a
+certain extent in our close associates and trusted mechanics."
+
+"Humph!" grunted the visitor, turning restlessly again in his chair.
+Then he said: "I agree as the necessity of that last statement; but I
+can only hope that these walls are soundproof."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Tom, rather sharply. He was a bright looking
+young fellow with an alert air and a rather humorous smile. His father
+was a semi-invalid; but Tom possessed all the mental vigor and muscular
+energy that a young man should have. He had not neglected his Athletic
+development while he made the best use of his mental powers.
+
+"Believe me," said the visitor, quite as harshly as before, "I begin to
+doubt the solidity of all walls. I know that I have been watched, and
+spied upon, and that eavesdroppers have played hob with our affairs.
+
+"Of late, there has been little planned in the directors' room of the
+H. & P. A. that has not seeped out and aided the enemy in foreseeing
+our moves."
+
+"The enemy?" repeated Mr. Swift, with mild surprise.
+
+"That's it exactly! The enemy!" replied Mr. Bartholomew shortly. "The
+H. & P. A. has got the fight of its life on its hands. We had a hard
+enough time fighting nature and the elements when we laid the first
+iron for the road a score of years ago.  Now I am facing a fight that
+must grow fiercer and fiercer as time goes on until either the H. & P.
+A. smashes the opposition, or the enemy smashes it."
+
+"What enemy is this you speak of?" asked Tom, much interested.
+
+"The proposed Hendrickton & Western. A new road, backed by new capital,
+and to be officered and built by new men in the construction and
+railroad game.
+
+"Montagne Lewis--you've heard of him, I presume--is at the head of the
+crowd that have bought the little old Hendrickton & Western, lock,
+stock and barrel.
+
+"They have franchises for extending the road. In the old days the
+legislatures granted blanket franchises that allowed any group of
+moneyed men to engage in any kind of business as side issues to
+railroading. Montagne Lewis and his crowd have got a 'plenty-big'
+franchise.
+
+"They have begun laying iron. It parallels, to a certain extent, our
+own line. Their surveyors were smarter than the men who laid out the H.
+& P. A. I admit it. Besides, the country out there is developed more
+than it was a score of years ago when I took hold.
+
+"All this enters into the fight between Montagne Lewis and me.  But
+there is something deeper," said the little man, with almost a snarl,
+as he thrashed about again in his chair. "I beat Montagne Lewis at one
+big game years ago. He is a man who never forgets--and who never
+hesitates to play dirty politics if he has to, to bring about his own
+ends.
+
+"I know that I have been watched. I know that I was followed on this
+trip East. He has private detectives on my track continually. And
+worse. All the gunmen of the old and wilder West are not dead. There's
+a fellow named Andy O'Malley--well, never mind him. The game at present
+is to keep anybody in Lewis's employ from getting wise to why I came to
+see you."
+
+"What you say is interesting," Mr. Swift here broke in quietly.  "But I
+have already been puzzled by what you first said. Just why have you
+come to us--to Tom and me--in reference to your railroad difficulties?"
+
+"And this suggestion you have made," added Tom, "about a possible
+electric locomotive of a faster type than has, ever yet been put on the
+rails?"
+
+"That is it, exactly," replied Bartholomew, sitting suddenly upright in
+his chair. "We want faster electric motor power than has ever yet been
+invented. We have got to have it, or the H. & P. A. might as well be
+scrapped and the whole territory out there handed over to Montagne
+Lewis and his H. & W. That is the sum total of the matter, gentlemen.
+If the Swift Construction Company cannot help us, my railroad is going
+to be junk in about three years from this beautiful evening."
+
+His emphasis could not fail to impress both the elder and the younger
+Swift. They looked at each other, and the interest displayed upon the
+father's countenance was reflected upon the features of the son.
+
+If there was anything Tom Swift liked it was a good fight. The clash of
+diverse interests was the breath of life to the young fellow. And for
+some years now, always connected in some way with the development of
+his inventive genius, he had been entangled in battles both of wits and
+physical powers. Here was the suggestion of something that would entail
+a struggle of both brain and brawn.
+
+"Sounds good," muttered Tom, gazing at the railroad magnate with
+considerable admiration.
+
+"Let us hear all about it," Mr. Swift said to Bartholomew.  "Whether we
+can help you or not, we're interested."
+
+"All right," replied the visitor again. "Whether I was followed East,
+and here to Shopton, or not doesn't much matter. I will put my
+proposition up to you, and then I'll ask, if you don't want to go into
+it, that you keep the business absolutely secret. I have got to put
+something over on Montagne Lewis and his crowd, or throw up the sponge.
+That's that!"
+
+"Go ahead, Mr. Bartholomew," observed Tom's father, encouragingly.
+
+"To begin with, four hundred miles of our road is already electrified.
+We have big power stations and supply heat and light and power to
+several of the small cities tapped by the H. & P. A.  It is a paying
+proposition as it stands. But it is only paying because we carry the
+freight traffic--all the freight traffic--of that region.
+
+"If the H. & W. breaks in on our monopoly of that, we shall soon be so
+cut down that our invested capital will not earn two per cent.--No, by
+glory! not one-and-a-half per cent.--and our stock will be dished. But
+I have worked out a scheme, Gentlemen, by which we can counter-balance
+any dig Lewis can give us in the ribs.
+
+"If we can extend our electrified line into and through the Pas Alos
+Range our freight traffic can be handled so cheaply and so effectively
+that nothing the Hendrickton & Western can do for years to come will
+hurt us. Get that?"
+
+"I get your statement, Mr. Bartholomew," said Mr. Swift. "But it is
+merely a statement as yet."
+
+"Sure. Now I will give you the particulars. We are using the Jandel
+locomotives on our electrified stretch of road. You know that patent?"
+
+"I know something about it, Mr. Bartholomew," said the younger
+inventor. "I have felt some interest in the electric locomotive, though
+I have done nothing practical in the matter. But I know the Jandel
+patent."
+
+"It is about the best there is--and the most recent; but it does not
+fill the bill. Not for the H. & P. A., anyway," said Mr. Bartholomew,
+shortly.
+
+"What does it lack?" asked Mr. Swift.
+
+"Speed. It's got the power for heavy hauls. It could handle the freight
+through the Pas Alos Range. But it would slow up our traffic so that
+the shippers would at once turn to the Hendrickton & Western. You
+understand that their rails do not begin to engage the grades that our
+engineers thought necessary when the old H. & P. A. was built."
+
+"I get that," said Tom briskly. "You have come here, then, to interest
+us in the development of a faster but quite as powerful type of
+electric locomotive as the Jandel."
+
+"Stated to the line!" exclaimed Mr. Bartholomew, smiting the arm of his
+chair with his clenched fist. "That is it, young man.  You get me
+exactly. And now I will go on to put my proposition to you."
+
+"Do so, Mr. Bartholomew," murmured the old inventor, quite as much
+interested as his son.
+
+"I want you to make a study of electric motive power as applied to
+track locomotives, with the idea of utilizing our power plants and
+others like them, and even with the possibility in mind of the
+continued use of the Jandel locomotives on our more level stretches of
+road.
+
+"But I want your investigation to result in the building of locomotives
+that will make a speed of two miles a minute, or as near that as
+possible, on level rails, and be powerful enough to snake our heavy
+freight trains through the hills and over the steep grades so rapidly
+that even two engines, a pusher and a hauler, cannot beat the electric
+power."
+
+"Some job, that, I'll say," murmured Tom Swift.
+
+"Exactly. Some job. And it is the only thing that will save the H. & P.
+A.," said Mr. Bartholomew decidedly. "I put it up to you Swifts. I have
+heard of some of your marvelous inventions. Here is something that is
+already invented. But it needs development."
+
+"I see," said Mr. Swift, and nodded.
+
+"It interests me," admitted Tom. "As I say, I have given some thought
+to the electric locomotive."
+
+"This is the age of speed," said Mr. Bartholomew earnestly.  "Rapidity
+in handling freight and kindred things will be the salvation, and the
+only salvation, of many railroads. Tapping a rich territory is not
+enough. The road that can offer the quickest and cheapest service is
+the road that is going to keep out of a receivership. Believe me, I
+know!"
+
+"You should," said Mr. Swift mildly. "Your experience should have
+taught you a great deal about the railroad business."
+
+"It has. But that knowledge is worth just nothing at all without swift
+power and cheap traffic. Those are the problems today. Now, I am going
+to take a chance. If it doesn't work, my road is dished in any case. So
+I feel that the desperate chance is the only chance."
+
+"What is that?" asked Tom Swift, sitting forward in his chair.  "I, for
+one, feel so much interested that I will do anything in reason to find
+the answer to your traffic problem."
+
+"That's the boy!" ejaculated Richard Bartholomew. "I will give it to
+you in a few words. If you will experiment with the electric locomotive
+idea, to develop speed and power over and above the Jandel patent, and
+will give me the first call on the use of any patents you may contrive,
+I will put up twenty-five thousand dollars in cash which shall be yours
+whether I can make use of a thing you invent or not."
+
+"Any time limit in this agreement, Mr. Bartholomew?" asked Tom, making
+a few notes on a scratch pad before him on the library table.
+
+"What do you say to three months?"
+
+"Make it six, if you can," Tom said with continued briskness.  "It
+interests me. I'll do my best. And I want you to get your money's
+worth."
+
+"All right. Make it six," said Mr. Bartholomew. "But the quicker you
+dig something up, the better for me. Now, that is the first part of my
+proposition."
+
+"All right, sir. And the second?"
+
+"If you succeed in showing me that you can build and operate an
+electric locomotive that will speed two miles a minute on a level track
+and will get a heavy drag over the mountain grades, as I said, as
+surely as two engines of the coal-burning or oil-burning type, I will
+pay you a hundred thousand dollars bonus, besides buying all the
+engines you can build of this new type for the first two years. I've
+got to have first call; but the hundred thousand will be yours free and
+clear, and the price of the locomotives you build can be adjusted by
+any court of agreement that you may suggest."
+
+Tom Swift's face glowed. He realized that this offer was not only
+generous, but that it made it worth his while dropping everything else
+he had in hand and devoting his entire time and thought for even six
+months to the proposition of developing the electric locomotive.
+
+He looked at his father and nodded. Mr. Swift said, calmly:
+
+"We take you on that offer, Mr. Bartholomew. Tom has the facts on
+paper, and we will hand it to Mr. Newton, our financial manager, in the
+morning. If you will remain in town for twenty-four hours, the contract
+can be signed."
+
+"Suits me," declared. Richard Bartholomew, rising quickly from his
+chair. "I confess I hoped you would take me up quite as promptly as you
+have. I want to get back West again.
+
+"We will see you in the office of the company at two o'clock tomorrow,"
+said Tom Swift confidently.
+
+"Better than good! And now, if that trailer that I am pretty sure
+Montagne Lewis sent after me does not get wise to the subject of our
+talk, it may be a slick job we have done and will do. I admit I am
+rather afraid of the enemy. You Swifts must keep your plans in utter
+darkness."
+
+After a little talk on more ordinary affairs, Mr. Bartholomew took his
+departure. It was getting late in the evening, and Tom Swift had an
+engagement. While old Rad, their colored servant, was helping him on
+with his coat preparatory to Tom's leaving the house, his father called
+from the library:
+
+"Got those notes in a safe place, Tom?"
+
+"Safest in the world, Dad," his son replied. But he did not go into
+details. Tom considered the "safest place in the world" just then was
+his own wallet, which was tucked into an inside pocket of his vest "I'm
+going to see Mary Nestor, Father," said Tom, as he went to the front
+door and opened it.
+
+He halted a moment with the knob of the door in his hand. The porch was
+deep in shadows, but he thought he had seen something move there.
+
+"That you, Koku?" asked Tom in an ordinary voice. Sometimes his
+gigantic servant wandered about the house at night. He was a strange
+person, and he had a good many thoughts in his savage brain that even
+his young master did not understand.
+
+There was no reply to Tom's question, so he walked down the steps and
+out at the gate. It was not a long distance to the Nestor house, and
+the air was brisk and keen, in spite of the fact that threatening
+clouds masked the stars.
+
+Two blocks from the house he came to a high wall which separated the
+street from the grounds of an old dwelling. Tom suddenly noticed that
+the usual street lights on this block had been extinguished--blown out
+by the wind, perhaps.
+
+Involuntarily he quickened his steps. He reached the archway in the
+wall. Here was the gate dividing the private grounds from the street.
+As he strode into the shadow of this place a voice suddenly halted Tom
+Swift.
+
+"Hands up! Put 'em up and don't be slow about it!" A bulky figure
+loomed in the dark. Tom saw the highwayman's club poised threateningly
+over his head.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Trouble Starts
+
+
+The fact that he was stopped by a footpad smote Tom Swift's mind as not
+a particularly surprising adventure. He had heard that several of that
+gentry had been plying their trade about the outskirts of the town. To
+a degree he was prepared for this sudden event.
+
+Then there flashed into Tom's mind the thought of what Mr. Richard
+Bartholomew had said regarding the spy he believed had followed him
+from the West. Could it be possible that some hired thug sent by
+Montagne Lewis and his crooked crowd of financiers considered that Tom
+Swift had obtained information from the president of the H. & P. A.
+that might do his employers signal service?
+
+Tom Swift had fallen in with many adventures--and some quite thrilling
+ones--since, as a youth, he was first introduced to the reader in the
+initial volume of this series, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motor
+Cycle." His first experiences as an inventor, coached by his father,
+who had spent his life in the experimental laboratory and workshop, was
+made possible by his purchase from Mr. Wakefield Damon, now one of his
+closest friends, of a broken-down motor cycle.
+
+Through a series of inventions, some of them of a marvelous kind, Tom
+Swift, aided by his father, had forged ahead, building motor boats,
+airships, submarines, monoplanes, motion picture cameras, searchlights,
+cannons, photo-telephones, war tanks. Of late, as related in "Tom Swift
+Among the Fire Fighters," he had engaged in the invention of an
+explosive bomb carrying flame-quenching chemicals that would, in time,
+revolutionize fire-fighting in tall buildings.
+
+The matter that Mr. Richard Bartholomew, the railroad magnate, had
+brought to Tom's and his father's attention had deeply interested the
+young inventor. Thought of the electric locomotive, the development of
+which the railroad president stated was the only salvation of the
+finances of the H. & P. A., had so held Tom's attention as he walked
+along the street that being stopped in this sudden way was even more
+startling than such an incident might ordinarily have been.
+
+Tom was a muscular young fellow; but a club held over one's head by a
+burly thug would have shaken the courage of anybody.  Dark as it was
+under the archway the young fellow saw that the bulk of the man was
+much greater than his own.
+
+"That's right, sonny," said the stranger, in a sneering tone.  "You got
+just the right idea. When I say 'Stick 'em up' I mean it. Never take a
+chance. Ah--ah!"
+
+The fellow ripped open Tom's overcoat, almost tearing the buttons off.
+Another masterful jerk and his victim's jacket was likewise parted
+widely. He did not lower the club for an instant.  He thrust his left
+hand into the V-shaped parting of the young fellow's vest.
+
+It was then that Tom was convinced of what the fellow was after. He
+remembered the notes he had made regarding the contract that was to be
+signed on the morrow between the Swift Construction Company and
+President Richard Bartholomew of the H. & P. A. Railroad. He
+remembered, too, the figure he thought he had seen in the dark porch of
+the house as he so recently left it.
+
+Mr. Bartholomew had considered it very possible that he was being spied
+upon. This was one of the spies--a Westerner, as his speech betrayed.
+But Tom was suddenly less fearful than he had been when first attacked.
+
+It did not seem possible to him that Mr. Bartholomew's enemies would
+allow their henchman to go too far to obtain information of the
+railroad president's intentions. This fellow was merely attempting to
+frighten him.
+
+A sense of relief came to Tom Swift's assistance. He opened his lips to
+speak and could the thug have seen his face more clearly in the dark he
+would have been aware of the fact that the young inventor smiled.
+
+The fellow's groping hand entered between Tom's vest and his shirt. The
+coarse fingers seized upon Tom's wallet. Nobody likes to be robbed, no
+matter whether the loss is great or small. There was not much money in
+the wallet, nor anything that could be turned into money by a thief.
+
+These facts enabled Tom, perhaps, to bear his loss with some fortitude.
+The highwayman drew forth the wallet and thrust it into his own coat
+pocket. He made no attempt to take anything else from the young
+inventor.
+
+"Now, beat it!" commanded the fellow. "Don't look back and don't run or
+holler. Just keep moving--in the way you were headed before. Vamoose."
+
+More than ever was Tom assured that the man was from the West.  His
+speech savored of Mexican phrases and slang terms used mainly by
+Western citizens. And his abrupt and masterly manner and speech aided
+in this supposition. Tom Swift stayed not to utter a word. It was true
+he was not so frightened as he had at first been. But he was quite sure
+that this man was no person to contend with under present conditions.
+
+He strode away along the sidewalk toward the far corner of the wall
+that surrounded this estate. Shopton had not many of such important
+dwellings as this behind the wall. Its residential section was made up
+for the most part of mechanics' homes and such plain but substantial
+houses as his father's.
+
+Prospering as the Swifts had during the last few years, neither Tom nor
+his father had thought their plain old house too poor or humble for a
+continued residence. Tom was glad to make money, but the inventions he
+had made it by were vastly more important to his mind than what he
+might obtain by any lavish expenditure of his growing fortune.
+
+This matter of the electric locomotive that had been brought to his
+attention by the Western railroad magnate had instantly interested the
+young inventor. The possibility of there being a clash of interests in
+the matter, and the point Mr. Bartholomew made of his enemies seeking
+to thwart his hope of keeping the H.  & P. A. upon a solid financial
+footing, were phases of the affair that likewise concerned the young
+fellow's thought.
+
+Now he was sure that Mr. Bartholomew was right. The enemies of the H. &
+P. A. were determined to know all that the railroad president was
+planning to do. They would naturally suspect that his trip East to
+visit the Swift Construction Company was no idle jaunt.
+
+Tom had turned so many fortunate and important problems of invention
+into certainties that the name of the Swift Construction Company was
+broadly known, not alone throughout the United States but in several
+foreign countries. Montagne Lewis, whom Tom knew to be both a powerful
+and an unscrupulous financier, might be sure that Mr. Bartholomew's
+visit to Shopton and to the young inventor and his father was of such
+importance that he would do well through his henchmen to learn the
+particulars of the interview.
+
+Tom remembered Mr. Bartholomew's mention of a name like Andy O'Malley.
+This was probably the man who had done all that he could, and that
+promptly, to set about the discovery of Mr. Bartholomew's reason for
+visiting the Swifts.
+
+Without doubt the man had slunk about the Swift house and had peered
+into one of the library windows while the interview was proceeding. He
+had observed Tom making notes on the scratch pad and judged correctly
+that those notes dealt with the subject under discussion between the
+visitor from the West and the Swifts.
+
+He had likewise seen Tom thrust the paper into his wallet and the
+wallet into his inside vest pocket. Instead of dogging Mr.
+Bartholomew's footsteps after that gentleman left the Swift house, the
+man had waited for the appearance of Tom. When he was sure that the
+young fellow was preparing to walk out, and the direction he was to
+stroll, the thug had run ahead and ensconced himself in the archway on
+this dark block.
+
+All these things were plain enough. The notes Tom had taken regarding
+the offer Mr. Bartholomew had made for the development of the electric
+locomotive might, under some circumstances, be very important. At
+least, the highwayman evidently thought them such. But Tom had another
+thought about that.
+
+One thing the young inventor was convinced about, as he strode briskly
+away from the scene of the hold-up: There was going to be trouble. It
+had already begun.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+Tom Swift's Friends
+
+
+Tom was still walking swiftly when he arrived in sight of Mary Nestor's
+home. He was so filled with excitement both because of the hold-up and
+the new scheme that Mr. Richard Bartholomew had brought to him from the
+West, that he could keep neither to himself. He just had to tell Mary!
+
+Mary Nestor was a very pretty girl, and Tom thought she was just about
+right in every particular. Although he had been about a good deal for a
+young fellow and had seen girls everywhere, none of them came up to
+Mary. None of them held Tom's interest for a minute but this girl whom
+he had been around with for years and whom he had always confided in.
+
+As for the girl herself, she considered Tom Swift the very nicest young
+man she had ever seen. He was her beau-ideal of what a young man should
+be. And she entered enthusiastically into the plans for everything that
+Tom Swift was interested in.
+
+Mary was excited by the story Tom told her in the Nestor sitting room.
+The idea of the electric locomotive she saw, of course, was something
+that might add to Tom's laurels as an inventor. But the other phase of
+the evening's adventure--"Tom, dear!" she murmured with no little
+disturbance of mind. "That man who stopped you! He is a thief, and a
+dangerous man! I hate to think of your going home alone."
+
+"He's got what he was after," chuckled Tom. "Is it likely he will
+bother me again?"
+
+"And you do not seem much worried about it," she cried, in wonder.
+
+"Not much, I confess, Mary," said Tom, and grinned.
+
+"But if, as you suppose, that man was working for Mr. Bartholomew's
+enemies--"
+
+"I am convinced that he was, for he did not rob me of my watch and
+chain or loose money. And he could have done so easily. I don't mind
+about the old wallet. There was only five dollars in it."
+
+"But those notes you said you took of Mr. Bartholomew's offer?"
+
+"Oh, yes," chuckled Tom again. "Those notes. Well, I may as well
+explain to you, Mary, and not try to puzzle you any longer.  But that
+highwayman is sure going to be puzzled a long, long time."
+
+"What do you mean, Tom?"
+
+"Those notes were jotted down in my own brand of shorthand.  Such
+stenographic notes would scarcely be readable by anybody else. Ho, ho!
+When that bold, bad hold-up gent turns the notes over to Montagne
+Lewis, or whoever his principal is, there will be a sweet time."
+
+"Oh, Tom! isn't that fun?" cried Mary, likewise much amused.
+
+"I can remember everything we said there in the library," Tom
+continued. "I'll see Ned tonight on my way home from here, and he will
+draw a contract the first thing in the morning."
+
+"You are a smart fellow, Tom!" said Mary, her laughter trilling sweetly.
+
+"Many thanks, Ma'am! Hope I prove your compliment true. This
+two-mile-a-minute stunt--"
+
+"It seems wonderful," breathed Mary.
+
+"It sure will be wonderful if we can build a locomotive that will do
+such fancy lacework as that," observed Tom eagerly. "It will be a great
+stunt!"
+
+"A wonderful invention, Tom."
+
+"More wonderful than Mr. Bartholomew knows," agreed the young fellow.
+"An electric locomotive with both great speed and great hauling power
+is what more than one inventor has been aiming at for two or three
+decades. Ever since Edison and Westinghouse began their experiments, in
+truth."
+
+"Is the locomotive they are using out there a very marvelous machine?"
+asked the girl, with added interest.
+
+"No more marvelous than the big electric motors that drag the trains
+into New York City, for instance, through the tunnels.  Steam engines
+cannot be used in those tunnels for obvious, as well as legal, reasons.
+They are all wonderful machines, using third-rail power.
+
+"But that Jandel patent that Mr. Bartholomew is using out there on the
+H. & P. A. is probably the highest type of such motors. It is up to us
+to beat that. Fortunately I got a pass into the Jandel shops a few
+months ago and I studied at first hand the machine Mr. Bartholomew is
+using."
+
+"Isn't that great!" cried Mary.
+
+"Well, it helps some. I at least know in a general way the 'how' of the
+construction of the Jandel locomotive. It is simple enough. Too simple
+by far, I should say, to get both speed and power. We'll see," and he
+nodded his head thoughtfully.
+
+Tom did not stay long with the girl, for it was already late in the
+evening when he had arrived at her house. As he got up to depart Mary's
+anxiety for his safety revived.
+
+"I wish you would take care now, Tom. Those men may hound you."
+
+"What for?" chuckled the young inventor. "They have the notes they
+wanted."
+
+"But that very thing--the fact that you fooled them--will make them
+more angry. Take care."
+
+"I have a means of looking out for myself, after all," said Tom
+quietly, seeing that he must relieve her mind. "I let that fellow get
+away with my wallet; but I won't let him hurt me. Don't fear."
+
+She had opened the door. The lamplight fell across porch and steps, and
+in a broad white band even to the gate and sidewalk.  There was a
+motor-car slowing down right before the open gate.
+
+"Who's this?" queried Tom, puzzled.
+
+A sharp voice suddenly was raised in an exclamatory explosion.
+
+"Bless my breakshoes! is that Tom Swift? Just the chap I was looking
+for. Bless my mileage-book! this saves me time and money."
+
+"Why, it's Mr. Wakefield Damon," Mary cried, with something like relief
+in her tones. "You can ride home in his car, Tom."
+
+"All right, Mary. Don't be afraid for me," replied Tom Swift, and ran
+down the walk to the waiting car.
+
+"Bless my vest buttons! Tom Swift, my heart swells when I see you--"
+
+"And is like to burst off the said vest buttons?" chuckled the young
+fellow, stepping in beside his eccentric friend who blessed everything
+inanimate in his florid speech.
+
+"I am delighted to catch you--although, of course," and Tom knew the
+gentleman's eyes twinkled, "I could have no idea that you were over
+here at Mary's, Tom."
+
+"Of course not," rejoined the young inventor calmly. "Seeing that I
+only come to see her just as often as I get a chance."
+
+"Bless my memory tablets! is that the fact?" chuckled Mr. Damon.
+"Anyway, I wanted to see you so particularly that I drove over in my
+car tonight--"
+
+"Wait a minute," said Tom, hastily. "Is this important?"
+
+"I think so, Tom."
+
+"Let me get something else off of my mind first, then, Mr. Damon," Tom
+Swift said quickly. "Drive around by Ned's house, will you, please? Ned
+Newton's. After I speak a minute with him I will be at your service.
+
+"Surely, Tom; surely," agreed the gentleman.
+
+The automobile had been running slowly. Mr. Damon knew the streets of
+Shopton very well, and he headed around the next corner. As the car
+turned, a figure bounded out of the shadow near the house line. Two
+long strides, and the man was on the running board of the car upon the
+side where Tom Swift sat. Again an ugly club was raised above the young
+fellow's head.
+
+"You're the smart guy!" croaked the coarse voice Tom had heard before.
+"Think you can bamboozle me, do you? Up with 'em!"
+
+"Bless my spark-plug!" gasped Mr. Wakefield Damon.
+
+Either from nervousness or intention, he jerked the steering wheel so
+that the car made a sudden leap away from the curb. The figure of the
+stranger swayed.
+
+Instantly Tom Swift struck the man's arm up higher and from under his
+own coat appeared something that bulked like a pistol in his right
+hand. He had intimated to Mary Nestor that he carried something with
+which to defend himself from highwaymen if he chose to. This invention,
+his ammonia gun, now came into play.
+
+"Bless my failing eyesight!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, as he shot the
+motor-car ahead again in a straight line.
+
+The man who had accosted Tom so fiercely fell off the running board and
+rolled into the gutter, screaming and choking from the fumes from Tom's
+gun.
+
+"Drive on!" commanded the young inventor. "If he keeps bellowing like
+that the police will pick him up. I guess he will let us alone
+here-after."
+
+"Bless my short hairs and long ones!" chuckled Mr. Damon. "You are the
+coolest young fellow, Tom, that I ever saw. That man must have been a
+highwayman. And it is of some of those gentry that I drove over to
+Shopton this evening to talk to you about."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+Much to Think About
+
+
+Although it was now nearing ten o'clock on this eventful evening, Tom
+knew that he would find Ned Newton at home. When Mr. Damon's car
+stopped before the house there was a light in Ned's room and the front
+door opened almost as soon as Tom rang. Mr. Damon left the car and
+entered with the young inventor at his invitation.
+
+"What's up?" was Ned's greeting, looking at the two curiously as he
+ushered them in. "I see this isn't entirely a social call," and he
+laughed as he shook the older man's hand.
+
+"Bless my particular star!" exclaimed the latter excitedly. "Of all the
+thrilling adventures that anybody ever got into, it is this Tom Swift
+who cooks them up! Why, Newton! do you know that we have been held up
+by a highwayman within two blocks of this very house?"
+
+"And that of course was Tom's fault?" suggested Ned, still smiling.
+
+"It wouldn't have happened if he had not been with me," said Mr. Damon.
+
+"I am curious," said Ned, as they seated themselves. "Who was the
+footpad? What drew his attention to you two? Tell me about it."
+
+"Bless my suspender buckles!" exclaimed Mr. Damon. "You tell him, Tom.
+I don't understand it myself, yet."
+
+"I think I can explain. But whatever I tell you both, you must hold in
+secret. Father and I have been entrusted with some private information
+tonight and I am going to take you, Ned, and Mr. Damon, into the
+business in a confidential way."
+
+"Let's have it," begged Newton. "Anything to do with the works?"
+
+"It is," answered Tom gravely. "We are going to take up a proposition
+that promises big things for the Swift Construction Company."
+
+"A big thing financially?"
+
+"I'll say so. And it looks as though we were mixing into a conspiracy
+that may breed trouble in more ways than one."
+
+Tom went on to sketch briefly the situation of the Hendrickton & Pas
+Alos Railroad as brought to the attention of the Swifts by the
+railroad's president. First of all his two listeners were deeply
+interested in the proposition Mr. Richard Bartholomew had made the
+inventors. Ned Newton jotted down briefly the agreement to be
+incorporated in the contract to be drawn and signed, by the Swift
+Construction Company and the president of the H. & P. A.  road.
+
+"This looks like a big thing for the company, Tom," the young manager
+said with enthusiasm, while Mr. Damon listened to it all with mouth and
+eyes open.
+
+"Bless my watch-charm!" murmured the latter. "An electric locomotive
+that can travel two miles a minute? Whew!"
+
+"Sounds like a big order, Tom," added Ned, seriously.
+
+"It is a big order. I am not at all sure it can be done," agreed Tom,
+thoughtfully. "But under the terms Mr. Bartholomew offers it is worth
+trying, don't you think?"
+
+"That twenty-five thousand dollars is as good as yours anyway,"
+declared his chum with finality. "I'll see there is no loophole in the
+contract and the money must be placed in escrow so that there can be no
+possibility of our losing that. The promise of a hundred thousand
+dollars must be made binding as well."
+
+"I know you will look out for those details, Ned," Tom said with a wave
+of his hand.
+
+"That is what I am here for," agreed the financial manager.  "Now, what
+else? I fancy the building of such a locomotive looks feasible to you
+and your father or you would not go into it."
+
+"But two miles a minute!" murmured Mr. Damon again. "Bless my prize
+pumpkins!"
+
+"The idea of speed enters into it, yes," said Tom thoughtfully.  "In
+fact electric motor power has always been based on speed, and on
+cheapness of moving all kinds of traffic.
+
+"Look here!" he exclaimed earnestly, "what do you suppose the first
+people to dabble in electrically driven vehicles were aiming at? The
+motor-car? The motor boat? Trolley cars? All those single motor sort of
+things? Not much they weren't!"
+
+"Bless my glove buttons!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, dragging off his
+gauntlets as he spoke. "I don't get you at all, Tom! What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean to say that the first experiments in the use of electricity as
+a motive power were along the electrification of the steam locomotive.
+Everybody realized that if a motor could be built powerful enough and
+speedy enough to drag a heavy freight or passenger train over the
+ordinary railroad right of way, the cost of railroad operation would be
+enormously decreased.
+
+"Coal costs money--heaps of money now. Oil costs even more. But even
+with a third-rail patent, a locomotive successfully built to do the
+work of the great Moguls and mountain climbers of the last two decades,
+and electrically driven, will make a great difference on the credit
+side of any railroad's books."
+
+"Right-o!" exclaimed Ned. "I can see that."
+
+"That was the object of the first experiments in electric motive
+power," repeated Tom. "And it continues to be the big problem in
+electricity. The Jandel locomotive is undoubtedly the last word so far
+as the construction of an electric locomotive is concerned. But it
+falls down in speed and power. I thought so myself when I saw that
+locomotive and looked over the results of its work. And this Mr.
+Bartholomew has assured father and me this evening that it is a fact.
+
+"It has a record of a mile a minute on a level or easy grade; but it
+can't show goods when climbing a real hill. It slows up both freight
+and passenger traffic on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos road. That range of
+hills is too much for it.
+
+"So the Swift Construction Company is going to step in," concluded the
+young inventor eagerly. "I believe we can do it.  I've the nucleus of
+an idea in my head. I never had a problem put up to me, Ned and Mr.
+Damon, that interested me more. So why shouldn't I go at it? Besides, I
+have dad to advise me."
+
+"That's right," agreed Ned. "Why shouldn't you? And with such a
+contract as you have been offered--"
+
+"Bless my bootsoles!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, getting up and tramping
+about the room in his excitement. "I thought the trolley cars that run
+between Shopton and Waterfield were about the fastest things on rails."
+
+"Not much. The trolley car is a narrow and prescribed manner of using
+electricity for motive power. The motor runs but one car--or one and a
+trailer, at most," said Tom. "As I have pointed out, the problem is to
+build a machine that will transmit power enough to draw the enormous
+weight of a loaded freight train, and that over steep grades.
+
+"A motor for each car is a costly matter. That is why trolley car
+companies, no matter how many passengers their cars carry, are so often
+on the verge of financial disaster. The margin of profit is too narrow.
+
+"But if you can get a locomotive built that will drag a hundred cars!
+Ah! how does that sound?" demanded Tom. "See the difference?"
+
+"Bless my volts and amperes!" exclaimed Mr. Damon. "I should say I do!
+Why, Tom, you make the problem as plain as plain can be."
+
+"In theory," supplemented Ned Newton, although he meant to suggest no
+doubt of his chum's ability to solve almost any problem.
+
+"You've hit it," said Tom promptly. "I only have a theory so far
+regarding such a locomotive. But to the inventor the theory always must
+come first. You understand that, Ned?"
+
+"I not only appreciate that fact," said his chum warmly; "but I believe
+that you are the fellow to show something definite along the line of an
+improved electric locomotive. But, whether you can reach the high mark
+set by the president of that railroad--"
+
+"Two miles a minute!" breathed Mr. Damon in agreement. "Bless my
+wind-gauge! It doesn't seem possible!"
+
+Tom Swift shrugged his shoulders. "It is the impossible that inventors
+have to overcome. If we experimenters believed in the impossible little
+would be done in this world, to advance mechanical science at least.
+Every invention was impossible until the chap who put it through built
+his first working model."
+
+"That's understood, old boy," said Ned, already busily scratching off
+the form of the contract he proposed to show the company's legal
+advisers early in the morning.
+
+When he had read over the notes he had made Tom O.K.'d them.  "That is
+about as I had the items set down myself on the sheet that fellow stole
+from me."
+
+"Wait!" exclaimed Ned, as Tom arose from his chair. "Do you know what
+strikes me after your telling me about your second hold-up?"
+
+"What's that?" asked his chum.
+
+"Are you sure that was the same fellow who stole your wallet?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Then his second attack on you proves that he got wise to the fact that
+your notes were in shorthand. He had a chance to study them while you
+visited with Mary Nestor."
+
+"Like enough."
+
+"I wonder if it doesn't prove that the fellow has somebody in cahoots
+with him right here in Shopton?" ruminated Ned.
+
+"Bless my spare tire!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, who had already started
+for the door but now turned back.
+
+"That's an idea, Ned," agreed Tom Swift. "It would seem that he had
+consulted with some superior," said the young manager of the Swift
+Construction Company. "This hold-up man may be from the West; but
+perhaps he did not follow Bartholomew alone."
+
+"I'd like to know who the other fellow is," said Tom thoughtfully. "I
+would know the man who attacked me, both by his bulk and his voice.
+
+"Me, too," put in Mr. Damon. "Bless my indicator! I'd know the
+scoundrel if I met him again."
+
+"The thing to do," said Ned Newton confidently, "is to identify the man
+who robbed you tonight as soon as possible and then, if he hangs around
+Shopton, to mark well anybody he associates with."
+
+"Perhaps they will not bother me any more," said Tom, rather carelessly.
+
+"And perhaps they will," grumbled Mr. Damon. "Bless my self-starter!
+they may try something mean again this very night. Come on, Tom. I want
+to run you home. And on the way, I tell you, I've got something to put
+up to you myself. It may not promise a small fortune like this electric
+locomotive business; but bless my barbed wire fence! my trouble has
+more than a little to do with footpads, too."
+
+He led the way out of the house and to the motor car again. In a minute
+he had started his engine, and Tom, jumping in beside him, was borne
+away toward his own home.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+Barbed Wire Entanglements
+
+
+"This gets us to your particular trouble, Mr. Damon," Tom Swift said,
+while the motor car was rolling along. "You intimated that you had
+something to consult me about."
+
+"Bless my windshield! I should say I had," exclaimed the eccentric
+gentleman, swinging around a corner at rather a fast clip.
+
+"And has it to do with highwaymen?" asked Tom, much amused.
+
+"Some of the same gentry, Tom," declared Mr. Damon. "I haven't any
+peace of my life, I really haven't!"
+
+"Who is troubling you, sir?"
+
+"Why, what nonsense that is, to ask that!" ejaculated the gentleman.
+"If I knew who they were I wouldn't ask odds of anybody. I'd go after
+them. As it is, I've left my servant with a gun loaded with rock-salt
+watching for them now."
+
+"Burglars?" exclaimed Tom, with real interest.
+
+"Chicken-house burglars! That's the kind of burglars they are," growled
+Mr. Damon. "Two or three times they have tried to get my prize buff
+Orpingtons. Last night they got me out of bed twice fooling around the
+chicken house and yard. Other neighbors have lost their hens already. I
+don't mean to lose mine. Want you to help me, Tom."
+
+"Is that all that is worrying you, Mr. Damon?" laughed the young fellow.
+
+"Bless my radiator! isn't that enough?"
+
+"I know you set your clock by those buff Orpingtons," agreed Tom.
+
+"That's right. That ten-months cockerel, Blue Ribbon Junior, never
+fails to crow at three-thirty-three to the minute. Bless my combs and
+spurs; a wonderful bird!"
+
+"But let's see how I can help you regarding the chicken thieves," Tom
+said, as they sighted the lights of the Swift house beyond the long
+stockade fence that surrounded the Construction Company's premises.
+
+"You know I have a barbed wire entanglement around the whole yard and
+hen-house. I don't take any more chances than I can help. Those prize
+buff Orpingtons are a great temptation to chicken lovers--both blond
+and brunette," and in spite of his anxiety, Mr. Damon could chuckle at
+his own joke. "Even your old Eradicate's friend fell for chickens, you
+know."
+
+"And Rad promptly cured him of the disease," laughed Tom.
+
+"And I'm trying to cure these others. I've charged my shotgun with
+rock-salt--as he did. My servant has orders to shoot anybody who
+tampers with my chicken house tonight.
+
+"But bless my shirt!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "I'll never be able to sleep
+comfortably until I know that no thief can get at my buff Orpingtons. I
+want you to fix it so I can sleep in peace, Tom."
+
+He slowed to a stop in front of the Swift's door. Tom stared at his
+eccentric friend questioningly.
+
+"Bless my gaiters!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, "don't you see what I want?
+And your head already full of this electrified locomotive you are going
+to build?"
+
+"Hush!" murmured Tom, with his hand upon his companion's arm.  "But
+what do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to fix it so that I can turn a current of electricity into
+that barbed wire chicken fence at night that will shock any thief that
+touches the wires. Not kill 'em--though they ought to be killed!"
+declared the eccentric man. "But shock 'em aplenty. Can't you do it for
+me, Tom Swift?"
+
+"Of course it can be done," said the young fellow. "You use electricity
+in your house. There is a feed cable in the street.  We will have to
+change your lighting switch for another. Fix it with the Electric
+Supply Company. It will cost you more--"
+
+"Bless my pocketbook! I don't care how much it costs. It will be ample
+satisfaction to see just one low-down chicken thief squirming on those
+wires."
+
+Tom laughed again. He meant to help his friend; but he did not propose
+to rig the wires so that anybody, even a chicken thief, would be
+seriously injured by the electric current passing through the strands.
+
+"I'll come down to Waterfield tomorrow in the electric runabout and fix
+things up for you. Get a permit from the Electric Supply Company early
+in the morning. Tell them I will rig the thing myself. They can send
+their inspector afterward."
+
+"That's fine, Tom! What--Ugh! what's this? Another footpad?"
+
+Out of the darkness beside the fence a bulky figure started.  For a
+moment Tom thought it was the same man who had attacked him twice. Then
+the very size of this new assailant proved that suspicion to be
+unfounded.
+
+"Koku!" exclaimed Tom. "What's the matter with you, Koku?"
+
+The huge and only half-tamed giant gained the side of the car in
+seemingly a single stride. In the dark they could not see his face, but
+his voice distinctly showed excitement.
+
+"Master come good. 'Cause there be enemy. Koku find--Koku kill!"
+
+"Bless my magnifying glass!" ejaculated Mr. Damon. "That fellow is the
+most bloodthirsty individual that I ever saw."
+
+"All in his bringing up," chuckled Tom who knew, as the saying is, that
+Koku's bark was a deal worse than his bite. "Killing and maiming his
+enemies used to be Koku's principal job. But he has his orders now. He
+doesn't kill anybody without consulting me first."
+
+"Bless my buttons!" murmured Mr. Damon. "That is certainly a good thing
+too. What's the matter with him now?"
+
+That is exactly what Tom himself wanted to know. He had dropped a hand
+upon the arm of the giant as he stood beside the car.
+
+"Who is the enemy, Koku?" he asked.
+
+"Not know, Master. See him footmarks. Follow him footmarks. Not find.
+When do find--kill!"
+
+"That is, after first obtaining my permission," said Tom dryly.
+
+"It is so," agreed the imperturbable Koku. "See! Show Master footmarks.
+Him look in at window. See! Koku have got the wonder lamp."
+
+He flashed the electric torch in his hand. He left the car and strode
+into the yard. Tom followed him, and Mr. Damon's curiosity brought him
+along.
+
+The giant pointed the ray of the flashlight at the ground below the
+porch. Several footprints--the marks of boots at least number twelve in
+size--were imbedded in the soil. Koku went around the house to the
+other side, following repeated marks of the same boots.
+
+"How came you to find them, Koku?" asked Tom softly.
+
+"Me look. All around stockade," and he waved a generous gesture with
+his free hand including the fence about the works. "Enemy may come.
+Anytime he come. Now he come."
+
+"Bless my slippery shoes!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, who had hard work to
+keep up both physically and mentally with the giant.  "What does he
+mean?"
+
+"Koku has always had it in his head," explained Tom, "that we built
+that fence about the works to keep out enemies. And, to tell the truth,
+we did! But all that is over--"
+
+"Is it?" asked Mr. Damon pointedly. "Enemy here," added Koku, flashing
+the lamplight upon the footprints on the ground.
+
+"Those bootmarks," added Mr. Damon, "are doubtless those of that fellow
+who jumped upon the running board of the car."
+
+"Humph! And who robbed me of my wallet," added Tom musingly.  "Well, it
+might be. And, if so, Koku is right. The enemy has come."
+
+"Me kill!" exclaimed the giant, stretching himself to his full height.
+
+"We'll consider the killing later," said Tom, who well knew his
+influence with this big fellow. "You are forbidden to kill anybody, or
+chase anybody away from here, until I have a talk with them. Enemy or
+not--understand?"
+
+"Me understand," said Koku in his deep voice. "Master say--me do."
+
+"Just the same," Tom said, aside to Mr. Damon, "there has been somebody
+around here. I guess Mr. Bartholomew was right. He is being spied upon.
+And now that we Swifts are going to try to do something for him, we are
+likely to be spied upon too."
+
+"Bless my statue of Nathan Hale!" murmured the eccentric gentleman. "I
+believe you. And you've been already attacked twice by some thug! You
+are positively in danger, Tom."
+
+"I don't know about that. Save that the fellow who robbed me was sore
+because I fooled him. Naturally he might like to get square about those
+shorthand notes. He knows no more now about Mr. Bartholomew's business
+with us than he did before he held me up."
+
+"That is a fact," agreed Mr. Damon.
+
+"And that brings me to another warning, Mr. Damon," added Tom
+earnestly, as his friend climbed into the motor car again. "Keep all
+that has happened, and all that I told you and Ned about the H. & P. A.
+railroad, to yourself."
+
+"Surely! Surely!"
+
+"If Mr. Bartholomew's rivals continue to keep their spies hanging
+around the works here, we'll handle them properly. Trust Koku for
+that," and Tom chuckled.
+
+"And don't forget my barbed wire entanglements," put in Mr. Damon,
+starting his engine. "I want to fix those chicken thieves.''
+
+"All right. I'll be over tomorrow," promised Tom Swift.
+
+Then he stood a minute on the curb and looked after the disappearing
+lights of Mr. Damon's car. The latter's problem dovetailed, after all,
+into this discovery of possible marauders lurking about the Swift
+premises. Koku had made no mistake in bringing his attention to the
+matter of the footprints. Tom had seen somebody dodging into the
+darkness outside the house when he had come out on his way to visit
+Mary Nestor.
+
+"And sure as taxes," muttered Tom, as he finally turned toward the
+front door again, "the fellow who twice attacked me this evening wore
+the boots the prints of which Koku found.
+
+"Those fellows, whoever they are, whether Montagne Lewis and his
+associates, or not, have bitten off several mouthfuls that they may be
+unable to chew. Anyhow, before they get through they may learn
+something about the Swifts that they never knew before."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+The Contract Signed
+
+
+Tom Swift went to bed that night without the least fear that the man
+who had twice attacked him in the streets of Shopton would be able to
+trouble him unless he went abroad again. Koku was on guard.
+
+The giant whom Tom had brought home from one of his distant wanderings
+was wholly devoted to his master. Koku never had, and he never would,
+become entirely civilized.
+
+He was naturally a born tracker of men. For generations his people had
+lived amid the alarms of threat and attack. He could not be made to
+understand how so many "tribes," as he called them, of civilized men
+could live in anything like harmony.
+
+That somebody should prowl about the Swift house at night with a desire
+to rob his young master or injure him, did not surprise Koku in the
+least. He accepted the fact of the marauder's presence as quite the
+expected thing.
+
+But the man who had robbed Tom and later tried to repay him for playing
+what appeared to be a practical joke on the robber, did not trouble the
+Swift premises with his presence before morning.  Koku, thrusting
+Eradicate Sampson aside and striding to his bedroom to report this
+fact, was what awoke Tom at eight o'clock.
+
+"Hey! What you want, tromping in here for, man?" demanded old Rad
+angrily. "An' totin' that spear, too. Where you t'ink yo' is?  In de
+jungle again? Go 'way, chile!"
+
+Both Rad and Koku were rapidly outliving the sudden friendship of Rad's
+sick days, when it was thought he might be blind for life, and were
+dropping back into their old ways of bickering and rivalry for Tom's
+attention.
+
+"I report to the Master," declared the giant, in his deep voice.
+
+"You tell me, I tell him," Rad said pompously. "No need yo' 'sturbing
+Massa Tom at dis hour."
+
+"Koku go in!" declared the giant sternly.
+
+"Jes' stay out dere on de stair an' res' yo'self," said Rad.
+
+Koku lost his temper with old Rad. There was a feud between them,
+although deep in their hearts they really were fond of each other. But
+the two were jealous of each other's services to young Tom Swift.
+
+Suddenly Tom heard the old negro utter a frightened squeal. The door
+which had been only ajar, burst inward and banged against the door-stop
+with a mighty smash.
+
+Rad went through the big bedroom like a chocolate-colored streak,
+entered Tom's bathroom, and the next moment there was the sound of
+crashing glass as Eradicate Sampson went through the lower sash of the
+window, headfirst, out upon the roof of the porch!
+
+"What do you mean by this?" shouted Tom, sitting up in bed.
+
+Koku paused in the doorway, bulking almost to the top of the door. His
+right arm was drawn back, displaying his mighty biceps, and he poised a
+ten foot spear with a copper head that he had seized from a nest of
+such implements which was a decoration of the lower hall.
+
+Had the giant ever flung that spear at poor Rad's back, half the length
+of the staff might have passed through his body.  Little wonder that
+the colored man, having roused the giant's rage to such a pitch, had
+given small consideration to the order of his going, but had gone at
+once!
+
+"You want to scare Rad out of half a year's growth?" Tom pursued
+sternly, slipping out of bed and reaching for his robe and slippers.
+"And he's broken that window to smithereens."
+
+"Koku come make report, Master," said the giant.
+
+"You go put that spear back where you found it and come up properly,"
+commanded the young fellow, with difficulty hiding his amusement. "Go
+on now!"
+
+He shuffled into the bathroom while the giant disappeared. He peered
+out of the broken window. It was a wonder Rad had not carried the sash
+with him! The broken glass was scattered all about the roof of the
+porch and the old colored man lay groaning there.
+
+"What did you do this for, Eradicate?" demanded Tom. "You act worse
+than a ten-year-old boy."
+
+"I's done killed, Massa Tom!" groaned Rad with confidence. "I's blood
+from haid to foot!"
+
+There was a scratch on his bald crown from which a few drops of blood
+flowed. But with all his terror, Eradicate had put both arms over his
+head when he made his dive through the window, and he really was very
+little injured.
+
+"Come in here," repeated Tom. "Fix something over this broken window so
+that I can take my bath. And then go and put something on that scratch.
+Don't you know better yet, than to cross Koku when he is excited?"
+
+"Dat crazy ol' cannibal!" spat out Rad viciously. "I'll fix him yet.
+I'll pizen his rations, dat's what I'll do."
+
+"You wouldn't be so bad as that, Rad!"
+
+"Well, mebbe not," said the colored man, crawling in through the
+bathroom window. "It would take too much pizen, anyway, to kill that
+giant. Take as much as dey has to give an el'phant to kill it. Anyways,
+I's bound to fix him proper some time, yet."
+
+These quarrels between Eradicate and Koku were intermittent.  They
+almost always arose, too, because of the desire of the two servants to
+wait upon Tom or his father. They were very jealous of each other, and
+their clashes afforded Tom and his friends a good deal of amusement.
+
+While the young inventor was in his bath the giant strode back into the
+bedroom, out of which Rad had scurried by another door, and proceeded
+to report the result of his night watch about the premises.
+
+He had not much to tell. In fact, after Tom had gone into the house
+Koku had seen nobody lurking about at all. The fact remained that,
+earlier in the evening, somebody had made a close surveillance of the
+Swift house, but the mysterious marauder had not come back.
+
+"All right, Koku. Keep your eyes open. I expect that enemy may return
+sometime. Too bad," he added to himself, "that I didn't get a better
+look at him."
+
+"Koku know him next time," declared the giant.
+
+"Why! you didn't even see him this time," cried Tom.
+
+"See him boots. See marks him boots make. Know him boots.  Waugh!"
+
+"'Waugh!' yourself," returned Tom, shaking his head. "You are
+altogether too sure, Koku. You couldn't tell a man from his bootprints
+in the mud."
+
+"Koku know," said the giant, just as confidently. "Wait. Him
+catch--see--show Master."
+
+"Don't you go to grabbing every stranger who comes around the house or
+the works for a spy, and make me trouble. Remember now."
+
+Koku nodded gravely and went away. When he met Rad suddenly in the hall
+with Mr. Swift's breakfast tray, the giant said "boo!" and almost cost
+the old colored man the loss of the tray.
+
+"Dat big el'phant ought to be livin' in a barn," declared Rad.  "Look
+at dat spear he come near runnin' me t'rough wid! If he had, yo' could
+ha' driv a tipcart full o' rubbish in after it.  Lawsy me!"
+
+But an hour later when Tom and his father started for the offices of
+the Swift Construction Company down the street, Rad and Koku were
+sitting before an enormous breakfast in the back kitchen and chatting
+together as companionably as ever.
+
+The old inventor and his son arrived at the offices of the Swift
+Construction Company not long ahead of Mr. Richard Bartholomew. Tom had
+merely found time to read over the contract that had been jointly
+prepared by Ned Newton and the firm's legal advisers, before the
+railroad man came.
+
+"No getting out of the provisions of that paper, Tom," Ned had
+whispered, when he saw Mr. Bartholomew coming into the outer office.
+"Is this your man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A sharp looking little fellow," commented Ned. "But even if he were
+bent on tricking us, this contract would hold him. He is solvent and so
+is his road--as yet. If it has a bad name in the market that is more
+because of slander by the Montagne Lewis crowd than from any real
+cause. I've found that out this morning."
+
+"Faithful Nero!" chuckled Tom. "Aren't going to let the Swifts get
+done, are you?"
+
+"Not if I can help it," declared Ned Newton emphatically.
+
+A clerk brought Mr. Bartholomew into the private office and he was
+introduced to Newton. If he considered the financial manager of the
+Swift Construction Company very young for his responsible position,
+after he had read the contract he felt considerable respect for Ned
+Newton.
+
+"You've got me here, young man, hard and fast," Mr. Bartholomew said.
+"If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance of it. But I
+don't. You have set forth here exactly my meaning and intent. I want
+your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift, and if you give them to me
+I'll foot the bill as agreed."
+
+"You've got me interested, I confess," said Tom. "By the way, were your
+friends following you when you came here this morning?"
+
+"My friends?" repeated Mr. Bartholomew, for a moment puzzled.
+
+"The spy that you mentioned," said Tom, smiling.
+
+"That Andy O'Malley?" exclaimed Bartholomew. "Haven't spotted him
+today."
+
+"He spotted me last night," said Tom grimly, and proceeded to relate
+what had happened.
+
+"You fooled 'em that time, young man!" exclaimed the railroad
+president, with satisfaction. "I am convinced that Montagne Lewis is
+behind it. Look out for these fellows when you get to work, Mr. Swift.
+They will stop at nothing. I tell you that the fight is on between the
+Hendrickton & Pas Alos and the Hendrickton & Western. I have either got
+to break them or they will break me."
+
+"You seem very sure that there is a conspiracy against you, Mr.
+Bartholomew," said the senior Swift reflectively.
+
+"I am sure," was the reply. "And I am likewise sure that this scheme of
+electrification of my road through the Pas Alos Range is the only
+salvation for my railroad."
+
+"I should call it a big contract," Ned Newton said, thoughtfully.
+
+"You have said it! But it is not a visionary scheme I have in mind. You
+must know--you Swifts--how successful such an electrification through
+the Rockies has been made by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway."
+
+"I've looked that up," confessed Tom, with enthusiasm. "That was a
+great piece of work."
+
+"It is. It is. But I hope for even a greater outcome of your
+experiments, Mr. Swift. Of course, I do not expect to compete with that
+great road. They had millions to spend, and they spent them. Those
+Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotives the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
+built in nineteen hundred and nineteen are wonderful machines. They
+have got forty-two freight locomotives, fifteen passenger locomotives
+and four switchers of that new type.
+
+"The Jandel patent that my road uses is, in some degree, the equal of
+those Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotives. At least, our machines equal
+the C., M. & St. P. on our level road. They can reach a mile-a-minute
+gait. But when it comes to speed and pull on steep grades--Ah! that is
+where they fail."
+
+"You will have to get power in the hills for your stations," suggested
+Tom, thoughtfully.
+
+"I know that. I know where the power is coming from. I gathered those
+waterfalls in years ago. Lewis and his crowd can't shut me off from
+them. But I have got to have a speedier and more powerful type of
+electric locomotive than has ever yet been built to protect the
+Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad from any rivalry.
+
+"I am looking to you Swifts to give me that. I am risking this
+twenty-five thousand dollars upon your succeeding. And I am offering
+you the hundred thousand dollars bonus for the right to purchase the
+first successful locomotives that can be built covered by your patents.
+Is it plain?"
+
+"It is eminently satisfactory," said Mr. Swift, quietly.
+
+"I will do my very best," agreed Tom, warmly. "There isn't a thing the
+matter with the agreement," declared Ned Newton, with confidence.
+"Gentlemen, sign on the dotted line."
+
+Five minutes later the twin contracts were in force. One went into the
+safe of the Swift Construction Company. The other, Mr. Richard
+Bartholomew bore away with him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+The Man with Big Feet
+
+
+The consultation in the private office of the Swift Construction
+Company after the departure of Mr. Richard Bartholomew between the two
+Swifts and Ned Newton had more to do with a vision of the future than
+with mere present finances.
+
+"I expect you know just about how you are going to work on this new
+invention, Tom?" suggested the financial manager, and Tom's chum.
+
+"Haven't the first idea," rejoined the young inventor, promptly.
+
+"What do you mean?" ejaculated Ned. "You talked just now as though you
+knew all about electric locomotives."
+
+"I know a good deal about those that have been built, both under the
+Jandel patent and those built for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul in
+the great Philadelphia shops.
+
+"But when you ask me if I know how I am going to improve on those
+patents so as to make my locomotive twice as speedy and quite as
+powerful as those other locomotives--well, I've got to tell you flat
+that I have not as yet got the first idea."
+
+"Humph!" grumbled Ned. "You say it coolly enough."
+
+"No use getting all heated up about it," returned his friend.  "I have
+got to consider the situation first. I must look over the field of
+electrical invention as applied to motive power. I must study things
+out."
+
+"I don't just see myself," Ned Newton remarked thoughtfully, "why there
+should be such a great need for the electrification of locomotives,
+anyway. Those great mountain-hogs that draw most of the mountain
+railroad trains are very powerful, aren't they? And they are speedy."
+
+"Locomotives that use coal or oil have been developed about as far as
+they can be," said Mr. Swift, quietly. "A successful electric
+locomotive has many advantages over the old-time engine."
+
+"What are those advantages?" asked the business manager, quickly. "I
+confess, I do not understand the matter, Mr. Swift."
+
+"For instance," proceeded the old gentleman, "there is the coal
+question alone. Coal is rising in price. It is bulky. Using electricity
+as motive power for railroads will do away with fuel trains, tenders,
+coal handling, water, and all that. Of course, Mr. Bartholomew will
+generate his electricity from water power--the cheapest power on earth."
+
+"Humph! I've got my answer right now," said Ned Newton. "If there is no
+other good reason, this is sufficient."
+
+"There are plenty of others," drawled Tom, smiling. "Good ones.  For
+instance, heat or cold has nothing to do with the even running of an
+electric locomotive. It can bore right through a snowbank--a thing a
+steam engine can't do. It runs at an even speed. Really, grade should
+have nothing to do with its speed.  There is a fault somewhere in the
+construction of the Jandel machine or the H. & P. A. would have little
+trouble with those locomotives on its grades.
+
+"Then, all you have to do to start an electrified locomotive is to turn
+a handswitch. No stoking or water-boiling. Does away with the fireboy.
+One man runs it!"
+
+"Why!" cried Ned, "I never stopped to think of all these things."
+
+"No ashes to dump," went on Tom. "No flues to clean, no boilers to
+inspect, and none to wear out. And they say that on the Chicago,
+Milwaukee & St. Paul, at least, their freight locomotives handle twice
+the load of a steam locomotive at a greatly reduced cost."
+
+"Sounds fine. Don't wonder Mr. Bartholomew is eager to electrify his
+entire tine."
+
+"On the side of passenger traffic," continued Tom Swift, "the electric
+locomotive is smokeless, noiseless, dirtless, and doesn't jerk the
+coaches in either stopping or starting. And in addition, the electric
+locomotive is much easier on track and roadbed than the old 'iron
+horse' driven by steam generated either from coal or oil."
+
+"It is a great field for your talents, Tom!" cried Ned, warmly.
+
+"It is a big job," admitted Tom, and he said this with modesty.  "I
+don't know what I may be able to do--if anything. I would not feel
+right in taking Mr. Bartholomew's twenty-five thousand dollars for
+nothing."
+
+"Quite right, my boy," said Mr. Swift, approvingly.
+
+"Never mind that," said the financial manager, rather grimly.  "It was
+his own offer and his risk. That twenty-five thousand comes to our
+account."
+
+Tom laughed. "All business, Ned, aren't you? But there is more than
+business for the Swift Construction Company in this. Our reputation for
+fair dealing as well as for inventive powers is linked up with this
+contract.
+
+"I want to show the Jandel people--to say nothing of the bigger
+firms--that the Swifts are to be reckoned with when it comes to
+electric invention. Other roads will be electrifying their lines as
+fast as it is proved that the electric-driven locomotive has the bulge
+on the steam-driven.
+
+"In the case of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos there are very steep grades
+to overcome. Supposedly an electric motor-drive should achieve the same
+speed on a hill as on the level. But there is the weight of the train
+to be counted on.
+
+"The H. & P. A. has a two per cent. grade in more than one place. Mr.
+Bartholomew confessed as much to me last night. The electric-driven
+locomotive of the powerful freight type, which the Jandel people built
+for Mr. Bartholomew, can make about sixteen miles an hour on those
+grades, although they can hit it up to thirty miles an hour on level
+track.
+
+"His passenger locomotives turn off a mile a minute and more, on the
+level road; but they can not climb those steep grades at a much
+livelier pace than the freight engines. That is why he is talking about
+two-mile-a-minute locomotives. He must get a mighty speedy locomotive,
+for both freight and passenger service, to keep ahead of Montagne
+Lewis's rival road, the Hendrickton & Western."
+
+"You don't suppose it can be done, do you?" demanded Ned. "The
+two-mile-a-minute locomotive, I mean, Tom."
+
+"That is the target I am to aim for," returned his friend, soberly. "At
+any rate, I hope to improve on the type of locomotive Mr. Bartholomew
+is now using, so that the hundred thousand dollars bonus will come our
+way as well as this first twenty-five thousand."
+
+"That wouldn't pay for one engine, would it?" cried Ned.
+
+"Nor is it expected to. The bonus has nothing to do with payment for
+any model, or patent, or anything of the kind. To tell you the truth,
+Ned, I understand those big locomotives used by the Chicago, Milwaukee
+& St. Paul cost them about one hundred and twelve thousand dollars
+each."
+
+"Whew! Some price, I'll tell the world!" murmured the youthful
+financial manager of the Swift Construction Company.
+
+When the conference was over, and Tom had been through the workshop to
+overlook several little jobs that were in process of completion by his
+trusted mechanics, it was lunch time. He left word that he would not be
+back that day, for this new task he was to attack was not to be
+approached with any haphazard thought.
+
+Tom knew quite as well as his father knew that the idea of improving
+the Jandel patent on electric locomotives was no small thing. The
+Jandel people had claimed that their patent was the very last word in
+electric motor-power. And Tom was quite willing to acknowledge that in
+some ways this claim was true.
+
+But in invention, especially in the field of electric invention, what
+is the last word today may be ancient history tomorrow.
+
+It was because this field is so broad and the possibility of
+improvement in every branch of electrical science so exciting, that Tom
+had accepted Mr. Bartholomew's challenge with such eagerness.
+
+Tom went back to the house for lunch, and as he joined his father in
+the dining room he remarked to Eradicate:
+
+"I want the electric runabout brought around after lunch. I am going to
+Waterfield. Tell Koku, will you, Rad?"
+
+"Tell that crazy fellow?" demanded the old colored man heatedly. "Why
+should I tell him, Massa Tom? Ain't I able to bring dat runabout out o'
+de garbarge? Shore I is!"
+
+"You can't do everything, Rad," said Tom, soberly. "That is humanly
+impossible."
+
+"But dat Koku can't do nothin' right. Dat's inhumanly possible, Massa
+Tom."
+
+"Give him a chance, Rad. I have to take Koku with me this afternoon.
+You must give your attention to the house and to father."
+
+"Huh! Umm!" grunted Eradicate.
+
+ Rad was jealous of anybody who waited on Tom besides himself.
+Yet he was proud of responsibility, too. He teetered between the pride
+of being in charge at home and accompanying his young master, and
+finally replied:
+
+"Well, in course, you ain't going to be gone long, Massa Tom.  And yo'
+father does like to get his nap undisturbed. And he'll want his pot o'
+tea afterwards. So I'll let dat irresponsible Koku go wid yo'. But yo'
+got to watch him, Massa Tom. Dat giant don't know what he's about half
+de time."
+
+As Koku was not within hearing to challenge that statement, things went
+all right. When Tom came out of the house after eating, he found his
+very fast car waiting for him, with the giant standing beside it at the
+curb.
+
+"Get in at the back, Koku," said Tom. "I am going to take you with me."
+
+"Master is much wise," said Koku. "That man with big feet will not hurt
+Master while Koku is with him."
+
+To tell the truth Tom had quite forgotten the supposed spy that had
+attacked him the night before. He needed Koku for a purpose other than
+that of bodyguard. But he made no comment upon the giant's remark.
+
+They stopped at one of the gates of the works, and Tom instructed Koku
+to bring out and put into the car certain boxes and tools that he
+wished to take with him. Then he drove on, taking the road to
+Waterfield.
+
+This way led through farmlands and patches of woods, a rough country in
+part. A mile out of the limits of Shopton the road edged a deep valley,
+the sidehill sparsely wooded.
+
+Almost at once, and where there was not a dwelling in sight, they saw a
+figure tramping in the road ahead, a big man, roughly dressed, and
+wearing a broad-brimmed hat. Somehow, his appearance made Tom reduce
+speed and he hesitated to pass the pedestrian.
+
+The man did not hear the runabout at first; or, at least, he did not
+look over his shoulder. He strode on heavily, but rapidly. Suddenly the
+young inventor heard the giant behind him emit a hissing breath.
+
+"Master!" whispered the giant.
+
+"What's up now?" demanded Tom, but without glancing around.
+
+"The big feet!" exclaimed Koku.
+
+The giant's own feet were shod with difficulty in civilized footgear,
+but compared with his other physical dimensions his feet did not seem
+large. The man ahead wore coarse boots which actually looked too big
+for him! Koku started up in the back of the car as the latter drew
+nearer to the stranger.
+
+The man looked back at last and Tom gained a clear view of his
+features--roughly carved, dark as an Indian's, and holding a grim
+expression in repose that of itself was far from breeding confidence.
+In a moment, too, the expression changed into one of active emotion.
+The man glared at the young inventor with unmistakable malevolence.
+
+"Master!" hissed Koku again. "The big feet!" The fellow must have seen
+Koku's face and understood the giant's expression. In a flash he turned
+and leaped out of the roadway. The sidehill was steep and broken here,
+but he went down the slope in great strides and with every appearance
+of wishing to evade the two in the motor-car.
+
+The giant's savage war cry followed the fugitive. Koku leaped from the
+moving car. Tom yelled:
+
+"Stop it, Koku! You don't know that that is the man."
+
+"The big feet!" repeated the giant. "Master see the red mud dried on
+Big Feet's boots? That mud from Master's garden."
+
+Again Koku uttered his savage cry, and in strides twice the length of
+those of the running man, started on the latter's trail.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+An Enemy in the Dark
+
+
+The situation offered suggestions of trouble that stung Tom to
+immediate action. The impetuousness of his giant often resulted in
+difficulties which the young inventor would have been glad to escape.
+
+Now Koku was following just the wrong path. Tom Swift knew it.
+
+"Koku, you madman!" he shouted after the huge native. "Come back here!
+Hear me? Back!"
+
+Koku hesitated. He shot a wondering look over his shoulder, but his
+long legs continued to carry him down the slope after the dark-faced
+stranger.
+
+"Come back, I say!" shouted Tom again. "Have I got to come after you?
+Koku! If you don't mind what you're told I'll send you back to your own
+country and you'll have to eat snakes and lizards, as you used to. Come
+here!"
+
+Whether it was because of this threat of a change of diet, which Koku
+now abhorred, or the fact that he had really become somewhat
+disciplined and that he fairly worshiped Tom, the giant stopped. The
+man with the big shoes disappeared behind a hedge of low trees.
+
+"Get back up here!" ejaculated Tom sternly. "I'll never take you away
+from the house with me again if you don't obey me."
+
+"Master!" ejaculated the giant, slowly approaching. "That Big Feet--"
+
+"I don't care if he made those footprints in the yard last night or
+not. I don't want him touched. I didn't even want him to know that we
+guessed he had been sneaking about the house.  Understand?"
+
+"Of a courseness," grumbled Koku. "Koku understand everything Master
+say."
+
+"Well, you don't act as though you did. Next time when I want any help
+I may have to bring Rad with me."
+
+"Oh, no, Master! Not that old man. He don't know how to help Master.
+Koku do just what Master say."
+
+"Like fun you do," said Tom, still apparently very angry with the
+simple-minded giant. "Get back into the car and sit still, if you can,
+until we get to Mr. Damon's house." Then to himself he added: "I don't
+blame that fellow, whoever he is, for lighting out. I bet he's running
+yet!"
+
+He knew that Koku would say nothing regarding the incident. The giant
+had wonderful powers of silence! He sometimes went days without
+speaking even to Rad. And that was one of the sources of irritation
+between the voluble colored man and the giant.
+
+"'Tain't human," Rad often said, "for nobody to say nothin' as much as
+dat Koku does. Why, lawsy me! if he was tongue-tied an' speechless, an'
+a deaf an' dumb mute, he couldn't say nothin' more obstreperously dan
+he does--no sir! 'Tain't human."
+
+So Tom had not to warn the giant not to chatter about meeting the
+stranger on the road to Waterfield. If that person with dried red mud
+on his boots was the spy who had followed Mr. Richard Bartholomew East
+and was engaged by Montagne Lewis to interfere with any attempt the
+president of the H. & P. A. might make to pull his railroad out of the
+financial quagmire into which it was rapidly sinking, Tom would have
+preferred to have the spy not suspect that he had been identified after
+his fiasco of the previous evening.
+
+For if this Western looking fellow was Andy O'Malley, whose name had
+been mentioned by the railroad man, he was the person who had robbed
+Tom of his wallet and had afterward attempted reprisal upon the young
+inventor because the robbery had resulted in no gain to the robber.
+
+Of course, the fellow had been unable to read Tom's shorthand notes of
+the agreement that he had discussed with Mr. Bartholomew. Just what the
+nature of that agreement was, would be a matter of interest to the
+spy's employer.
+
+Having failed in this attempt to learn something which was not his
+business, the spy might make other and more serious attempts to learn
+the particulars of the agreement between the railroad president and the
+Swifts. Tom was sorry that the fellow had now been forewarned that his
+identity as the spy and footpad was known to Tom and his friends.
+
+Koku had made a bad mess of it. But Tom determined to say nothing to
+his father regarding the discovery he had made. He did not want to
+worry Mr. Swift. He meant, however, to redouble precautions at the
+Swift Construction Company against any stranger getting past the
+stockade gates.
+
+Arrived at Mr. Damon's home in Waterfield, Tom got quickly to work on
+the little job he had come to do for his old friend. Of course, Tom
+might have sent two of his mechanics from the works down here to
+electrify the barbed wire entanglements that Mr. Damon had erected
+around his chicken run. But the young inventor knew that his eccentric
+friend would not consider the job done right unless Tom attended to it
+personally.
+
+"Bless my cracked corn and ground bone mixture!" ejaculated the chicken
+fancier. "We'll show these night-prowlers what's what, I guess. One of
+my neighbors was robbed last night. And I would have been if I hadn't
+set a watch while I drove over to see you, Tom. Bless my spurs and
+hackles! but these thieves are getting bold."
+
+"We'll fix 'em," said Tom, cheerfully, while Koku brought the tools and
+wire to the hen run. "After we link up your supply of the current with
+this wire fence it will be an unhappy chicken burglar who interferes
+with it."
+
+"That was an unhappy fellow who got your charge of ammonia last
+evening," whispered Mr. Damon. "Heard anything more of him?"
+
+"I think I have seen him. But Koku spoiled everything by trying to eat
+him up," and Tom laughingly related what had occurred on the way from
+Shopton.
+
+"Bless my boots!" said Mr. Damon. "You'd better see the police, Tom."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, they ought to know about such a fellow lurking about Shopton. If
+he followed that Western railroad president here--"
+
+"We'll hope that he will follow Mr. Bartholomew away again," chuckled
+Tom. "Mr. Bartholomew won't stay over today. When that chap finds he
+has gone he probably will consider that there is no use in his
+bothering me any further."
+
+Whether Tom believed this statement or not, he was destined to realize
+his mistake within a very short time. At least, the fact that he was
+being spied upon and that the enemy meant him anything but good, seemed
+proved beyond a doubt that very week.
+
+Having done the little job for Mr. Damon, Tom allowed no other outside
+matter to take up his attention. He shut himself into his private
+experimental workshop and laboratory at the works each day. He did not
+even come out for lunch, letting Rad bring him down some sandwiches and
+a thermos bottle of cool milk.
+
+"The young boss is milling over something new," the men said, and
+grinned at each other. They were proud of Tom and faithful to his
+interests.
+
+Time was when there had been traitors in the works; but unfaithful
+hands had been weeded out. There was not a man who drew a pay envelope
+from the Swift Construction Company who would not have done his best to
+save Tom and his father trouble. Such a thing as a strike, or labor
+troubles of any kind, was not thought of there.
+
+So Tom knew that whatever he did, or whatever plans he drew, in his
+private room, he was safely guarded. Yet he always took a portfolio
+home with him at night, for after dinner he frequently continued his
+work of the day. Naturally during this first week he did not get far in
+any problem connected with the proposed electric locomotive. There
+were, however, rough drafts and certain schedules that had to do with
+the matter jotted down.
+
+It was almost twelve at night. Tom had sat up in his own room after his
+father had retired, and after the household was still.
+
+Eradicate was in bed and snoring under the roof, Tom knew. Just where
+Koku was, it would have been hard to tell. Although a fine and
+penetrating rain was falling, the giant might be roaming about the
+waste land surrounding the stockade of the works. The elements had no
+terrors for him.
+
+Tom locked his portfolio and stepped into his bathroom to wash his
+hands before retiring. Before he snapped on the electric light over the
+basin he chanced to glance through the newly set windowpane which had
+replaced the one Rad had shattered in escaping threatened impalement on
+Koku's spear.
+
+Although the clouds were thick and the rain was falling, there was a
+certain humid radiance upon the roof of the porch under the bathroom
+window. At least, the wet roof glistened so that any moving figure on
+or beyond it was visible.
+
+"What's that?" muttered Tom, and he sank down lower than the sill and
+crept slowly to the window. He merely raised himself until his eyes
+were on a level with the sill.
+
+Coming up over the edge of the porch roof was a bulky figure.  It was
+so dimly outlined at first that Tom could scarcely be sure that it was
+that of a man.
+
+However, it was not possible that any creature but a man would be able
+to mount the lattice supporting the honeysuckle vines and so creep out
+upon the porch roof. Once making secure his footing, the enemy in the
+dark approached directly the bathroom window at which Tom crouched.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+Where was Koku?
+
+
+Tom reached up swiftly and pushed over the lever that locked the two
+window sashes. In doing this he set his own patent burglar alarm. If
+that lever was turned back again, or broken, the buzzers would be set
+ringing all over the house, and in Koku's room over the garage.
+
+He did not believe that the marauder on the roof of the porch could
+have seen the flash of his shirt-sleeved arm. But he took no chance of
+being observed from outside by rising to his feet.
+
+On his hands and knees he crept away from the window, and out of the
+bathroom. Once there, he stood up, grabbed the portfolio, and without
+coat or vest and as he was, dashed out of the bedroom. He had been
+positive that nobody but himself was astir in the big house, and he was
+right.
+
+He did not punch the light button when he entered the library.  He knew
+where to put his hand upon an electric torch in the table drawer, and
+he gained possession of this.
+
+Then he went to the safe and twirled the knob and watched the indicator
+find the four numbers which were the "open sesame" to the burglar and
+fire-proof door.
+
+He flung the portfolio into the inner compartment, closed both doors,
+and twirled the combination-knob. Then Tom tiptoed to the foot of the
+front stairs to listen. He could hear no sound from above.
+
+He did not want his father to be startled, if the enemy did break in;
+and he knew that old Rad, awakened out of a sound sleep, would be worse
+than useless at such a time.
+
+After all, the giant, Koku, was his main dependence under these
+circumstances. Tom crept to the outer door, opened it carefully, and
+slipped out, letting the spring lock click behind him. For the first
+time he realized that he was in his shirt and trousers and wore only
+felt slippers on his feet.
+
+But he was locked out now. He had no key. He must run the risk of the
+fine rain and the chill of the night air.
+
+He stepped off the end of the porch and ran around the house.  It was
+to the roof of the rear porch that the marauder had climbed. But peer
+as he might from down in the yard, Tom could see no moving figure up
+there near the bathroom window. It was pitch dark against the wall of
+the house.
+
+He turned to glance up at the window of the sleeping room over the
+garage where Koku was supposed to spend the night. But Tom knew the
+giant was seldom there during the dark hours. He was as much of a
+night-prowler as a wildcat or an owl.
+
+There was no light there in any case. But Koku did not use a light
+much. He could see in the dark, like a wild animal. Tom did not want to
+call him. If he must have Koku's help, he would have to climb the
+stairs to his bedside. The giant always aroused as wide awake as at
+noonday.
+
+But while the young inventor hesitated a sudden, but muffled, snap--the
+breaking of metal--sounded. Tom knew instantly the direction from which
+the sound came.
+
+Although he could see nothing up there at the bathroom window because
+of the rain and the deep shadow, he knew that the snapping sound meant
+the severing of the window lock that he had so recently closed. Some
+instrument had been forced under the bottom of the lower sash and
+pressure enough been brought to bear to break the thin steel lever.
+
+On the heels of this sound came another. A muffled buzzing somewhere in
+the house--again! again! And then, startlingly clear from the room over
+the garage, the burglar alarm went off in Koku's chamber.
+
+"It's all off now!" gasped Tom, and he ran to the foot of the
+honeysuckle ladder up which he knew the enemy had climbed to get to the
+roof of the porch. "If he comes down I'll have him!" muttered Tom,
+staring up into the mist and gloom.
+
+"Fo' de lawsy's sake! 'Tain't mawnin', is it?" Rad's sleepy voice was
+heard to announce. "No, it's da'k as--" And the voice trailed off into
+silence.
+
+"Tom! Tom!" the young fellow heard his aroused father shouting.
+
+Tom knew that his father was in no danger. In fact Mr. Swift's voice
+did not even betray apprehension. It was to the garage Tom looked for
+an explosion. But none came.
+
+If Koku was up there the prolonged buzzing of the alarm did not awake
+him. Therefore he could not be there. Tom realized that if the burglar
+was to be taken the whole affair fell upon his shoulders.
+
+"And I've got my hands full, if it is the fellow with the big feet that
+we saw on the Waterfield Road the other day," muttered the young
+inventor.
+
+Nothing stirred on the porch roof. Moment after moment slipped by. Tom
+began to grow more than amazed. He was worried. What would happen next?
+
+His father had not cried out again. Stepping around to the end of the
+roofed porch, Tom saw a light in Mr. Swift's room. Rad had evidently
+gone to sleep again. It would take more than an intermittent buzzer to
+rouse fully that colored man.
+
+"When old Morpheus has a strangle hold on Rad, Gabriel's trump would
+scarcely awaken him," Tom muttered.
+
+What had become of the enemy? If it was an ordinary burglar he would
+have feared the electric alarm instantly. The buzzers were still
+working. But there was no sign of the man who had set them off at the
+bathroom window.
+
+Suddenly Tom heard a door slam. It was from the front of the house. Had
+his father come downstairs to look around and see what the matter was?
+
+The young fellow started around the house on a run. He heard heavy
+bootsoles spurning the gravel of the path to the front gate. He arrived
+at the far corner of the house in time to see a man dash through the
+gateway and run down the street, disappearing finally into the
+fast-driving rain.
+
+"Fooled me! He went in and right through and down the stairs!  Out the
+front door!" gasped Tom. "Did he get anything? I wonder!"
+
+He sprang up to the front porch and tried the door. It was locked
+again, of course. Should he ring the bell and get Rad or his father
+down to the door?
+
+And then, of a sudden, the principal mystery of all this affair bit
+into Tom Swift's mind. The burglar had made his escape. He could
+relieve his father's anxiety later. It was his own puzzlement of mind
+that he first wished to ease.
+
+Where was Koku?
+
+Even had the giant been circling the stockade around the shops he
+surely must have come up to the home premises by this time.  His keen
+ears could not fail to hear the buzzers. They were still going and
+would go until the switch was turned.
+
+If the giant was in his room--Tom turned suddenly and started on a run
+for the rear premises. He still carried the hand-lamp and it lit his
+way into the garage door and up the narrow stairway. He shot the round
+beam of the lamp into Koku's room.
+
+He had been obliged to have an iron bedstead made to order for the
+giant. It stood against one wall of the room. The buzzer was snarling
+like a  huge bumblebee above the head of the couch.  Below it sprawled
+the giant, eyes tightly closed and mouth slightly ajar. From the lips
+of Koku were emitted sounds worthy of Rad Sampson in his deepest
+slumbers!
+
+"Asleep?" gasped Tom, stepping cat-like into the room.
+
+And then he was suddenly aware of a sickish, heavy odor in the chamber.
+The window had been closed. But it was something more than stale air
+that Tom smelled.
+
+A folded cloth lay on the floor beside the couch. The young fellow saw
+at once that it had been originally placed over the giant's face, but
+had slid off. And lucky for Koku that it had been dislodged!
+
+"Chloroform!" muttered Tom. "He's drugged. It is no wonder he did not
+hear the burglar alarm."
+
+In any event, the incident made one deep impression on Tom's mind. The
+spies who he believed were working for the Hendrickton & Western
+Railroad and its owner, Montagne Lewis, were desperate men. Tom could
+not believe that the fellow with the big feet was alone in Shopton and
+was unaided in his attempts to find out what Tom was doing.
+
+This attempt to burglarize the house betrayed the caliber of the enemy.
+In chloroforming Koku he had taken the risk of murdering the giant.
+Only the fact that the pad of saturated cloth had fallen off Koku's
+face had, perhaps, saved the man from suffocation.
+
+Tom did not tell the giant when he aroused what the matter with him
+was. Koku was ill enough! He was wrenched by interior spasms that
+seemed almost to tear his huge body to pieces.
+
+"What done got into dat big lump o' bone an' grizzle?" demanded
+Eradicate. "He looks like, he swallowed a volcano, and it just got to
+wo'kin' right. My lawsy!"
+
+"He is a sick man, all right," admitted Tom. "Looks like he wouldn't
+try to stab me to deaf wid no spear no mo'," went on Rad, inclined to
+approve of Koku's sufferings.
+
+"If he died you'd be mighty sorry, old man," declared Tom, sternly.
+
+"Sho' would. Be a mighty hard job to bury him," was the callous
+response.
+
+Just the same, the crotchety old colored man began to hop around in
+lively fashion with hot water, and later with coffee and other
+stimulants; and he nursed Koku all day as though he were a big baby.
+
+Koku, who had never been ill before in his life, was inclined to lay
+the trouble to an evil genius of some kind. Perhaps, in spite of his
+half-civilized state, he was still a devil-worshiper.  At any rate, he
+had a vital respect for the forces of evil.
+
+Naturally he considered this unknown and unexpected misery he suffered
+the result of malignant influences of some kind. Tom did not want him
+to suspect that the man with the big feet had any possible part in the
+mystery. Had Koku suspected this, and had he got his hands on the spy,
+the latter could never have been successfully used in that sort of work
+again. In all probability he would have said that he had had enough.
+
+Meanwhile Tom made a point of considering each step he took alone
+thereafter with particular care. He had a bodyguard--usually the giant
+after the latter had recovered--between the works and the house. He did
+not bring home any more the schedules or drawings connected with the
+electric locomotive that he proposed to have built and to test inside
+the stockade of the Swift Construction Company.
+
+He even put a private detective to work on the matter of finding a man
+named Andy O'Malley who might be lurking around Shopton. He had a
+pretty clear description of the fellow, for he had not only seen him
+once, face to face by daylight, but Tom had written to the president of
+the H. & P. A. and had got from that gentleman a clear picture in words
+of the spy whom Mr. Bartholomew believed was working in the interests
+of Montagne Lewis.
+
+"If O'Malley appears in Shopton, look out. He is a bad character. He is
+not only a notorious gunman, with several warrants out for him in these
+parts, but he is a cruel and desperate man in any event. The minute you
+mark him, have him arrested and telegraph me. We'll get him extradited
+and put him through for ten years or more right in this county." The
+private investigator, however, as the weeks went by, could not find any
+man who filled O'Malley's description.
+
+Meanwhile Tom Swift had got what he called "a lead" and was working day
+and night upon the invention that he believed might make even the
+Jandel people respectful, if not a bit envious.
+
+First of all Tom had arranged to have built all around inside the
+stockade a track of rails heavy enough to stand the wear and tear of
+the heaviest locomotive built. Meanwhile the various parts of his
+locomotive were being built in several shops, but would be shipped to
+the Swift Construction Company and assembled in Tom's try-out shed.
+
+Great secrecy was of course maintained. Aside from the fact that the
+new invention had something to do with electric motive power, nobody
+about the shops could say what the new industry portended. Save, of
+course, the Swifts themselves, Ned Newton, and Mr. Damon, who was the
+Swifts' closest friend and sometimes had furnished additional capital
+for Tom's experiments.
+
+There was a thing that Mr. Damon furnished Tom at this time that proved
+in the end to be of much importance. Before Tom had seized upon this
+idea of his eccentric friend, and had made proper use of it, something
+happened that came near to wrecking utterly Tom's invention and
+completely putting an end to Tom himself as an inventor.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+A Strange Conversation
+
+
+Mr. Wakefield Damon frequently came to the shops, for he was not alone
+very friendly with the Swifts, but he was greatly interested in Tom's
+new invention.
+
+"If it goes as good as what you did for my chicken run," he declared,
+chuckling, "bless my dampers! you'll beat all the electric locomotives
+in the market."
+
+"That is easy, perhaps," said Tom smiling. "There are not many in the
+market at the present time. But I don't know what mine will be. This is
+going to be some job."
+
+"Bless my flues and clinkers!" cried Mr. Damon, "you are not losing
+hope, Tom Swift? Look what you did for my chicken run. And believe me,
+that entanglement will give a shock that makes a man stand right up and
+shake."
+
+"Have you tried it yourself?" asked Tom.
+
+"No. But my servant did. I saw him through the window of my study doing
+some kind of a shimmy with the shovel. Thought he'd gone crazy. Then I
+saw what he had done. It was early in the morning and I hadn't turned
+the current off, and he had put one hand against the wires. When he
+dropped the shovel as I told him to, bless my plyers and nippers! he
+was all right."
+
+"The current would not seriously hurt him," said Tom. "I was careful
+about that."
+
+"It killed two tomcats," said Mr. Damon. "I certainly was glad of that,
+for those two ash-barrel cats kept the whole neighborhood awake. Bless
+my claws and whiskers! how those two cats did use to yell. But when one
+tried to climb the wires and the other sprang on him, it was all over!
+That is, all over but the burial party."
+
+Mr. Damon was on the ground when the mechanical equipment and a part of
+the electrical equipment of the new locomotive arrived and was set up
+in the erection shed. The length of the machine was what first
+impressed Ned Newton as well as Mr. Damon.
+
+"Bless my yardstick!" exclaimed the eccentric man, "it's as long as a
+gossip's tongue. What a monster it will be!"
+
+"How long is it, Tom?" asked Ned Newton.
+
+"When completed, and standing on its drivers and bogie truck and
+trailer truck, from cow-catcher to rear bumper it will be a few inches
+over ninety feet. And that is slightly longer than the biggest electric
+locomotive so far built. But length does not so much enter into the
+value of the machine. I would have it built more compactly if I could."
+
+"What is the horsepower?" asked Mr. Damon.
+
+"I figure on forty-four hundred horsepower. The power must be received
+from a three thousand-volt direct-current trolley.  There are twelve
+driving-wheels, as you can see. Each pair of drivers will be driven by
+a twin-motor geared to the axles through a system of flexible spring
+drive. Remember, I have got to obtain both speed as well as power in
+this locomotive, for it is being built to pull a passenger train--a
+fast cross-continent express--to compete with the best passenger
+equipment in the country."
+
+"Bless my combination ticket!" murmured Mr. Damon. "You have picked out
+some task, and no mistake, Tom Swift."
+
+"He'll do it," cried Ned, with his usual optimism when Tom had once
+started on any experimental work. "Of course he will. Just as she
+stands there now, only half put together, I would be willing to bet a
+farm that she is a better locomotive than the Jandel patent."
+
+"Three cheers!" laughed Tom. "Ned is as enthusiastic as usual.  But
+believe me, friends, we are not going to turn out a better locomotive
+than the Jandel without both thought and work."
+
+His friends' enthusiasm was heartening, however. No doubt of that. He
+never let them into his experiment room, any more than he allowed his
+workmen in there. Aside from his own father, nobody really knew what
+Tom Swift was doing behind that always-locked door.
+
+The huge structure of the locomotive was set up on the driving wheels
+and leading and trailing trucks by Tom's chief foreman and a picked
+crew. Just such another locomotive had never been seen anywhere about
+Shopton. Naturally the men at work on the monster began to speak of it
+outside the works.
+
+Not that they betrayed any secrets regarding the locomotive. In fact,
+as yet none of them knew anything about what Tom intended to do with
+the big machine. But the story soon circulated that Tom Swift, the
+young inventor, was about to show all the previous builders of electric
+locomotives how such machines should be built.
+
+It was even whispered that Tom's objective was a two-mile-a-minute
+locomotive. And when this was publicly known the information was not
+long in seeping to the ears of certain men who had been keeping as
+close a watch as they dared on the Swift Construction Company and the
+activities of Tom himself.
+
+Ned Newton went to the bank one Friday for money for the payroll of the
+working and clerical force of the Swift Company.  It was an errand he
+never relegated to any employee.
+
+Ned had once worked himself in the bank, and naturally he knew many of
+its employees as well as the officials. With his back to the general
+waiting room, he sat at the vice president's desk discussing some minor
+matter. Only a railing divided the vice president's enclosure from the
+long settee on which waiting customers of the bank were seated.
+
+Ned knew that there were two men directly behind him, whispering
+together; but he paid no attention to them until he heard this phrase:
+
+"It's time to explode in just five hours; then good-night to that
+invention, whatever it is."
+
+This statement might mean almost anything--or nothing.  Ordinarily Ned
+Newton might not have paid any consideration to the words. But
+"invention" was a term that he could not overlook. His mind then was
+fixed upon Tom's invention almost as closely as the mind of the young
+inventor himself.
+
+Ned turned around slowly, as though idly, indeed, and tried to see the
+faces of the two men behind him. One was a small, neatly dressed man of
+professional appearance. He wore a Vandyke beard and eyeglasses. The
+other's face Ned could not see; but as they both rose just then and
+strolled toward the door of the bank he could observe that the fellow
+was big and burly.
+
+Ned wheeled to his friend, the vice president, and asked:
+
+"Who are those men, Mr. Stanley? Do you know them?"
+
+The pair were just going out through the revolving door. The vice
+president craned his neck for a look at them.
+
+"Don't know the small man, Ned. But the other is named O'Malley, I
+believe. Somebody introduced him here and he gets a check cashed
+occasionally. Not a customer of the bank."
+
+At that moment the name "O'Malley" did not mean anything to Ned Newton.
+But he bade his friend good-bye and went out after the two men. They
+had disappeared.
+
+Rad was in the electric runabout, waiting for him. The words spoken by
+O'Malley (Ned thought it must have been he who spoke of the invention
+because of his deep voice) continued to disturb Ned's thought.
+
+"Rad," he said, as he got into the runabout, "did you ever hear the
+name O'Malley?"
+
+"Sure has," declared the colored man. "And it's a bad name and a bad
+man owns it."
+
+"Do you mean that?" exclaimed the financial manager of the Swift
+Construction Company, with increasing apprehension. "Who is he?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Newton, don't you 'member dat man?"
+
+"Who is he?" repeated Ned.
+
+"Dat Andy O'Malley is de one what tried to hold up Massa Tom dat time.
+O'Malley is de man what's been spyin' on Massa Tom--"
+
+"Great grief!" exclaimed Ned, breaking in with excitement.  "I'll drive
+as fast as I can, Rad. There is something wrong at the works, I do
+believe!"
+
+"What's wrong, Mr. Ned?" demanded Rad. "We just come from dere, and
+everyt'ing was all right."
+
+"I just heard something that O'Malley said. I want to get back in a
+hurry. I believe that scoundrel is attempting to blow up Tom's
+locomotive. We've got to get to the works just as quick as we can."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+Touch and Go
+
+
+The mechanical equipment of the new locomotive was now complete and Tom
+was establishing the electrical equipment as rapidly as possible. He
+not only acted as overseer of this work, but in overalls and jumper he
+was doing a good share of the work himself.
+
+The weight of the electrical equipment when it was finally set up was
+not far from two hundred thousand pounds. Altogether, when the oil,
+sand, and water tanks were filled, the great machine would weigh two
+hundred and eighty-five tons--a monster indeed!
+
+"She is going to take a lot of current to run her," said Tom to his
+father, who was standing by. "When I come to arrange with the Shopton
+Electric Company for power, it's a question if they can give me all I
+need. And I must have plenty of current to make sure that my motors
+fill the bill."
+
+"As your tests will be made in the daytime, the company should be able
+to furnish the power you need," rejoined Mr. Swift. "At night, of
+course, when they must furnish so much light as well as power, it might
+be difficult for them to give you the proper current."
+
+"Forty-four hundred horsepower is a big demand," went on Tom.  "I've
+got to have at least a three-thousand-volt direct-current to feed my
+motors. I will soon have to take up the matter with the Electric
+Company."
+
+The heavy work of setting the electrical parts of the locomotive had
+been finished the day previous, and the track-derrick was removed. Tom
+was engaged in adjusting the more delicate parts of the equipment and
+had merely stepped down from the cab to speak to Mr. Swift.
+
+Now he climbed back into the interior of the great machine which, in a
+general way, looked like a box car. An electric locomotive has not much
+of the appearance of a steam engine. The machinery is all boxed in and
+the entire floor of the locomotive is above even the drivers.
+
+These six pairs of driving wheels were about seventy inches in
+diameter, while the diameter of the leading and following truck-wheels
+was but half that number of inches.
+
+Mr. Swift had turned away from the locomotive when Tom put his head out
+of the door again.
+
+"Do you hear that, father?" he demanded in a puzzled tone.
+
+"Hear what, Tom?" asked the old inventor, looking up.
+
+"That ticking sound? I declare, I'd think it was one of those
+death-watch beetles had got in here. Sounds like a big watch ticking. I
+can't make it out."
+
+"Where is it? What is it?" repeated Mr. Swift. "I hear nothing down
+here on the floor of the shed."
+
+"Well, it gets me," muttered Tom, and disappeared again. In a moment he
+called out: "Say, you fellows! who left his bundle of overalls in here?
+Better take 'em out to be manicured. Whose are these?"
+
+Two or three of the mechanics working near looked up from their tasks.
+Mr. Swift turned back to the door of the cab again.
+
+"What is the matter now, Tom?" he asked, in added curiosity.
+
+"That bundle, Dad."
+
+Tom once more appeared and addressed the workmen: "Whose bundle of
+dirty overalls is this in here? Come and take 'em away. They shouldn't
+have been left here."
+
+"Why, Mr. Tom," said the foreman who was near, "I didn't see any soiled
+overalls in there when I left last evening. Any of you fellows," he
+asked the group of hands, "know anything about any overalls?"
+
+"The bundle is here all right. Pushed back against the third series
+motors. Come up here, one of you fellows--"
+
+Suddenly there was a noise at the end of the shed where the door to the
+offices lay. Two figures burst through from the glass doors and charged
+down the lanes between the lathes and cranes.  Ned Newton led, Rad
+Sampson, his face a mouse-gray with fear, followed.
+
+"Massa Tom! Massa Tom!" shouted the colored man. "Look out fo' de bomb!
+Look out fo' de bomb!"
+
+The foreman sprang toward the high door of the locomotive where Tom
+stood, staring out. The young inventor, quick as his mind usually
+functioned, did not understand at all what Eradicate meant.
+
+"There's something wrong in there, Mr. Tom!" shouted the foreman. "Come
+down, sir, and let me get up there and see what it is."
+
+But Mr. Barton Swift grasped the meaning of what was going on more
+quickly than anybody else. Tom's father, Tom frequently said, had spent
+so many years investigating chemical and mechanical mysteries that he
+saw more clearly and more exactly into and through most problems than
+other people.
+
+His raised voice now cut through the rumble of machinery and all the
+other noises of the shop. Even Rad Sampson's delirious cry was dwarfed
+by Mr. Swift's sharp tone:
+
+"Tom! The ticking of that watch! That means danger!"
+
+The declaration seemed to rip away a curtain from Tom's thoughts.
+Perhaps Rad's cry about "de bomb" aided the young inventor to
+understand the peril that threatened.
+
+The faint ticking sound that had begun to annoy him during the past few
+minutes betrayed the nature of the threatening peril.  Tom swung back
+from the open doorway of the locomotive cab, reached in to the space
+between the motors, and seized the bundle of overall stuff that he had
+previously spied.
+
+He knew instantly that the rapid ticking came from that bundle.  It
+could be nothing but a time bomb. He had heard of such things and,
+indeed, had seen one before, an infernal machine which, set like an
+alarm clock, would go off at a certain time. That indicated time might
+be an hour hence, or might be within a few seconds! Ned Newton, almost
+at the spot, shouted to Tom when the latter reappeared with the bundle
+in his hands:
+
+"Get down out of that, Tom Swift! Quick! For your life!"
+
+But Tom was cool enough now. He saw his father's white, strained face
+at one side and the young inventor could even smile at him. Behind the
+foreman was set a barrel of water in which tools were cooled and
+tempered.
+
+"Stoop, McAvoy!" Tom shouted, and tossed the bundle from him.
+
+Had the infernal machine exploded in midair Tom would not have been
+surprised. But McAvoy dodged, Rad clapped his hands over his ears, and,
+even Ned Newton halted like a bird-dog at point.
+
+The bundle splashed into the barrel of water. It sank to the bottom.
+There was no explosion. When a few seconds had passed the group of
+excited men began to relax. The barrel was carried carefully to a
+neighboring field.
+
+"Fo' de lawsy sake!" gasped Rad, and got a full breath again.
+
+"That was touch and go, sure enough," muttered Ned Newton.
+
+"Those overalls sure went to the wash, Boss," declared the foreman.
+"What was in 'em? And who put 'em in the cab up there?"
+
+But Tom dropped down the ladder and went to his father. Their hands
+sought each other and gripped, hard.
+
+"Better not tell Mary about this," whispered Tom. "She's worried enough
+as it is."
+
+"Right, Tom," agreed the old inventor. "From this time on we cannot be
+too careful. If there proves to be an infernal machine in that package
+we may be sure that we are dealing with desperate men. We've got to
+keep our eyes open."
+
+"Wide open," added Ned.
+
+"I'll say we have," said Tom.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+The Try-Out Day Arrives
+
+
+It did not need Ned Newton's story of what he had overheard at the bank
+to prove that an attempt had been made to blow to pieces Tom Swift's
+electric locomotive before even it had been tested.
+
+An examination of the water-soaked package in the open yard of the
+shops of the Swift Construction Company, proved that there was enough
+explosive in the bomb to blow the shed itself to pieces. But the
+stopping of the clockwork attachment of course made the bomb harmless.
+
+"The main thing to be explained," Tom said, when he and his father and
+Ned discussed the particulars of the affair, "is not who did it, or
+what it was done for. Those are comparatively easy questions to answer."
+
+"Yes," agreed Ned. "O'Malley did it, or caused it to be done; and it
+was an attempt to balk Mr. Bartholomew and the H, & P. A.  rather than
+a direct attack upon the Swift Construction Company."
+
+"I am afraid, however," remarked Mr. Swift, "that Tom has aroused the
+personal antagonism of this spy from the West. We must not overlook
+that."
+
+"I don't," replied the young inventor. "O'Malley has it in for me. No
+doubt of that. But he could not be sure that I would be hurt by the
+explosion he arranged for."
+
+"True," said his father.
+
+"The attempt was against my invention. And O'Malley was doubtless urged
+to destroy the locomotive that I am building because my success will
+aid Mr. Bartholomew and his railroad."
+
+"Quite agreed," said Ned. "But--"
+
+"But the important question," interrupted Tom, "is this: How did the
+bomb get into the interior of the electric locomotive?  That is the
+first and most important problem. Its having been done once warns us
+that it can be done again until our system of guarding the works is
+changed."
+
+"We have five watchmen on the job at night, and the gates are never
+opened in the daytime to anybody for any purpose without a pass,"
+declared Ned. "I don't see how that fellow got in here with the time
+bomb."
+
+"Exactly. It shows that there is a fault in our system somewhere," said
+Tom grimly. "We cannot surround the place at night with an armed guard.
+It would cost too much. Even Koku cannot be everywhere. And I have
+reason to know that he was wandering about the stockade last night as
+usual."
+
+"The fellow was pretty sharp to slip by," Ned observed.
+
+"The stockade is no mean barrier, especially with the rows of barbed
+wire at the top," said Mr. Swift.
+
+"Barbed wire! That's it!" exclaimed Tom. It was just here that Mr.
+Damon's idea for guarding his prize buff Orpingtons came into play in
+Tom's scheme of things. "Barbed wire doesn't seem to keep out spies,"
+he added slowly. "But believe me, something else will!"
+
+For Tom to think of a thing was to start action without delay.
+Immediately he called a gang from the shops and set them to work
+stringing copper wire along the top of the stockade.
+
+He was sure that the man who had set the time bomb in place had got
+into the enclosure over the fence. If he tried the same trick again he
+was very apt to have the surprise of his life!
+
+Each night when the shops closed and the watchmen went on duty, a
+current of electricity was turned into those copper wires entwined with
+the barbed wire entanglement at the top of the stockade that would
+certainly double up any marauder who sought to get over the top.
+
+However, no further attempt was made against Tom's peace of mind and
+against his invention during the immediate weeks that followed. The
+young inventor was so closely engaged in his work that he scarcely left
+the house or the confines of the shops.  Even Mary Nestor saw very
+little of him.
+
+But Mary realized fully that at such a time as this Tom must give all
+his thought and energy to the task in hand. She was proud of Tom's
+ability and took a deep interest in his inventions.
+
+"I want to see the test when you try the locomotive, Tom," she told
+him, when she came to the shops the first time to look at the monster
+locomotive. "What a wonderful thing it is!"
+
+"Its wonder is yet to be proved," rejoined the young inventor.  "I
+believe I've got the right idea; but nothing is sure as yet."
+
+In addition to his mechanical contrivances inside the locomotive, Tom
+had to arrange for an increased supply of electric power to drive the
+huge machine around the track that was being built inside the stockade.
+
+A regular station had to be built for receiving the electricity in a
+100,000-volt alternating current and delivering it to the locomotive in
+a 3,000-volt direct current. Therefore, this station had two functions
+to perform--reducing the voltage and changing the current from
+alternating to direct.
+
+The reduction of the voltage was accomplished as follows: The
+100,000-volt alternating current was received through an oil switch and
+was conveyed to a high-tension current distributor made up of three
+lines of copper tubing, thus forming the source of power for this
+station.
+
+From the current distributor the current was conducted through other
+oil switches to the transformers--entering at 100,000 volts and
+emerging at 2,300 volts. Then the current was conducted from the
+transformers through switches to the motor-generator sets and became
+the power employed to operate them.
+
+The motor generator consisted of one alternating current motor driving
+two direct current generators. The motor Tom established in his station
+was of the 60-cycle synchronous type, which means that the current
+changes sixty times each second.
+
+There were two sets, each generating a 1,500 or 2,000 volt direct
+current; and the two generators being permanently connected, delivered
+a combined direct current of 3,000 volts--as high a direct voltage
+current, Tom knew, as had ever been adopted for railroad work. The
+current voltage for ordinary street railway work is 550 volts.
+
+"I could run even this big machine," Tom explained to Ned Newton, "with
+a much lighter current. But out there on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
+line the transforming stations deliver this high voltage to the
+locomotives. I want to test mine under similar conditions."
+
+"This is going to be an expensive test, Tom," said Ned, grumbling a
+little. "The cost-sheets are running high."
+
+"We are aiming at a big target," returned the inventor. "You've got to
+bait with something bigger than sprats to catch a whale, Ned."
+
+"Humph! Suppose you don't catch the whale after all?"
+
+"Don't lose hope," returned Tom, calmly. "I am going after this whale
+right, believe me! This is one of the biggest contracts--if not the
+very biggest--we ever tackled."
+
+"It looks as if the expense account would run the highest," admitted
+the financial manager.
+
+"All right. Maybe that is so. But I'll spend the last cent I've got to
+perfect this patent. I am going to beat the Jandels if it is humanly
+possible to do so."
+
+"I can only hope you will, Tom. Why, this track and the overhead
+trolley equipment is going to cost a small fortune. I had no idea when
+you signed that contract with Mr. Bartholomew that so much money would
+have to be spent in merely the experimental stage of the thing."
+
+Ned Newton possessed traits of caution that could not be gainsaid. That
+was one thing that made him such a successful financial manager for the
+Swift Company. He watched expenditures as closely now as he had when
+the business was upon a much more limited footing.
+
+The rails laid along the inside of the stockade made a two-mile track,
+as well ballasted as any regular railroad right of way. In addition the
+overhead equipment was costly.
+
+To eliminate any possibility of the trolley wire breaking, a strong
+steel cable, called a catenary, was slung just above the trolley wire.
+To this catenary the trolley wire was suspended by hangers at short
+intervals.
+
+These cables were strung from brackets so that a single row of poles
+could be used, save at the curves, at which cross-span construction was
+used. The trolley wire itself was of the 4/0 size, and was the largest
+diameter copper wire ever employed for railroad purposes.
+
+Several weeks had now passed since the great locomotive had been
+assembled in the erection shed and the cab of the locomotive completed.
+It really was a monster machine, and any stranger coming into the place
+and seeing it for the first time must have marveled at the grim power
+suggested by the mere bulk of the structure.
+
+When the day of the first test arrived Tom allowed only his most
+intimate friends to be present. Mary Nestor accompanied Mr. Swift into
+the shops at the time appointed, and she was as excited over the
+outcome of the test as Tom himself.
+
+Ned Newton and the mechanical force of the shops knocked off work to
+become spectators at the exhibition.  The only other outsider was Mr.
+Damon.
+
+"Bless my alternating current!" cried the eccentric gentleman.  "I
+would not miss this for the world. If you tried to shut me out, Tom,
+I'd climb over the stockade to get in."
+
+"You'd better not," Tom told him, dryly. "If you tried that you'd get a
+worse shock than any chicken thief will get that tries to steal your
+buff Orpingtons."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Hopes and Fears
+
+
+Tom climbed into the huge cab of the electric locomotive. In fact, the
+cab was the most of it, for every part of the mechanism save the
+drivers was covered by the eighty-odd foot structure.  From the peak of
+the pilot to the rear bumper the length was ninety feet and some inches.
+
+As Tom slid the monster out upon the yard track the small crowd
+cheered. At least, the locomotive had the power to move, and to the
+unknowing ones, at least, that seemed a great and wonderful thing.
+
+What they saw was apparently a box-car--like a mail coach, only with
+more high windows--ten feet wide, its roof more than fourteen feet from
+the rails, its locked pantagraph adding two feet more to its height.
+
+Just what was in the cab--the water and oil tanks, the steam-heating
+boiler to supply heat and hot water to the train the monster was to
+draw, the motors and the many other mechanical contrivances--was hidden
+from the spectators.
+
+In fact, since completing the electrical equipment of the Hercules
+0001, as Tom had named the locomotive, the young inventor had allowed
+nobody inside the cab, any more than he allowed visitors inside his
+private workshop. Even Mr. Swift did not know all the results of Tom's
+experimental work. In a general way the older inventor knew the trend
+of his son's attempts, but the details and the results of Tom's
+experiments, the latter told to nobody.
+
+But as the huge locomotive rolled into the yard and followed the more
+or less circular track inside the yard fence, it was plain to all of
+the onlookers that the motive-power was there all right! Just what
+speed could be coaxed from the feed-cable overhead was another question.
+
+Nor did Tom Swift try for much speed on this first test of the Hercules
+0001. He went around the two-mile track several times before bringing
+his machine to a stop near the crowd of onlookers. He came to the open
+door of the cab.
+
+"One thing is sure, Tom!" shouted Ned. "It do move!"
+
+"Bless my slippery skates!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "it slides right
+along, Tom. You've done it, my boy--you've done it!"
+
+"It looks good from where I stand, my son," said Mr. Barton Swift.
+
+It was Mary who suspected that Tom was not wholly satisfied--as yet, at
+least--with the test of the Hercules 0001. She cried:
+
+"Tom! is it all right?"
+
+"Nothing is ever all right--that is, not perfect--in this old world, I
+guess, Mary," returned the young inventor. "But I am not discouraged.
+As Ned says, the old contraption 'do move.' How fast she'll move is
+another thing."
+
+"What time did you make?" asked Mr. Swift.
+
+"Not above fifteen miles an hour."
+
+"Whew!" whistled Ned dolefully. "That is a long way from--"
+
+Tom made an instant motion and Ned's careless lips were sealed.  It was
+not generally known among the men the speed which Tom hoped to obtain
+with his new invention.
+
+"It is a wide shoot at the target, that is true," Tom said, soberly.
+"But remember I cannot test it for speed on this short and almost
+circular track. Right at the start, however, I see that something about
+the power-feed must be changed."
+
+"What is that?" asked Mary, curiously.
+
+"I have only had rigged here one trolley wire. There must be two
+attached alternately to the catenary cable. Such a form of twin
+conductor trolley will permit the collection of a heavy current through
+the twin contact of the pantagraph with the two trolley wires, and
+should assure a sparkless collection of the current at any speed. You
+noticed that when I took the sharper curves there was an aerial
+exhibition. I want to do away with the fireworks."
+
+The fact that the Hercules 0001 was a going and apparently powerful
+draught engine satisfied most of the onlookers that Tom Swift was on
+the road to final and overwhelming success. The mechanics, indeed, saw
+no reason why the locomotive could not be run right out of the yard on
+the freight track and coupled to the first train going West. Of course,
+the Hercules 0001 could not be delivered to the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
+under its own power.
+
+When the locomotive was run back into the shed and stood once more on
+the erection track, Tom confessed to Mary and Ned, while Mr. Damon and
+Mr. Swift were looking through the huge cab, that he was not at all
+pleased with the action of the machine.
+
+"I have the best equipment of any electric locomotive on the rails
+today. I am sure of that," he said. "The Hercules Three-Oughts-One is
+not as long as those electric locomotives of the C. M. &. St. P. But
+that's all right. I have built mine more compactly and, properly
+geared, it should have all the power of either the Baldwin-Westinghouse
+or the Jandel locomotive."
+
+"Then, Tom dear, what is wrong?" cried Mary.
+
+"Speed. That is what troubles me. Have I got anything like the speed I
+am aiming for?"
+
+"Two miles a minute!" breathed Ned Newton. "Some speed, boy!"
+
+"And must you have such great speed, Tom?" repeated Mary.
+
+"That is in my contract. Not only that, but to be of much use to the H.
+& P. A. this locomotive must have such speed--or mighty near it. Of
+course, under ordinary conditions, two miles a minute for a locomotive
+and train of heavy freights would burn up the track--maybe melt the
+flanges and throw everything out of gear."
+
+"Why try for it, then?" demanded Mary.
+
+"It is the power suggested by the possession of such speed that we want
+in the Hercules Three-Oughts-One. That two miles a minute is a fiction
+of the imagination, cannot be claimed. It is possible. It is humanly
+possible. It is coming."
+
+"Then you must be the fellow to first accomplish it, Tom Swift," Ned
+declared.
+
+"Of course, if anybody can do it, you can, Tom," agreed the girl
+complacently.
+
+"Thanks--many, many thanks," laughed the young inventor. "I'd be able
+to harness the sun and stars, and put a surcingle around the moon if I
+came up to my friends' opinion of my ability.
+
+"Nevertheless, two-miles-a-minute is my objective point, and I do not
+believe it is visionary. Consider the motor-cycle. Ninety miles an hour
+has long been possible with that, and some tests have shown a speed of
+over a hundred and ten. That is not far from my mark.
+
+"Some Mallet locomotives of the oil-burning type have achieved from
+eighty-five to ninety-five miles an hour with a heavy load behind them.
+They are very powerful machines. The Mogul mountain climbers are
+powerful, too, although they are not built for speed.
+
+"The electric Goliaths built for the C. M. & St. P., and the Jandels,
+are both very speedy under certain conditions. The former has a maximum
+speed of sixty-five miles and the Jandel slightly faster."
+
+"But that is only half what that Mr. Bartholomew demands of your
+invention, Tom!" Mary cried.
+
+"That is a fact. I must reach twice sixty miles an hour, anyway, to
+meet his demand and gain that hundred thousand bonus.  But I have the
+advantage of a knowledge of all that has been done before my time in
+the matter of electrical locomotive construction."
+
+"The world do move," repeated Ned. "You believe that you have the edge
+on all the other inventors?"
+
+"Along the line of this development--yes," said Tom. "I am taking up
+the work where former experimenters ended theirs. Why shouldn't I find
+the right combination to bring about a two-miles-a-minute drive?"
+
+"Oh, Tom!" cried Mary, with clasped hands, "I hope you do."
+
+"I hope I do, too," said Tom, grimly. "At least, if trying will bring
+it, success is going to come my way."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+Speed
+
+
+More than four months had passed since the contract had been signed,
+when Tom made his first yard-test of the Hercules 0001.  For a month
+nothing had been seen or heard of Andy O'Malley, whose identity as the
+spy, set by Montagne Lewis to cripple Tom's attempt to help the
+Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad, had been determined beyond any doubt.
+
+The private inquiry agent that Tom had engaged to find O'Malley had
+been unsuccessful in his work. The spy had disappeared from Shopton and
+the vicinity. Nevertheless, the inventor did not for a moment overlook
+the possibility that the enemy might again strike.
+
+Every night the electric current was turned into the wires that capped
+the stockade of the Swift Construction Company enclosure.  Koku beat a
+path around the enclosure at night, getting such short sleep as he
+seemed to need in the forenoon.
+
+"Dat crazy cannibal," grumbled Rad, "got it in his haid dat he's gwine
+to he'p Massa Tom by walkin' out o' nights like he was dis here
+Western, de great sprinter, Ma lawsy me! Koku ain't got brains enough
+to fill up a hic'ry nut shell. Dat he ain't."
+
+Nothing anybody else could do for Tom ever satisfied Rad. The colored
+man fully believed that he was the only person really necessary for
+Tom's success and peace of mind. In fact, Rad thought that even Ned
+Newton's duties as financial manager of the firm were scarcely of as
+much importance.
+
+When he heard that Tom was going West, after a time, with the electric
+locomotive, to try it out on the tracks of the H. & P. A., Rad was
+quite sure that if he did not go along, the test would not come out
+right.
+
+"O' course yo'll need me, Massa Tom," he said, confidently.  "Couldn't
+git along widout me nohow. Yo' knows, sir, I allus has to go 'long wid
+yo' to fix things."
+
+"Don't you think father will need you here, Rad?" Tom asked the
+faithful old fellow. "You're getting old--"
+
+"Me gittin' old?" cried, the colored man. "Huh! Yo' don't know 'bout
+dis here chile. I don't purpose ever to git old. I been gray-haided
+since befo' yo' was born; but I ain't old yit!"
+
+Mr. Damon chanced to be present at this conversation, and he was highly
+amused, yet somewhat impressed, too, by the colored man's statement.
+
+"Bless my own antiquity!" he exclaimed. "I agree with Rad, Tom.  It's
+us old fellows who know what to do when an emergency of any kind
+arises. Experience teaches more than inspiration."
+
+"Oh," said Tom, laughing, "I do not deny the value of old friends at
+any stage of the game."
+
+"Bless my roving nature! I am glad to hear you say that. For I tell you
+right now, Tom, I want to be out there when you make your final test of
+the locomotive."
+
+"Do you mean that you will go West when I take out the Hercules
+Three-Oughts-One?" cried Tom.
+
+"It's just what I want to do. Bless my traveling bag, Tom! I mean to be
+present at your final triumph."
+
+"What will happen to your buff Orpingtons while you are gone?" asked
+the young inventor, gravely.
+
+"I have got my servant trained to look after those chickens," declared
+Mr. Damon. "And this invention of yours is really more important than
+even my buff Orpingtons."
+
+"Just the same," remarked Tom to his eccentric friend, when Rad had
+left the room. "I've got to fix it so that Eradicate stays at home with
+father. He doesn't really know how old and broken he is--poor fellow."
+
+"His heart is green, Tom. That's what is the matter with Rad."
+
+"He is a loyal old fellow. But I shall take Koku with me, not Rad," and
+the young inventor spoke decidedly. "And that is going to trouble poor
+Rad a lot."
+
+The prospect of going West, however, was not the main subject of Tom's
+thoughts at this time. As the weeks passed and the end of the six
+months of experiment came nearer, the inventor was more and more
+troubled by the principal difficulty which had from the first
+confronted him. Speed.
+
+That was the mark he had set himself. A maximum speed of two miles a
+minute on a level track for the Hercules 0001. With the speed already
+attained by both steam and electric locomotives in the more recent
+past, this was by no means an impossible attainment, as Tom quite well
+knew.
+
+But he became convinced that the conditions under which he labored made
+it impossible for him to be positive of just how great a speed on a
+straight, level track his invention would attain.
+
+There was no electrified stretch of railroad near Shopton on which the
+Hercules 0001 might be tested. The track inside the Swift Company's
+enclosure did not offer the conditions the inventor needed. He felt
+balked.
+
+"I believe I have hit the right idea in my improvements on the Jandel
+patents," he told Ned Newton when they were discussing the matter. "But
+believing is one thing. Knowing is another!"
+
+"Theoretically it works out all right, I suppose?" questioned Ned.
+
+"Quite. I can prove on paper that I've got the speed. But that isn't
+enough. You can see that."
+
+"Impossible to be sure on the trackage already built here, Tom?"
+
+"I haven't dared give her all she'll take," grumbled Tom. "If I did, I
+fear she'd jump the rails and I'd have a wreck on my hands."
+
+"And maybe kill yourself!" exclaimed Ned. "You want to have a care."
+
+"Oh, that's all right! I've taken risks before. I don't want to risk
+the safety of the locomotive, which is more important. That machine has
+cost us a lot of money."
+
+"I'll say so!" agreed Ned. "You'll have to wait till you can get the
+locomotive out there on the H. & P. A. tracks before you get a fair
+speed-test."
+
+"And suppose instead of a triumph it is a fiasco?" Tom said,
+doubtfully. "I tell you straight, Ned: I never was so uncertain about
+the outcome of one of my inventions since I began dabbling with
+motive-power."
+
+"We could build several miles of straight track in the waste ground
+behind the works," Ned said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Not a chance! There is neither time nor money for such work.  Besides,
+I should have to rebuild my transforming station if I supplied longer
+conduit wires with current."
+
+"You don't really consider that you have failed, do you, Tom?" and
+Ned's anxiety made his voice sound very woeful indeed.
+
+"I tell you that my belief doesn't satisfy me. I hate to go West
+without being sure--positive. I want to know! I have tried the
+locomotive out in the yard half a dozen times. It runs like a fine
+watch. There doesn't seem to be a thing the matter with it now. But
+what speed can I attain?"
+
+"I don't see but you'll have to risk it, Tom."
+
+"I mean to give her one more test. I'll run her out tonight when there
+is nobody about but the watchmen--and you, if you want to come. I'll
+arrange with the Electric Company for all the current they can spare.
+By ginger! I've got to take some risk."
+
+"By the way, Tom," said his chum, "did it ever strike you as odd that
+that private detective agency never got any trace of O'Malley?"
+
+"Well, he's gone away. We needn't worry about him. Maybe the detective
+wasn't very smart, at that."
+
+"And yet he was here in town after you put the inquiry on foot.  I saw
+him in the bank. He came there occasionally. And either he, or somebody
+he hired, placed that bomb in the locomotive."
+
+"All those being facts, what of it?"
+
+"Besides, there was that other fellow--the man with the Vandyke beard.
+Might be a shyster lawyer, or something of the kind. He wasn't spotted,
+either."
+
+"To tell the truth, I didn't bother to give the Detective Agency the
+description of that fellow, although you gave it to me," and Tom
+laughed. "I must confess that I depend more upon my man-trap electric
+wires to protect the invention than I do on the private inquiry agent."
+
+"It's funny, just the same. If I had another job for a detective I
+should not submit it to the Blatz Agency," grumbled Ned.
+
+"I fancy Montagne Lewis and his crowd called off their Wild West
+gunman," said Tom. "In any case, every attempt he made to bother us
+turned out a fizzle. I am not, however, forgetting precautions, my boy."
+
+Ned Newton realized that his chum had determined to make this night
+test of the electric locomotive the pivotal trial of the whole affair.
+He came back to the works after dinner and was let in by the office
+watchman at about nine o'clock.
+
+"Mr. Tom here yet?" he asked the man.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Newton. The young boss didn't go home to supper, even. That
+colored man brought something down for him, and he's in the shed yet."
+
+"Rad is here, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, sir. At least, he didn't go out this way, and we watchmen have
+instructions to let nobody in or out by the yard gates at night."
+
+"I'll say Tom is being careful," thought Ned, as he stepped out through
+the runway toward the erection shed.
+
+Before he reached the entrance to the huge shed, however, Ned chanced
+to look down the enclosure. There were several arc lights burning, but
+even these only furnished a dim illumination for the whole yard.
+
+He supposed that four watchmen were tramping their several beats along
+the inside of the stockade and close to the trolley-track. But when he
+saw an instant gleam of light down there, close to the ground, Ned did
+not believe that it was the flash of a torch in the hand of any sentry.
+
+"Funny," he muttered. "That's outside the fence, or I'm much mistaken.
+I wonder now--"
+
+He turned from the door of the shed, left the runway, and began walking
+toward the distant point at which he had seen the mysterious flash of
+light.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+The Enemy Still Active
+
+
+Ned was dressed in a dark business suit, so he was not likely to be
+observed from a distance, for it was a starless night. Half way to the
+end of the great yard he began to wonder if the light he had seen might
+not have been an hallucination.
+
+He doubted very much if anybody was creeping about outside the fence.
+The boards were close together, with scarcely a crack half an inch wide
+anywhere. A light out there--
+
+It flashed again. He was positive of it this time, and of its locality
+as well. It could be nobody who had any honest business about the Swift
+Construction Company's premises. It was not Koku, for ordinarily the
+giant would not use an electric torch.
+
+Ned did not know where any of the watchmen were who were acting as
+sentinels. In fact, as it appeared later, three of them had been called
+off their beats by Tom himself to help in some necessary task inside
+the shed. The young inventor was getting ready to run the huge
+locomotive out upon the yard-track.
+
+Remembering vividly the attempt which had been made some weeks before
+to blow up the Hercules 0001, it was only natural that Ned should
+suspect that the flash of light he had seen revealed the presence of
+some ill-conditioned person lurking just beyond the fence.
+
+A man might be crouching there prepared to hurl an explosive bomb over
+the fence when the locomotive was brought around as far as that spot.
+Or was the villain foolish enough to attempt to enter the enclosure by
+surmounting the fence?
+
+Ned, keeping close to the ground, crossed the rails in the fortunate
+shadow of one of the posts. There he found a place where, with his back
+to a pole-prop right at this curve in the trolley system, the shadow
+enfolded him completely.
+
+Had his movements been marked by the person outside the fence?  Ned
+waited several long and anxious minutes for some move from out there.
+Then something rather unexpected occurred. For the past ten minutes he
+had forgotten about the test of the Hercules 0001 which Tom had
+promised.
+
+With a blast of its siren the huge electric locomotive burst out of the
+shed and thundered around the track. It smote Ned Newton's mind
+suddenly that the inventor was going to "take a chance" on this evening
+and try to get some speed out of the huge machine.
+
+The electric headlight cast a broad cone of white and dazzling light
+across the yard. It suddenly struck full upon the spot where Ned Newton
+crouched; but the upright against which he leaned was broad enough to
+hide him completely.
+
+Looking up at the top of the stockade at that moment of illumination,
+the young financial manager of the Swift Construction Company beheld a
+crawling figure nearing the wire entanglements on the summit of the
+fence.
+
+The unknown man was climbing by means of a notched pole. Ned could not
+see that he bore any bulky object in his hands; indeed, he needed both
+of them to aid him to climb. But the man's right hand was reaching
+upward, above his head.
+
+The Hercules 0001 came roaring on. Its cone of light passed beyond
+Ned's station. In a few seconds it reached the spot, and roared on. Ned
+had not made a move. It seemed to him that he could not move or speak.
+
+The onrush of the electric locomotive all but swept the young fellow
+from his feet. It had come and gone in an instant!
+
+"He's making more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour, all right,"
+muttered Ned.
+
+Then he flashed another glance up at the figure outside the fence. The
+man's cap showed above the top of the boards. He seemed to be dragging
+something up to him from below--something that hung and swung around
+and around a few feet from the ground.
+
+Ned was about to dart out of concealment and hail the fellow.  He was
+not armed, nor could he get out of the stockade near this point. He
+feared what the marauder intended, and he felt that he must frighten
+him away.
+
+"Suppose that is a bomb and he means to fling it in front of Tom's
+locomotive?" thought the anxious Ned.
+
+He again saw the stranger's right hand reach up above his head.  But he
+had no bomb in his hand. Ned suddenly shrieked a word of warning! It
+had come to him what the man was doing and what the result of his act
+would be.
+
+The wire-cutters bit on one of the copper wires. There followed a flash
+of blue flame, and the man screamed. He dropped the thing swinging
+below him and involuntarily grabbed at the wires with his left hand.
+
+He was caught, then! The crackling intermittent shocks of electric
+fluid passed through his body in fiery sequence. His limbs writhed. He
+mouthed horribly, and croaking gasps came from between his wide open
+jaws.
+
+The Hercules 0001 had rounded the enclosure and was coming down upon
+its second lap. The cone of white radiance from the headlight fell upon
+the writhing body of the victim on the wires.  The locomotive siren
+emitted a blast that almost deafened Ned.
+
+The monster ground to a stop. Tom swung himself half out of the cab
+window beside the controller.
+
+"Who's that?" he yelled. Then he saw Ned below him. "Who is that
+fellow?"
+
+"No friend of yours, Tom, I believe," returned his financial manager in
+a shaking voice.
+
+"Where's Rad? Rad!" Tom shouted at the top of his voice.
+
+"I's comm', Massa Tom," rejoined the colored man.
+
+"Never mind coming here! Get a move on, and get to the switchboard.
+Turn the current out of the fence wires.
+
+"Yis, sir, I'll go Massa Tom," declared the old man.
+
+"Is he a spotter, Ned?" demanded the inventor.
+
+"He's no friend. I am going out by the gate. He's got something there
+that means harm, I believe. Do you think he's killed, Tom?"
+
+"Only ought to be. Not enough current to kill him. But he's badly
+burned and--and--well! I bet he won't care to fool around the works
+again."
+
+Ned dashed away to an entrance. A watchman came running, opened the
+small gate, and followed Ned into the open.
+
+Before they arrived at the vicinity of the accident Rad had got to the
+switchboard. The electricity was shut out of the stockade wires.
+
+Ned uttered another shout. He saw the writhing body of the shocked man
+fall from the stockade. When he and the watchman got to the spot the
+fellow lay upon his back, groaning and sobbing; but Ned saw at once
+that he was more frightened than hurt.
+
+"Well, you did it that time!" exclaimed the young financial manager.
+"And I hope you got enough."
+
+"You--you demons!" gasped the man. "I'll have the law on you--"
+
+"Sure you will," cackled the watchman. "You had every right in the
+world to try to cut those wires, of course, and get into the yard of
+the works. Sure! The judge will believe you all right."
+
+Ned was, meanwhile, staring closely at the fallen man. Tom had come
+down from the locomotive and was close to the fence.
+
+"Who is he?" demanded the inventor. "Not O'Malley?"
+
+Ned stepped to the fence and whispered:
+
+"It's the other fellow. The little chap with the Vandyke. He's dressed
+like a tramp, but it's the same man."
+
+"Is he badly hurt?" demanded Tom.
+
+"His temper is, Boss," said the watchman callously. "And say! I know
+this fellow. He works for the Blatz Detective Agency. I used to work
+for those folks myself. His name is Myrick--Joe Myrick."
+
+"Ned," said Tom sternly, "go to the office and call the police.  I'll
+make him tell why he was here. And I'll make the Blatz people explain,
+too. Hullo! what's that?"
+
+Ned had seized the rope he had seen in Myrick's hand, and from a patch
+of weeds drew a two-gallon oil-can.
+
+"What you got there, Ned?" repeated the young inventor.
+
+"Whatever it is, I am going to be mighty easy with it. I think this
+scoundrel was trying to get it over the fence and into the way of the
+locomotive."
+
+"You can't hang anything on me," said Myrick, suddenly. "I was just
+climbing up to the top of the fence to get a squint at that contraption
+you've built. You can't hang anything on me."
+
+"He's evidently feeling better," said Tom, scornfully. "Nugent, don't
+let him get away from you. Go call the police, Ned. And take care of
+that can until we can find out what's in it."
+
+Later, when the police had removed Joe Myrick and the mysterious can
+had been deposited in a tub of water in the open lot until its contents
+could be examined, Tom said to his chum:
+
+"I was just working up some speed on the locomotive. The speedometer
+indicated fifty-five when I saw that fellow sprawling up there on the
+fence. I would not have dared go much faster in any case."
+
+"Why, you weren't half trying, Tom!" cried the delighted Ned.
+
+"She did slide around easy, didn't she? Fifty-five on an almost
+circular track is a good showing. I am not so scared as I was, my boy."
+
+"You think that on a straight track you might accomplish what you set
+out to do?"
+
+"It looks like it. At any rate, I shall risk a trial on the H. & P. A.
+tracks. I'm going to take her West. Be ready on Monday, Ned, for I
+shall want you with me," declared Tom Swift.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Off for the West
+
+
+Of course, as Tom supposed they would, the Blatz Detective Agency
+denied that Joe Myrick, their one-time operative, had been engaged
+through their bureau either to spy upon the Swift Construction Company
+or to injure Tom's invention of the electric locomotive.
+
+Nevertheless, three points were indisputable: Myrick had been caught
+spying; in his possession was a can of explosive which could be set off
+by concussion; and it was a fact that to Myrick had been first
+entrusted the matter of hunting for Andy O'Malley when Tom had put the
+search for the Westerner up to the Blatz people.
+
+"He played traitor both to you, Mr. Swift, and to our agency," declared
+Blatz to Tom. "I wash my hands of him. I hope the police send him away
+for life!"
+
+"He'll go to prison all right," said Tom, confidently. "But the main
+point is that one of your operatives fell down on a simple job. I
+wanted that Andy O'Malley traced. He's out of the way, now, of course.
+If you had put an honest man to work for me, O'Malley would be behind
+the bars himself."
+
+"Some doubt of that, Mr. Swift," grumbled Blatz.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Where's your evidence that this O'Malley was connected with the
+attempt to blow up your locomotive the first time? Mr. Newton's
+testimony would need corroboration."
+
+"Never mind that," rejoined the young inventor, with a smile.  "I'd
+have him for highway robbery. I recognized him. He robbed me of a
+wallet. Guess we could put O'Malley away for awhile on that charge. And
+by the time he got out again my job for that Western railroad would be
+completed."
+
+"Humph! Nothing personal in your going after the fellow, then?" queried
+the head of the detective agency.
+
+"No. But I frankly confess that I am afraid of O'Malley. He is
+undoubtedly in the employ of men who will pay him well if he wrecks my
+invention. But there really is no personal grudge between O'Malley and
+me. At least, I feel no particular enmity against the fellow."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"If you say so we will give you a couple of good men as bodyguards on
+your trip West," suggested Blatz, licking his lips hungrily.
+
+"As good men as Myrick?" retorted Tom, rather scornfully. "No, thank
+you. Just make your bill out to the Swift Construction Company to date,
+and a check will be sent you the first of the month. I will take my own
+precautions hereafter."
+
+And those precautions Tom considered sufficient. When the Hercules 0001
+was towed out of the enclosure belonging to the Swift Construction
+Company early on Monday morning, each door and window of the huge cab
+was barred and locked. Inside the cab rode Koku, the giant.
+
+Koku had his orders to allow nobody to enter the Hercules 0001 until
+Tom or Ned Newton came to relieve him of his responsibility as guard.
+The giant had a swinging cot to sleep on and sufficient food--of a
+kind--to last him for a fortnight if necessary.
+
+He was not armed, for Tom did not often trust him with weapons.  The
+young inventor, however, did not expect that any armed force would
+attack the electric locomotive.
+
+If Montagne Lewis desired to wreck the new invention which might mean
+so much to Mr. Bartholomew and the H. & P. A., he surely would not
+allow his hirelings to attack openly the locomotive while it was en
+route.
+
+On the other hand, Tom did not really believe that Andy O'Malley would
+attempt any reprisal against him personally. Of course, the Western
+desperado might feel himself abused by Tom, especially in the matter of
+Tom's use of his ammonia pistol.
+
+But that had happened months ago. O'Malley had undoubtedly been hired
+by Mr. Bartholomew's enemies to obtain knowledge of the contract signed
+between the young inventor and the railroad president; and later it was
+certain that the spy had tried his best to wreck the electric
+locomotive.
+
+As for any personal assault so many weeks after O'Malley had clashed
+with him Tom Swift did not expect it. With Ned in his company on this
+journey to Hendrickton, the young inventor had good reason to consider
+that he was perfectly safe.
+
+Mary Nestor and Mr. Swift came to the station to see the two young men
+off on Monday evening. Mary had heard about the second attempt made to
+blow up the Hercules 0001 and she begged Tom to take every precaution
+while he was in the West.
+
+"You will be in the enemy's country out there, Tom dear," she warned
+him. "You won't be careless?"
+
+"I know I shall be mighty busy," he told her, laughing. "I'll let Ned
+play watch-dog. And you know, his is a cautious soul, Mary."
+
+"I've every confidence in Ned's faithfulness," the girl said, still
+with anxious tone. "But those men who are trying to ruin Mr.
+Bartholomew's road will stop at nothing. I must hear from you
+frequently, Tom, or I shall worry myself ill."
+
+"Don't lose your courage, Mary," rejoined the inventor, more gravely.
+"I do not think they will attack me personally again.  Remember that
+Koku is on the job, as well as Ned. And Mr. Damon declares he will
+follow us West very shortly," and again Tom chuckled.
+
+"Even Mr. Damon may be a help to you, Tom," declared Mary, warmly. "At
+least, he is completely devoted to you."
+
+"So is Rad Sampson," said Tom, with a little grimace. "I certainly had
+my hands full convincing him that father needed him here at home. At
+that, Rad is pretty warm over the fact that I sent Koku on with the
+locomotive. If anything should chance to happen to my invention,
+Eradicate Sampson is going to shout 'I told you so!' all over the shop."
+
+Mary dabbed her eyes a little with her handkerchief, and Tom patted her
+shoulder.
+
+"Don't worry, Mary," he said more cheerfully. "There won't a thing
+happen to me out there at Hendrickton. I'll keep the wires hot with
+telegrams. And I'll write to both you and father, and give you the full
+particulars of how we get along. You'll keep your eye on father, Mary,
+won't you?"
+
+"You may be sure of that," said the girl. "I will not leave him
+entirely to the care of Rad," and she tried hard to smile again.  But
+it was a difficult matter.
+
+Such a parting as this is always hard to endure. Tom wrung his father's
+hand and warned him to be careful of his health. The train came along
+and the two young men boarded it with their personal luggage.
+
+They had a flash of the two faces--that of Mr. Swift's and Mary's
+blooming countenance--as the express started again, and then the
+outlook from the Pullman coach showed them the fast-receding environs
+of Shopton.
+
+"We're on our way, my boy," said Tom to his chum.
+
+"We certainly are," said Ned, thoughtfully. "I wonder what the outcome
+of the trip will be? It may not be all plain sailing."
+
+"Don't croak," rejoined the young inventor, with a grin.
+
+"I don't see how you can appear so cheerful. Why! you don't even know
+if that electric locomotive is safe. Something may have already
+happened to it. The freight train might be wrecked. A dozen things
+might happen."
+
+"I am not crossing any bridges before I come to them," declared Tom.
+"Besides, I propose to keep in touch with the Hercules Three-Oughts-One
+in a certain way--Hullo! Here it is."
+
+"Here what is?" demanded Ned.
+
+The Pullman conductor at that moment came in through the forward
+corridor. He had a telegram in his hand, and intoned loudly as he
+approached:
+
+"Mr. Swift! Mr. Thomas Swift! Telegram for Mr. Swift."
+
+"That is for me, Conductor," said Tom briskly, offering his card.
+
+"All right, Mr. Swift. Just got it at Shopton. Operator said you had
+boarded my car. This is railroad business, you'll notice.  Have you any
+reply, sir?"
+
+Tom ripped open the envelope and unfolded the telegram. He held it so
+that Ned could read, too. It was signed: "N. G. Smith, Conductor,
+Number 48."
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Ned, reading the message.
+
+"'Locomotive and crazy man in it all right at Lingo,'" repeated Tom
+aloud, and chuckled.
+
+"No, Conductor, there is no answer."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Ned. "You arranged to get reports en route from the
+conductors handling the Hercules Three-Oughts-One?"
+
+"Surest thing you know," replied Tom. "And I guess, from the wording of
+this message, that the crew of Forty-eight have already found out that
+Koku is not an ordinary guard."
+
+"He's a great boy," smiled Ned. "Glad he is on the job."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+The Wreck of Forty-Eight
+
+
+The two chums sought their berths that night in high fettle.  Even Ned
+sloughed off his mood of apprehension which he had worn on boarding the
+train at Shopton.
+
+For, true to the arrangement Tom had made with the railroad people,
+another reassuring telegram was brought to him before bedtime. The
+second conductor responsible for the management of the Western bound
+freight to which the Hercules 0001 was attached, sent back a brief
+statement of the safety of the electric locomotive.
+
+Naturally the two chums would have passed the freight and got well
+ahead of it before reaching Hendrickton. But Tom had business in
+Chicago, and they stayed over in that city for twenty-four hours. The
+freight train went around the city, of course. But the telegrams
+continued to reach Tom promptly, even at the hotel where he and Ned
+stopped in the city.
+
+Occasionally the trainmen in charge of the freight mentioned Koku. His
+eccentric behavior doubtless somewhat puzzled the railroaders.
+
+"That's all right," chuckled Ned. "Let them think Koku is dangerous if
+they want to. That O'Malley person believed he was!"
+
+"I'll say so!" replied Tom. "The way he ran when Koku started after him
+that time on the Waterfield Road seemed to prove that he didn't want to
+mix with Koku."
+
+"If he--or other spies--learns that Koku is with the Hercules
+Three-Oughts-One, it ought to warn them away from the locomotive."
+
+This was Ned's final speech before getting into his berth. He, as well
+as Tom, slept quite as calmly on this first night out of Chicago as
+they had before.
+
+They knew exactly where the electric locomotive was. It was on the same
+road as this train they were traveling in, and, although on a different
+track, it was not many miles ahead. In fact, if the two trains kept to
+schedule, the transcontinental passenger train would pass the freight
+in question about five o'clock in the morning.
+
+It lacked half an hour of that time when the Pullman train came
+suddenly to a jolting stop. Both Tom and Ned were awakened with the
+rest of the passengers in their coach.
+
+Heads were poked out between curtains all along the aisle and a chorus
+of more or less excited voices demanded:
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothin's the matter wid dis train, gen'lemens an' ladies," came in the
+porter's important voice. "Jest nothin' at all's happened. It's done
+happened up ahead of us, das all."
+
+"Well, what has happened ahead of us, George?" asked Ned.
+
+"Jest another train, Boss, been splatterin' itself all ober de right of
+way. We sort o' bein' held up, das all," replied the porter.
+
+"That's good news--for us," said Ned, preparing to climb back into his
+berth. But he halted where he was when he heard his chum ask:
+
+"What train left the track, George?"
+
+"A freight train, sah. Yes, sah. Number Forty-eight. She jumped de
+rails, side-swiped de accommodation dat was holdin' us back, and has
+jest done spread herself all over de right of way."
+
+"My goodness!" gasped Ned.
+
+"Hear that, Ned?" exclaimed Tom. "Scramble into your clothes, boy. The
+Hercules Three-Oughts-One is hitched to Forty-eight."
+
+"Suppose she's off the track?" murmured Ned.
+
+"It's lucky if she isn't smashed to matchwood," groaned Tom, and almost
+immediately left the Pullman coach on the run.
+
+Ned was not far behind him. When they reached the cinder path beside
+the freight train it was just sunrise. Long arms of rosy light reached
+down the mountain side to linger on the tracks and what was strewed
+across them. A glance assured the two young fellows from the East that
+it was a bad smash indeed.
+
+Several of the rear boxcars were slung athwart the passenger tracks.
+The passenger train that had been ahead of the Pullman train on which
+Tom and Ned rode, had been badly beaten in all along its side. Scarcely
+a whole window was left on the inner side of the five cars. But those
+cars were not derailed. It was merely some of the freight cars that
+retarded the further progress of the transcontinental flyer. A derrick
+car must be brought up to lift away the debris before the fast train
+could move on.
+
+Tom and Ned walked forward along the length of the wreck.  Suddenly the
+anxious young inventor seized Ned's arm.
+
+"Glory be!" he ejaculated. "It's topside up, anyway."
+
+"The Hercules Three-Oughts-One?" gasped Ned.
+
+"That's what it is!"
+
+Tom quickened his pace, and his financial manager followed close upon
+his heels. The forward end of Forty-eight had not left the track and
+the electric locomotive stood upright upon the rails, being near the
+head end of the train.
+
+"If this wreck was intentional, and aimed at your invention, Tom,"
+whispered Ned Newton, "it did not result as the wreckers expected."
+
+Tom scouted the idea suggested by his chum. And in a few moments they
+learned from a railroad employee that a broken flange on a boxcar wheel
+had caused the wreck.
+
+"So that disposes of your suspicion, Ned," said Tom, approaching the
+huge electric locomotive.
+
+"Hey, gents!" exclaimed another railroad man, one of the crew of the
+wrecked freight. "Better keep away from that locomotive."
+
+"What's the matter with it?" Ned asked, curiously.
+
+"Got some kind of an aborigine caged up in it. You put your hand on any
+part of it and he's likely to jump out and bite your hand off, or
+something. Believe me, he's some savage."
+
+Both Tom and Ned burst into laughter. The former went forward to the
+door of the cab and knocked in a peculiar way. It was a signal that the
+giant recognized instantly.
+
+"Master!" Koku cried from inside the cab. "Master! Him come in?"
+
+"No, Koku," said Tom. "I'm not coming in. Are you all right?"
+
+"Yes. Koku all right. Him come out?"
+
+"No, no!" laughed Tom. "You are not at your journey's end yet, Koku.
+Keep on the job a while longer."
+
+"Sure. Koku stay here forever, if Master say so."
+
+"Forever is a long word, Koku," said Tom, more seriously. "I'll tell
+you when to open the door. I'll be at the end of the journey to meet
+you."
+
+"It all right if Master say so. But Koku no like to travel in box,"
+grumbled the giant.
+
+Tom turned from the electric locomotive to see Ned staring across the
+tracks at a man who was talking to several of the train crew of the
+side-swiped accommodation train. That train was about to be moved on
+under its own power. None of the wreckage of the freight interfered
+with the progress of the accommodation.
+
+Tom stepped to Ned's side and touched his arm. "Who is he?" the
+inventor asked.
+
+The man who had attracted Ned's attention and now held Tom's interest
+as well was a solid looking man with gray hair and a dyed mustache. He
+was chewing on a long and black cigar, and he spoke to the train hands
+with authority.
+
+"Well, why can't you find him?" he wanted to know in a hoarse and
+arrogant voice.
+
+"Who is he?" asked Tom again in Ned's ear.
+
+"I've seen him somewhere. Or else I've seen somebody that looks like
+him. Maybe I've seen his picture. He's somebody of importance."
+
+"He thinks he is," rejoined the young inventor, with some disdain.
+
+In answer to something one of the railroad men said the important
+looking individual uttered an oath and added:
+
+"There's nobody been killed then? He's just missing? He was sitting in
+the coach ahead of me. I saw him just before the wreck. You know
+O'Malley yourself. Do you mean to say you haven't seen him, Conductor?"
+
+"I assure you he disappeared like smoke, sir," said the passenger
+conductor. "I haven't an idea what became of him."
+
+"Humph! If you see him, send him to me," and the solid man stepped
+heavily aboard the nearest coach and disappeared inside.
+
+Tom and Ned stared at each other with wondering gaze. O'Malley!  The
+spy who had represented Montagne Lewis and the Hendrickton & Western
+Railroad in the East.
+
+"What do you know about that?" demanded Ned, wonderingly.
+
+"Hold on!" exclaimed Tom. He sprang across the rails after the
+conductor of the accommodation train that was just starting on.  "Let
+me ask you a question."
+
+"Yes, sir?" replied the conductor
+
+"Who was that man who just spoke to you?" "That man? Why, I thought
+everybody out this way knew Montagne Lewis. That is his name, sir--and
+a big man he is. Yes, sir," and the conductor, giving the watching
+engineer of his train the "highball," caught the hand-rail of the car
+and swung himself aboard as the train started.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+On the Hendrickton & Pas Alos
+
+
+The transcontinental was delayed three hours by the strewn wreckage of
+the rear of Number Forty-eight. When she went on the two young fellows
+from Shopton gazed anxiously at the Hercules 0001, which stood between
+two gondolas in the forward end of the freight train.
+
+"Just by luck nothing happened to it," muttered Ned.
+
+"Just luck," agreed Tom Swift. "It was a shock to me to learn that Andy
+O'Malley was right there on the spot when the accident happened."
+
+"And his employer, too," added Ned. "For we must admit that Mr.
+Montagne Lewis is the man who sicked O'Malley on to you."
+
+"True."
+
+"And they were both in the accommodation that was sideswiped by the
+derailed cars of Number Forty-eight."
+
+"That, likewise is a fact," said Tom, nodding quickly.
+
+"But what puzzles me, as it seemed to puzzle Lewis, more than anything
+else, is what became of O'Malley?"
+
+"I guess I can see through that knot-hole," Tom rejoined.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I bet O'Malley got a squint at me--or perhaps at you--as we walked up
+the track from this coach, and he lit out in a hurry.  There stood the
+Three-Oughts-One, and there were we. He knew we would raise a hue and
+cry if we saw him in the vicinity of my locomotive."
+
+"I bet that's the truth, Tom."
+
+"I know it. He didn't even have time to warn his employer. By the way,
+Ned, what a brute that Montagne Lewis looks to be."
+
+"I believe you! I remember having seen his photograph in a magazine.
+Oh, he's some punkins, Tom."
+
+"And just as wicked as they make 'em, I bet! Face just as pleasant as a
+bulldog's!"
+
+"You said it. I'm afraid of that man. I shall not have a moment's peace
+until you have handed the Hercules Three-Oughts-One over to Mr.
+Bartholomew and got his acceptance."
+
+"If I do," murmured Tom.
+
+"Of course you will, if that Lewis or his henchmen don't smash things
+up. You are not afraid of the speed matter now, are you?" demanded Ned
+confidently.
+
+"I can be sure of nothing until after the tests," said Tom, shaking his
+head. "Remember, Ned, that I have set out to accomplish what was never
+done before--to drive a locomotive over the rails at two miles a
+minute. It's a mighty big undertaking."
+
+"Of course it will come out all right. If Koku is faithful----"
+
+"That is the smallest 'if' in the category," Tom interposed, with a
+laugh. "If I was as sure of all else as I am of Koku, we'd have plain
+sailing before us."
+
+Two days later Tom Swift and Ned Newton were ushered into the private
+office of the president of the H. & P. A. at the Hendrickton terminal.
+The two young fellows from the East had got in the night before, had
+become established at the best hotel in the rapidly growing Western
+municipality, and had seen something of the town itself during the
+hours before midnight.
+
+Now they were ready for business, and very important business, too.
+
+Mr. Richard Bartholomew sat up in his desk chair and his keen eyes
+suddenly sparkled when he saw his visitors and recognized them.
+
+"I did not expect you so soon. Your locomotive arrived yesterday, Mr.
+Swift. How are you, Mr. Newton?"
+
+He motioned for them to take chairs. His secretary left the room. The
+railroad magnate at once became confidential.
+
+"Nothing happened on the way?" he asked, pointedly. "There was a
+freight wreck, I understand?"
+
+"And we chanced to be right at hand when that happened," said Tom.
+
+"So was your friend, Mr. Lewis," remarked Ned Newton.
+
+"You don't mean to say that Montagne Lewis--"
+
+"Was there. And Andy O'Malley," put in Tom.
+
+Then he detailed the incident, as far as he and Ned knew the details,
+to Mr. Bartholomew, who listened with close attention.
+
+"Well, it might merely have been a coincidence," murmured the railroad
+president. "But, of course, we can't be sure. Anyhow, it is just as
+well if your servant, Mr. Swift, keeps close watch still upon that
+locomotive."
+
+"He will," said Tom, nodding. "He is down there in the yard with the
+Hercules Three-Oughts-One, and I mean to keep Koku right on the job."
+
+"Good! Let's go down and look at her," Mr. Bartholomew said, eagerly.
+
+But first Tom wanted to go into the theoretical particulars of his
+invention. And he confessed that thus far his tests of the locomotive
+had not been altogether satisfactory.
+
+"I have got to have a clear track on a stretch of your own line here,
+Mr. Bartholomew, and under certain conditions, before I can be sure as
+to just how much speed I can get out of the machine."
+
+"Speed is the essential point, Mr. Swift," said the railroad man,
+seriously.
+
+"That is what I have been telling Ned," Tom rejoined. "I believe my
+improvements over the Jandel patents are worthy. I know I have a very
+powerful locomotive. But that is not enough."
+
+"We have got to shoot our trains through the Pas Alos Range faster than
+trains were ever shot over the grades before, or we have failed," said
+Mr. Bartholomew, with decision.
+
+"But--" began Ned; but Tom put up an arresting hand and his financial
+manager ceased speaking.
+
+"I have not forgotten the details of our contract, Mr. Bartholomew," he
+said, quietly. "Two-miles-a-minute is the target I have aimed for.
+Whether I have hit it or not, well, time will show. I have got to try
+the locomotive out on the tracks of the H. & P. A. in any case. The
+Hercules Three-Oughts-One has been dragged a long distance, and has
+been through at least one wreck.  I want to see if she is all right
+before I test her officially."
+
+"I'll arrange that for you," said Mr. Bartholomew, briskly, putting
+away his papers. "I will go with you, too, and take a look at the
+marvel."
+
+"And a marvel it is," grumbled Ned. "Don't let him fool you, Mr.
+Bartholomew. Tom never does consider what he's done as being as great
+as it really is."
+
+"Everything must be proved," Tom said, cautiously. "If it was a
+financial problem, Mr. Bartholomew, believe me it would be Ned who
+displayed caution. But I have seldom built anything that could not--and
+has not--later been improved."
+
+"You do not consider your electric locomotive, then, a completed
+invention?" asked Mr. Bartholomew, as the three walked down the yard.
+
+"I have too much experience to say it is perfect," returned Tom. "I can
+scarcely believe, even, that it is going to suit you, Mr. Bartholomew,
+even if the speed test is as promising as I hope it may be."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"But before I shall be willing to throw up the sponge and say that I
+have failed, I shall monkey with the Hercules Three-Oughts-One quite a
+little on your tracks."
+
+"Your six months isn't up yet," said Mr. Bartholomew, more cheerfully.
+"And it doesn't matter if it is. If you see any chance of making a
+success of your invention, you are welcome to try it out on the tracks
+of the H. & P. A. for another six months."
+
+"All right," Tom said, smiling. "Now, there is the Hercules
+Three-Oughts-One, Mr. Bartholomew. And there is Koku looking longingly
+through the window."
+
+In fact, the giant, the moment he saw Tom, ran to unbar and open the
+door of the cab on that side.
+
+"Master! If no let Koku out, Koku go amuck--crazy! No can breathe in
+here! No can eat! No can sleep!"
+
+"The poor fellow!" ejaculated Ned.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" asked Mr. Bartholomew, curiously.
+
+"Get out, if you want to, Koku. I'll stay by while you kick up your
+heels."
+
+No sooner had the inventor spoken than the giant leaped from the open
+door of the locomotive and dashed away along the cinder path as though
+he actually had to run away. Tom burst into a laugh, as he watched the
+giant disappear beyond the strings of freight cars.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" repeated the railroad president.
+
+"He's got the cramp all right," laughed Tom Swift. "You don't
+understand, Mr. Bartholomew, what it means to that big fellow to be
+housed in for so many days, and unable to kick a free limb. I bet he
+runs ten miles before he stops."
+
+"The police will arrest him," said the railroad man.
+
+It was then Ned's turn to chuckle. "I am sorry for your railroad police
+if they tackle Koku right now," he said. "He'd lay out about a dozen
+ordinary men without half trying. But, ordinarily, he is the most
+mild-mannered fellow who ever lived."
+
+"He will come back, if he is let alone, as harmless as a kitten," Tom
+observed. "And when I am not with the Hercules Three-Oughts-One, and
+while I continue making my tests, Koku will be on guard. You might tell
+your police force, Mr. Bartholomew, to let him alone. Now come aboard
+and let me show you what I have been trying to do."
+
+They spent two hours inside the cab of the great locomotive.  Mr.
+Richard Bartholomew was possessed of no small degree of mechanical
+education. He might not be a genius in mechanics as Tom Swift was, but
+he could follow the latter's explanations regarding the improvements in
+the electrical equipment of this new type of locomotive.
+
+"I don't know what your speed tests will show, Mr. Swift," said the
+railroad president, with added enthusiasm. "But if those parts will do
+what you say they have already done, you've got the Jandels beat a
+mile! I'm for you, strong. Yes, sir! like your friend, Newton, here, I
+believe that you have hit the right track. You are going to triumph."
+
+But Tom's triumph did not come at once. He knew more about the
+uncertainties of mechanical contrivances than did either Mr.
+Bartholomew or Ned Newton.
+
+The very next day the Hercules 0001 was got out upon a section of the
+electrified system of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railway, and the
+pantagraphs of the huge locomotive for the first time came into
+connection with the twin conductor trolleys which overhung the rails.
+
+Ned accompanied Tom as assistant. Koku was allowed by the inventor to
+roam about the hills as much as he pleased during the hours in which
+his master was engaged with the Hercules 0001. Tom did not think any
+harm would come to Koku, and he knew that the giant would enjoy
+immensely a free foot in such a wild country.  The two young fellows,
+dressed in working suits of overall stuff, spent long hours in the cab
+of the electric locomotive. Their try-outs had to be made for the most
+part on sidetracks and freight switches, some miles outside
+Hendrickton, where the invention would not be in the way of regular
+traffic.
+
+Speed on level tracks had been raised in one test to over ninety-five
+miles an hour and Mr. Bartholomew cheered wildly from the cab of a huge
+Mallet that paced Tom's locomotive on a parallel track. No steam
+locomotive had ever made such fast time.
+
+But Tom was after something bigger than this. He wanted to show the
+president of the H. & P. A. that the Hercules 0001 could drag a load
+over the Pas Alos Range at a pace never before gained by any
+mountain-hog.
+
+Therefore he coaxed the electric locomotive out into the hills, some
+hundred or more miles from headquarters. He had to keep in touch with
+the train dispatcher's office, of course; the new machine had often to
+take a sidetrack. Nor was much of this hilly right-of-way electrified.
+The Jandels locomotive had been found to be a failure on the sharp
+grades; so the extension of the trolley system had been abandoned.
+
+But there was one steep grade between Hammon and Cliff City that had
+been completed. The current could be fed to the cables over this
+stretch of track, and for a week Tom used this long and steep grade
+just as much as he could, considering of course the demands of the
+regular traffic.
+
+The telegraph operator at Half Way (merely a name for a station, for
+there was not a habitation in sight) thrust his long upper-length out
+of the telegraph office window one afternoon and waved a "highball" to
+the waiting electric locomotive on the sidetrack.
+
+"Dispatcher says you can have Track Number Two West till the
+four-thirteen, westbound, is due. I'll slip the operator at Cliff City
+the news and he'll be on the lookout for you as well as me, Mr. Swift.
+Go to it."
+
+Every man on the system was interested, and most of them enthusiastic,
+about Tom's invention. The latter knew that he could depend upon this
+operator and his mate to watch out for the western-bound flyer that
+would begin its climb of the grade at Hammon less than half an hour
+hence.
+
+The electric locomotive was coaxed out across the switch. Tom was
+earnestly inspecting the more delicate parts of the mechanism while Ned
+(and proud he was to do it) handled the levers. Once on the main line
+he moved the controller forward. The machine began to pick up speed.
+
+The drumming of the wheels over the rail joints became a single
+note--an increasing roar of sound. The electric locomotive shot up the
+grade. The arrow on the speedometer crept around the dial and Ned's eye
+was more often fastened on that than it was on the glistening twin
+rails which mounted the grade.
+
+Black-green hemlock and spruce bordered the right of way on either
+hand. Their shadows made the tunnel through the forest almost dark. But
+Tom had not seen fit to turn on the headlight.
+
+"How is she making out?" asked the inventor, coming to look over his
+chum's shoulder.
+
+"It's great, Tom!" breathed Ned Newton, his eyes glistening.  "She eats
+this grade up."
+
+"And it's within a narrow fraction of a two per cent.," said the
+inventor proudly. "She takes it without a jar--Hold on! What's that
+ahead?"
+
+The locomotive had traveled ten miles or more from Half Way.  The
+summit of the grade was not far ahead. But the forest shut out all view
+of the station at Cliff City and the structures that stood near it.
+
+Right across the steel ribbons on which the hercules 0001 ran, Tom had
+seen something which brought the question to his lips.  Ned Newton saw
+it too, and he shouted aloud:
+
+"Tree down! A log fallen, Tom!"
+
+He did not lose completely his self-control. But he grabbed the levers
+with less care than he should. He tried to yank two of them at once,
+and, in doing so, he fouled the brakes!
+
+He had shut off connection with the current. But the brake control was
+jammed. The locomotive quickly came to a halt. Then, before Tom could
+get to the open door, the wheels began spinning in reverse and the
+great Hercules 0001 began the descent of the steep grade, utterly
+unmanageable!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+Peril, The Mother of Invention
+
+
+Tom Swift's first thought was one of thankfulness. Thankfulness that he
+did not have a drag of fifty or sixty steel gondolas or the like to add
+their weight to the down-pull. The locomotive's own weight of
+approximately two hundred and seventy tons was enough.
+
+For when the inventor pushed Ned aside and tried to handle the
+controllers properly, he found them unmanageable. There was not a
+chance of freeing them and getting power on the brakes. The Hercules
+0001 was backing down the mountain side with a speed that was
+momentarily increasing, and without a chance of retarding it!
+
+The young inventor at that moment of peril, knew no more what to do to
+avert disaster than Ned Newton himself.
+
+It flashed across his mind, however, that others beside themselves were
+in peril because of this accident. The fast express from the East that
+should pass Half Way at four-thirteen, might already be climbing the
+hill from Hammon. Hammon, at the foot of the grade, was twenty-five
+miles away. Nor was the track straight.
+
+If the operator at Half Way did not see the runaway locomotive and
+telephone the danger to the foot of the grade, when the Hercules 0001
+came tearing down the track it might ram something in the Hammon yard,
+if it did not actually collide with the approaching westbound express.
+
+Such an emergency as this is likely either to numb the brains of those
+entangled in the peril or excite them to increased activity. Ned Newton
+was apparently stunned by the catastrophe.  Tom's brain never worked
+more clearly.
+
+He seized the siren lever and set it at full, so that the blast called
+up continuous echoes in the forest as the locomotive plunged down the
+incline. He ran to the door again, on the side where Half Way station
+lay, and hung out to signal the operator who had so recently given him
+right of way on this stretch of mountain road.
+
+"We're going to smash! We're going to smash!" groaned Ned Newton.
+
+Tom read these words on his chum's lips, rather than heard them, for
+the roar of the descending locomotive drowned every other sound. Tom
+waved an encouraging hand, but did not reply audibly.
+
+Meanwhile his brain was working as fast as ever it had. He had
+instantly comprehended all the danger of the situation. But in addition
+he appreciated the fact that such an accident as this might happen at
+any time to this or any other locomotive he might build.
+
+Automatic brakes were all right. If there had been a good drag of cars
+behind the Hercules 0001, on which the compressed air brakes might have
+been set, the present manifest peril might have been obliterated. The
+brakes on the cars would have stopped the whole train.
+
+But to halt this huge monster when alone, on the grade, was another
+matter. Once the locomotive brake lever was jammed, as in this case,
+there was no help for the huge machine. It had to ride to the foot of
+the grade--if it did not chance to hit something on the way!
+
+And with this realization of both the imminent peril and the need of
+averting it, to Tom's active brain came the germ of an idea that he
+determined to put into force, if he lived through this accident, on
+each and every electric locomotive that he might in the future build.
+
+This monster, flying faster and faster down the mountain side, was a
+menace to everything in its track. There might be almost anything in
+the way of rolling stock on the section between Half Way and Hammon at
+the foot of the grade. If this thunderbolt of wood and steel collided
+with any other train, with the force and weight gathered by its plunge
+down the mountain, it would drive through such obstruction like a
+projectile from Tom's own big cannon.
+
+Tom realized this fact. He knew that whatever object the Hercules 0001
+might strike, that object would be shattered and scattered all about
+the right of way. What might happen to the runaway was another matter.
+But the inventor believed that the electric locomotive would be less
+injured than anything with which it came into collision.
+
+At any rate, thought of the peril to himself and his invention had
+secondary consideration in Tom Swift's mind. It was what the monster
+which he could not control might do to other rolling stock of the H. &
+P. A. that rasped the young fellow's mind.
+
+The grade above Half Way had few curves. Tom soon caught the first
+glimpse of the station. Would the operator hear the roar of the
+descending runaway and understand what had happened?
+
+He leaned far out from the open doorway and waved his cap madly. He
+began to shout a warning, although he saw not a soul about the station
+and knew very well that his voice was completely drowned by the voice
+of the siren and the drumming of the great wheels.
+
+Suddenly the tousled head of the operator popped out of his window. He
+saw the coming locomotive, the drivers smoking!
+
+To be a good railroad man one has to have his wits about him.  To be a
+good operator at a backwoods station one has to have two sets of
+wits--one set to tell what to do in an emergency, the other to listen
+and apprehend the voice of the sounder.
+
+This Half Way man was good. He knew better than to try the telegraph
+instrument. He grabbed the telephone receiver and jiggled the hook up
+and down on the standard while the Hercules 0001 roared past the
+station.
+
+It did not need Tom's frantically waving cap to warn him what had
+happened. And he remembered clearly the fact of the expected westbound
+flyer.
+
+"Hammon? Get me? This is Half Way. That derned electric hog has sprung
+something and is coming down, lickity-split!
+
+"Yes! Clear your yard! Where's Number Twenty-eight? Good! Side her, or
+she'll be ditched. Get me?"
+
+The voice at the other end of the wire exploded into indignant
+vituperation. Then silence. The Half Way operator had done his
+best--his all. He ran out upon the platform. The electric locomotive
+had disappeared behind the woods, but the roar of its wheels and the
+shrill voice of its siren echoed back along the line.
+
+The sound faded into insignificance. The operator went back into his
+hut and stayed close by the telephone instrument for the next ten
+minutes to learn the worst.
+
+If the operator's nerves were tense, what about those of Tom Swift and
+his chum? Ned staggered to the door and clung to Tom's arm. He shrilled
+into the latter's ear:
+
+"Shall we jump?"
+
+"I don't see any soft spots," returned Tom, grimly. "There aren't any
+life nets along this line."
+
+Ned Newton was frightened, and with good reason. But if his chum was
+equally terrified he did not show it. He continued to lean from the
+open door to peer down the grade as the Hercules 0001 drove on.
+
+Around curve after curve they flew. It entered Ned's tortured mind that
+if his chum had wanted speed, he was getting it now! He realized that
+two miles a minute was a mere bagatelle to the pace now accomplished by
+the runaway locomotive.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+The Result
+
+
+As Ned Newton, fumbling at the controls when he saw the fallen tree
+across the tracks, had jammed the brakes, the station master at Hammon,
+at the bottom of this long grade on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos, had
+stepped out to the blackboard in the barnlike waiting room and scrawled
+with a bit of chalk:
+
+"No. 28--Westbound--due 3:38 is 15 m. late."
+
+
+The fact, thus given to the general public or to such of it as might be
+interested, averted what would have been a terrible catastrophe.
+
+The fast express was late. When the babbling voice of the Half Way
+operator over the telephone warned Hammon of the coming of the runaway
+electric locomotive, there was time to shift switches at the head of
+the yard so that, when Number Twenty-eight came roaring in, she was
+shunted on to a far track and flagged for a stop before she hit the
+bumper.
+
+Thirty seconds later, from the west, the Hercules 0001 roared down the
+grade and shot into the cleared west track in a halo of smoke and dust.
+Speed! No runaway had ever traveled faster and kept the rails. The
+story of the incident was embalmed in railroad history, and no history
+is so full of vivid incident as that of the rail.
+
+When the first relay of excited railroad men reached the electric
+locomotive after it had stopped on the long level, even Ned Newton had
+pulled himself together and could look out upon the world with some
+measure of calmness. Tom Swift was making certain notes and draughting
+a curious little diagram upon a page of his notebook.
+
+"What happened to you, Mr. Swift?" was the demand of the first arrival.
+
+"Oh, my foot slipped," said the young inventor, and they got nothing
+more out of him than that.
+
+But to Ned, after the crowd had gone, the inventor said:
+
+"Ned, my boy, they used to say that necessity was the mother of
+invention. Therefore a loaf of bread was considered the maternal parent
+of the locomotive. I've got one that will beat that."
+
+"Whew!" gasped Ned. "How can you? I haven't got my breath back yet."
+
+"It is peril that is the mother of invention," Tom went on, still
+jotting down his notes. "Believe me! that jolt gave me a new idea--an
+important idea. Suppose that operator at Half Way had been out back
+somewhere, and had not seen or heard us flash by?"
+
+"Well, suppose he had? What's the answer?" sighed Ned.
+
+"Like enough we would have rammed something down here."
+
+"And I hardly understand even now why we didn't do just that," muttered
+his chum, with a shake of his head.
+
+"Wake up, Ned! It's all over," laughed Tom. "While it was happening I
+admit I was guessing just as hard as you were about the finish. But--"
+
+"Your recovery is better," grumbled his friend. "I'm scared yet."
+
+"And it might happen again--"
+
+"No--not--ever!" exclaimed Ned. "I shall never touch those controllers
+again. I'll drive your airscout, or your fastest automobile, or
+anything like that. But me and this electric locomotive have parted
+company for good. Yes, sir!"
+
+"All right. It wasn't your fault. It might happen to any
+motor-engineer. And the very fact that it can happen has given me my
+idea. I tell you that danger is the mother of invention."
+
+"As far as I am concerned, it can be father and grandparents into the
+bargain," Ned declared, with a smile.
+
+"Wake up!" cried his friend again. "I have got a dandy idea. I wouldn't
+have missed that trip for anything."
+
+"You are crazy," interrupted Ned. "Suppose we had bumped something?"
+
+"But we didn't bump anything, except my brain tank. An idea bumped it,
+I tell you. I am going to eliminate any such peril as that here-after."
+
+"You mean you are going to make it impossible for this locomotive ever
+to slide down such a hill again if the brakes won't work? Humph!
+Meanwhile I will go out and make the nearest water-fall begin to run
+upward."
+
+"Don't scoff. I do not mean just what you mean."
+
+"I bet you don't!"
+
+"But although I cannot be sure that a locomotive will never again fall
+downhill," said Tom patiently, "I'm going to fix it so that warning
+need not be given by some operator along the line.  The engineer must
+be able to send warning of his accident, both up and down the road."
+
+"Huh? How are you going to do that?" demanded Ned.
+
+"Wireless telephone. I may make some improvements on the present
+models; but it is practicable. It has been used on submarines and
+cruisers, and lately its practicability has been proved in the forestry
+service.
+
+"Every one of these electric locomotives I turn out will be supplied
+with wireless sets. The expense of making certain telegraph offices
+along the line into receiving stations will be small. I am going to
+take that up with Mr. Bartholomew at once.  And I am going to fix these
+brake controls so that nobody need ball them up again."
+
+If, out of such a desperate adventure, Tom could bring to fruition
+really worthwhile improvements in relation to his invention, Ned
+acknowledged the value of the incident. Just the same, he had a
+personal objection to having any part in a similar experience.
+
+He was brave, but he could not forget danger. Tom seemed to throw the
+effect of that terrible ride off his mind almost instantly. Ned dreamed
+of it at night!
+
+However, from that time things seemed to go with a rush.  Mr.
+Bartholomew approved of the young inventor's suggestion regarding the
+use of the wireless telephone as a method of averting a certain quality
+of danger in the use of the proposed monster locomotive. The railroad
+man was convinced that Tom's ideas were finally to culminate in
+success, and he was ready to spend money, much money, in pushing on the
+work.
+
+It was not long before a private test of the Hercules 0001 up the grade
+from Hammon to Cliff City showed Mr. Bartholomew that the speed he had
+required in his contract was attainable. With a drag fully as heavy as
+any two locomotives had been able to get over the same sector, the new
+locomotive alone marked a forty-five mile an hour pace.
+
+This attainment was kept quiet; not even the train crew knew what the
+monster had done when they reached the summit of the mountain. But Mr.
+Bartholomew, who rode with Tom and Ned in the cab, had held his own
+watch on the test and compared it every minute with the speedometer.
+
+"I am satisfied that you are going to do more than I had really hoped,
+Mr. Swift," the railroad president said at the end of the run. "Already
+you could drive this locomotive at a two-mile-a-minute clip on level
+rails, I am sure. Keep at it! Nobody will be more delighted than I
+shall be if you pull down that hundred thousand dollars' bonus."
+
+"That's a fine way to talk, sir," cried Ned, with enthusiasm.
+
+"I mean every word of it, Mr. Newton. The money is his as soon as he
+makes good."
+
+Both Tom and his financial manager left the president's office in a
+satisfied state of mind.
+
+"Great news to send home, Tom," remarked Ned, when they were alone.
+
+"Righto, Ned. My father will be glad to hear it."
+
+"And what about Mary?" And Ned poked his chum in the ribs.
+
+"I guess she'll be glad too," Tom replied, his face reddening.
+
+That night Tom sent word to Mary and also a telegram, in code, to his
+father, saying the prospects were now bright for a quick finish of the
+task that had brought him West.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+The Open Switch
+
+
+Meanwhile the work of electrifying another division of the Hendrickton
+& Pas Alos Railroad had been pushed to completion. As Mr. Bartholomew
+had in the first place stated, the road controlled water rights in the
+hills which would supply any number of electric power stations, and his
+enemies could not shut his road off from these waterfalls.
+
+Tom had not warned his faithful servant, the giant Koku, to watch out
+for Andy O'Malley in particular; the inventor knew that the giant would
+be as cautious about any stranger as could be wished. But personally
+Tom was amazed that either O'Malley or some other henchman of the
+president of the Hendrickton & Western did not make an attempt to
+injure the electric locomotive.
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Bartholomew's police are really of some good," said Ned
+Newton, when his chum mentioned his surprise on this point. "Has Koku
+seen nobody lurking about at night?"
+
+"He certainly has not seen the man he calls 'Big Feet,'" chuckled Tom.
+"If he had spotted O'Malley, there certainly would have been an
+explosion."
+
+"Tell you what," Ned said reflectively, "the longer Lewis keeps off
+you, the more suspicious I should be."
+
+"You think he is a bad citizen, do you?"
+
+"And then some, as the boys say out here," replied Ned. "I wouldn't
+trust that man any farther than I would a nest of hornets or a shedding
+rattlesnake."
+
+"I am inclined to believe, with you, Ned, that Lewis is hatching up
+something and is keeping mighty whist about it. I sounded Mr.
+Bartholomew on the idea and he, too, is puzzled."
+
+"I guess he knows that hombre," grumbled Ned.
+
+"Mr. Bartholomew admits that several roads have sent representatives to
+make inquiries about my locomotive. They have got wind of it, and,
+after all, most railroads work in unison.  What means progress for one
+is progress for all."
+
+"That same rule does not seem to apply in the case of the H. & P. A.
+and the H. & W.," remarked Ned.
+
+"No. They are out and out rivals. And Lewis and his gang have done this
+road dirt--no two ways about that. But when I am convinced that my
+locomotive has got all the speed and power contracted for, Mr.
+Bartholomew wants to invite a bunch of his brother railroaders to see
+the tests--to ride in the Hercules Three-Oughts-One, in fact."
+
+"How about it? You going to agree? Suppose they have some inventive
+sharp along who will be able to steal some of your mechanical
+contrivances--in his head, I mean," and Ned seemed quite suddenly
+anxious.
+
+"I had thought of that. But before the test I shall send my blueprints
+to Washington. Our patent attorney there has already filed tentative
+plans and applied for certain patents that I consider completed. Don't
+fret. I'll make it impossible for anybody to steal our patents legally."
+
+"Yes! But illegally?"
+
+"That we cannot help in any case, and you know it," Tom said.  "If some
+road tries to build anything like the Hercules Three-Oughts-One for the
+first two years without arranging with the Swift Construction Company,
+you know that that railroad can be made to suffer in the courts, and
+you are the boy, Ned, to put them over the jumps for it."
+
+"Sure," grumbled his chum. "It's always up to me to save the day."
+
+"Exactly," chuckled Tom. "And in your character of life saver, do look
+out for anybody who looks suspicious hanging about the Hercules
+Three-Oughts-One. I'll take care of rival inventors. You and Koku keep
+your eyes peeled for the H. & W. spies. Especially for that Andy
+O'Malley. I feel that he will again show up. Maybe by 'the pricking of
+my thumb' as Macbeth's witch used to remark."
+
+Every day save Sunday the electric locomotive had some kind of try-out.
+On a level track Tom was sure of his monster invention's qualities; but
+in the hills, at a distance from the Hendrickton terminal, it was
+another matter.
+
+The grades were steep; but the road was well ballasted. There was
+plenty of power. He saw the Jandel locomotives hurry back and forth
+with the local trains and realized that this rival invention was by no
+means to be despised.
+
+It was at about this time, too, that Mr. Damon appeared in Hendrickton.
+Early one forenoon, when Tom and Ned were preparing to take the
+Hercules 0001 out of the yard, and Koku was going to his lodgings to
+get a little sleep, Tom's eccentric friend came across the tracks,
+waving his cane at Tom.
+
+"Bless my frogs and switch-targets!" he ejaculated, "I've walked a mile
+from that station to get here. Where are you going with that big
+contraption? How does it work? Does it make all the speed you want, Tom
+Swift? Bless my rails and sleepers!'
+
+"We're going about a hundred miles out on the road to a good, stiff
+grade," Tom told him, having shaken hands in welcome. "If you want to,
+get aboard."
+
+"They haven't blown you up yet, or otherwise wrecked the locomotive,"
+remarked Mr. Damon, grinning broadly. "I'll have to write right back to
+your father--and to a certain young lady who shows a remarkable
+interest in your welfare--that you are all right."
+
+"They should already be sure of that," laughed Tom. "Ned and I have
+kept the post-office department and the telegraph company very busy."
+
+"They are waiting for my report," announced Mr. Damon, with confidence.
+"And I am waiting for yours. Tell me, Tom: Is the locomotive a success?"
+
+"It's going to be," declared the inventor, with decision.
+
+"Bless my trolley wires!" cried Mr. Damon, "I am glad to hear that.
+Then you will surely pull down the extra hundred thousand dollars?"
+
+"I believe I shall fulfill every clause of the contract Mr. Bartholomew
+and I signed," said Tom.
+
+"Then it's more than a success!" cried his friend. "You have invented
+another marvel, Tom Swift!"
+
+"Marvel or not," rejoined Tom, "I believe that the Hercules
+Three-Oughts-One will top anything so far built in the way of electric
+locomotives."
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Mr. Damon. "Bless my controller! But your father and
+Mary Nestor will be glad to hear that!"
+
+Mr. Damon was quite as much interested in this invention as he always
+was in anything the young inventor worked upon. When he had once seen
+the Hercules 0001 work on an up-grade he was doubly enthusiastic. To
+his sanguine mind the locomotive was already completed. He could see no
+possibility of failure.
+
+Tom, however, had to prove to his own satisfaction the success of every
+detail of his invention before he was willing to tell Mr. Bartholomew
+that he was ready for a public test. Mr. Damon, nor even Ned, could
+scarcely see the reason for Tom's caution.
+
+Tom's favorite try-out grade was between Hammon and Cliff City.  He
+could obtain a right of way order from the train dispatcher on that
+grade, sometimes of an hour's duration. He often snaked a load of
+gondolas or cattle cars up the grade, relieving both the puller and
+pusher steam locomotive. By this time the H. & P. A.  system had
+stopped using the Jandel machines on any grades. They had proved their
+lack of power for such work.
+
+"But the Hercules Three-Oughts-One shows at every test that it has the
+kick," Mr. Damon cried.
+
+In his enthusiasm he was out every day with Tom and Ned. And sometimes
+Koku remained in the cab during the trial runs as well.
+
+On one such occasion Tom had drawn a heavy train over the mountain,
+taking it down the grade beyond Cliff City to Panboro in the farther
+valley. This was over a newly built stretch of the electrified road.
+The power station charged the trolley cables with an abundance of
+current, and the Hercules 0001 made a splendid trip.
+
+"Bless my cuff-links!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, his rosy face one beaming
+smile. "You couldn't expect to do better than this. You save one
+locomotive on the haul, and you beat the schedule ten minutes, so that
+you had to lay by to get right of way into the yard here. Why linger
+longer, Tom?"
+
+"I agree with Mr. Damon," Ned said. "It seems to work perfectly. And
+you have, I believe, established your required speed."
+
+"Can't be too perfect," said the young inventor, smiling. "But I will
+tell Mr. Bartholomew when we get back that he can set his time for the
+big test whenever he pleases. I have already sent our patent attorney
+in Washington the final blueprints. Now, if nothing happens--"
+
+"Bless my stickpin!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "What can happen now that the
+locomotive is practically perfect?"
+
+That question was answered in one way, and a most startling way, within
+the hour. Tom got right of way back over the mountain and pushed the
+electric locomotive up-grade at almost top speed.  He drew no train on
+this occasion, and the speed made by the Hercules 0001 was really
+remarkable.
+
+They topped the rise at Cliff City and got orders from the dispatcher
+to proceed on the time of Number Eighty-seven, which chanced to be
+late. With that release Tom might have made the entire distance of a
+hundred and ten miles to Hendrickton had it not been for the
+accident--the unexpected something that so often happens in the
+railroad business.
+
+Tom was a careful driver; the chatter of Ned and Mr. Damon did not take
+the inventor's mind off his business for one instant. He was quite
+alert at his window, looking ahead, as Koku was at the open doorway of
+the cab.
+
+Not a mile outside of Cliff City, and on this eastbound side of the
+right of way, was a long siding and a shipping point for timber. It was
+sometimes a busy point; but at this time of year there were no
+lumbermen about and no activities in the adjacent forest.
+
+The Hercules 0001 came spinning along from the Cliff City yards, and
+Tom Swift gave scarcely a glance to the joint of the switch ahead. He
+had been over it so many times of late, and knew that it was always
+locked. The railroad did not even keep a man here at this season.
+
+Suddenly Koku emitted a wild yell. He startled everybody else in the
+cab, as he flung his huge body more than half out of the doorway and
+prepared to jump--or so it seemed.
+
+Ned shrieked a warning to the big fellow. Mr. Damon began to bless
+everything in sight. But it was Tom, quite as excited as his friends,
+who understood what Koku shouted:
+
+"Big Feet! Big Feet! I see um Big Feet, Master!"
+
+The next moment he threw himself from the rapidly moving locomotive. He
+might have been killed easily enough. But fortunately he landed feet
+first in the drift beside the rails, and remained upright as he slid
+down into the ditch.
+
+Tom, glancing ahead again, saw the flash of a man in a checked Mackinaw
+running up through the open wood and away from the right of way. He
+could not be sure of Andy O'Malley's figure at that distance; but he
+could be pretty confident of Koku's identification.
+
+And then, with a shock that gripped and almost paralyzed his mind, Tom
+saw again the switch ahead of the pilot of the Hercules 0001. The
+switch was open, and at the speed the electric locomotive had attained,
+if she did not jump the rails, it seemed scarcely possible that she
+could be stopped before hitting the bumper at the end of the siding!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+A Desperate Chase
+
+
+These moments were fraught with peril, and not alone peril to the huge
+machine that Tom Swift had built, but peril to those who remained in
+the cab of the electric locomotive, as her forward trucks struck the
+open switch.
+
+There was a mighty jerk that brought a shout from Ned Newton's lips and
+a grunt from Mr. Damon. Tom clung to his swivel-seat, staring ahead.
+
+The pilot of the electric locomotive shot over on the siding; the
+forward trucks followed, then the great drivers. The whole locomotive
+swerved into the siding, but for several breathless seconds Tom was not
+at all sure that the monster would not jump the rails and head into the
+ditch!
+
+Meanwhile his gaze measured the speed of that flying figure in the
+Mackinaw as it scuttled up the slope through the open grove of hard
+wood and pine. He could not at first see Koku, but he knew the giant
+was headed for the fugitive, whether the latter proved to be Andy
+O'Malley or not.
+
+Tom's gaze flashed to what lay ahead of the electric locomotive. As it
+seemed to joggle back into balance, gain its uprightness, as it were,
+the inventor saw the great, log-braced bumper between the two rails at
+the end of the siding. With what force would the locomotive hit that
+obstruction?
+
+Until the trailers were over the switch Tom dared not give her the
+brakes. To lock the brake shoes upon the wheels might easily throw the
+locomotive off the rails. But the instant he felt the tail of the long
+locomotive swerve off the switch he jabbed the compressed air lever and
+the wild shriek of the brake shoes answered to his effort.
+
+Then the bumper was but a few yards ahead. The electric locomotive was
+bound to collide with it. And under the speed at which it had been
+running, now scarcely reduced by half, the collision was apt to be a
+tragic happening!
+
+Weeks of effort might be ruined in that moment! If the crash was
+serious, thousands of dollars might be lost! In truth, Tom Swift
+apprehended the possibility of a disaster, the complete results of
+which might put the test of his invention forward for weeks--perhaps
+for months.
+
+Nor could he do a thing to avert the disaster. He had reversed and set
+the brakes immediately after the last wheel of the trailer was on the
+siding. Nothing more could he do as the great electric locomotive bore
+down upon the solid timber at the far end of this short track.
+
+Those few seconds, as the locked wheels slid toward the end of the
+siding, were about as hard to bear as any experience the young inventor
+had ever gone through. It was not so much the peril of the accident, it
+was the possibility of what might happen to the locomotive.
+
+Within those few moments, however, Tom considered more than the safety
+of his companions and himself, and more than the peril of wreck to his
+locomotive. He considered the schedule of the trains on this division
+of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos and remembered all those that might be
+within this sector at this time.
+
+If the locomotive smashed into the bumper with force enough to wreck
+the structure, would some approaching train on the westbound track not
+be endangered?
+
+The thought was parent to Tom's act before the collision occurred. With
+a single swift motion he reached for the signaling apparatus which he
+had established in connection with his wireless telephone.
+
+Just the moment before the head of the locomotive rammed that seemingly
+immovable barrier at the end of the siding there flashed into the air
+from Tom's annunciator the code word agreed upon announcing a wreck,
+and the number of the sector on which the electric locomotive was then
+running.
+
+The next moment the crash occurred.
+
+Tom had leaped up with a shout of warning. "Hang on!" was his cry. But
+when the locomotive had struck and rebounded Ned, from far down the
+aisle of the locomotive, wanted to know in a very peevish tone what he
+should have hung on to?
+
+"My elbows!" he groaned. "I've skinned 'em, and my back has got a twist
+in it like the Irishman thought he had when he put on his overalls
+hind-side to. What's happened?"
+
+"Bless my radiolite!" growled Mr. Damon. "My watch crystal is broken
+all to finders, if you want to know. Bless my shock-absorbers! you
+won't do this locomotive a bit of good, Tom Swift, if you stop it so
+abruptly."
+
+"And that's the surest word you ever said," responded Tom, hurrying to
+the door. "I don't know what's broken, but we're still on the rails.
+The most immediate thing to learn, is the where-abouts of the fellow
+who did this."
+
+"Who opened the switch?" cried Ned.
+
+"I believe it was Andy O'Malley. Come on, Ned! Koku is after him and I
+don't want him to tear O'Malley apart before I get there."
+
+"O'Malley has got powerful interests behind him, and it might go hard
+with Koku if he injured the spy and some of these Westerners caught
+him," suggested Mr. Damon.
+
+"They ought to thank Koku for manhandling the fellow--if he does," said
+Ned.
+
+"As a matter of fact," replied Tom, "Koku will merely hold to the
+fellow until we get there. But my giant's strength is enormous, and he
+does not always know the strength of his grasp. He might hurt the
+fellow. Come on," and Tom leaped from the doorway of the electric
+locomotive.
+
+Ned leaped down the ladder after his chum.
+
+"Which way did they go?" he asked.
+
+"Across the ditch and up the hill," said Tom. "Mr. Damon!" he called
+back to that eccentric man, "will you please remain there and watch the
+locomotive?"
+
+"I certainly will. And I'm armed, too," shouted Mr. Damon.  "Don't fear
+for this locomotive, Tom. I am right on the job."
+
+Tom waved his hand in reply, leaped the ditch, and started up through
+the wood. Ned was close behind him, and the two young men ran as hard
+as they could in the direction Tom had seen Andy O'Malley, followed by
+the giant, running.
+
+In places the earth was slippery with pine needles, and the ground was
+elsewhere rough. Therefore the chums did not make much speed in running
+after the giant and his quarry. But Tom was sure of the direction in
+which the two had disappeared, and he and Ned kept doggedly on.
+
+They went over the crest of the hill and lost sight of the siding and
+the locomotive. Here was a sharp descent into a gulch, and some rods
+away, in the bottom of this gully, the young fellows obtained their
+first sight of Koku. He was still running with mighty strides and was
+evidently within sight of the man he had set out after in such haste.
+
+"Hey! Koku!" shouted Tom Swift.
+
+The giant's hearing was of the keenest. He glanced back and raised his
+arm in greeting. But he did not slacken his pace.
+
+"He must see O'Malley, Tom," cried Ned Newton.
+
+"I am sure he does. And I want to get there about as soon as Koku grabs
+the fellow," panted Tom.
+
+"He'll maul O'Malley unmercifully," said Ned.
+
+"I don't want Koku to injure him," admitted Tom, and he increased his
+own stride as he plunged down into the gully.
+
+The young inventor distanced his chum within the next few moments. Tom
+ran like a deer. He reached the bottom of the gully and kept on after
+Koku's crashing footsteps. At every jump, too, he began to shout to the
+giant:
+
+"Koku! Hold him!"
+
+The giant's voice boomed back through the heavy timber: "I catch him! I
+hold him for Master! I break all um bones! Wait till Koku catch him!"
+
+"Hold him, Koku!" yelled Tom again. "Be careful and don't hurt him till
+I get there!"
+
+He could not see what the giant was doing. The timber was thicker down
+here. It might be that the giant would seize the man roughly. His zeal
+in Tom's cause was great, and, of course, his strength was enormous.
+
+Yet Tom did not want to call the giant off the trail. Andy O'Malley
+must be captured at this time. He had done enough, too much, indeed, in
+attempting the ruin of Tom's plans. Before the matter went any further
+the young inventor was determined that Montagne Lewis' spy should be
+put where he would be able to do no more harm.
+
+But he did not want the man permanently injured. He knew now that Koku
+was so wildly excited that he might set upon O'Malley as he would upon
+an enemy in his own country.
+
+"Koku! Stop! Wait for me!" Tom finally shouted.
+
+Now the young inventor got no reply from the giant. Had the latter got
+so far ahead that he no longer heard his master's command?
+
+Tom pounded on, working his legs like pistons, putting every last ounce
+of energy he possessed into his effort. This was indeed a desperate
+chase.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+Mr. Damon at Bay
+
+
+Mr. Wakefield Damon was a very odd and erratic gentleman, but he did
+not lack courage. He was much more disturbed by the possible injury to
+Tom Swift's invention by this collision with the bumper at the end of
+the timber siding than he had been by his own danger at the time of the
+accident.
+
+He did not understand enough about the devices Tom had built in the
+forward end of the locomotive cab to understand, by any casual
+examination, if they were at all injured. But when he climbed down
+beside the track he saw at once that the forward end of the locomotive
+had received more than a little injury.
+
+The pilot, or cow-catcher, looked more like an iron cobweb than it did
+like anything else. The wheels of the forward trucks had not left the
+track, but the impact of the heavy locomotive with the bumper had been
+so great that the latter was torn from its foundations. A little more
+and the electric locomotive would have shot off the end of the rails
+into the ditch.
+
+While Mr. Damon was examining the front of the locomotive, and Tom and
+Ned remained absent, he suddenly observed a group of men hurrying out
+of the forest on the other side of the H. & P. A.  right of way. They
+were not railroad men--at least, they were not dressed in uniform--but
+they were drawn immediately to the locomotive.
+
+The leader of the party was a squarely built man with a determined
+countenance and a heavy mustache much blacker than his iron gray hair.
+He was a bullying looking man, and he strode around the rear of the
+locomotive and came forward just as though he was confident of boarding
+the machine by right.
+
+Mr. Damon, knowing himself in the wilderness and not liking the
+appearance of this group of strangers, had retired at once to the cab,
+and now stood in the doorway.
+
+"Where's that young fool Swift?" growled the man with the dyed
+mustache, looking up at Mr. Damon and laying one hand upon the rail
+beside the ladder.
+
+"Don't know any such person," declared Mr. Damon promptly.
+
+"You don't know Tom Swift?" cried the man.
+
+"Oh! That's another matter," said Mr. Damon coolly. "I don't know any
+fool named Swift, either young or old. Bless my blinkers! I should say
+not."
+
+"Isn't he here?" demanded the man, gruffly.
+
+"Tom Swift isn't here just now--no."
+
+"I'm coming up," announced the stranger, and started to put his foot on
+the first rung of the iron ladder.
+
+"You're not," said Mr. Damon, promptly.
+
+"What's that?" ejaculated the man.
+
+"You only think you are coming up here. But you are not. Bless my
+fortune telling cards!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, "I should say not."
+
+At this point the black-mustached man began to splutter words and
+threats so fast that nobody could quite understand him. Mr. Damon,
+however, did not shrink in the least. He stood adamant in the doorway
+of the cab.
+
+Finding little relief in bad language, the enemy made another attempt
+to climb up. For one thing, he was physically brave. He did not call on
+his companions to go where he feared to.
+
+"I'll show you!" he bawled, and scrambled up the rungs of the ladder.
+
+Mr. Damon did show him. He drew from some pocket a black object with a
+bulb and a long barrel. Somebody below on the cinder path shouted:
+
+"Look out, boss he's got a gun!"
+
+At that moment the marauder reached out to seize Mr. Damon's coat. Then
+the object in Mr. Damon's hand spat a fine spray into the florid face
+of the enemy!
+
+"Whoo! Achoo! By gosh!" bawled the big man, and he fell back screaming
+other ejaculations.
+
+"Bless my face and eyes!" cried Mr. Damon. "What did I tell you? And
+you other fellows want to notice it. Tom Swift isn't here just at this
+precise moment; but he is guarding his locomotive just the same. He
+invented this ammonia pistol, and I should say it was effectual. Do
+you?"
+
+The eccentric man was shrewd enough now to keep behind the jamb of the
+cab door. For some of these fellows, he realized, might be armed with
+more deadly weapons than his own.
+
+"Hey, Mr. Lewis!" cried one big fellow, "d'you want we should get that
+fellow for you?"
+
+"I want to know how badly that blamed thing is smashed," replied the
+big man with the dyed mustache savagely. "Where's O'Malley?"
+
+"O'Malley's lit out, Boss, like I told you. That giant and them other
+fellows is after him."
+
+"Break into that cab! Oh! My eyes! I'll kill that old fool!  Break a
+way in there--What's that?"
+
+In pain as he was, his other senses were alert. He was first to hear
+the screeching whistle of the on-coming freight.
+
+"Think they got wind of this so quick?" demanded Montagne Lewis, for it
+was he. "Are they sending help from Cliff City?"
+
+"It's a regular freight," returned one of his men.
+
+"She's comm' a-whizzin'," added another. "Right down the eastbound
+track. If the crew see us--"
+
+"Wait!" commanded Lewis. "Isn't that switch open?"
+
+"You bet it is, Boss."
+
+"Let it be, then," cried the chief plotter. "Let 'em run into it. That
+freight will smash up this electric locomotive more completely than we
+could possibly do it. Stand away, men, and let her go!"
+
+A sharp curve in the right of way hid the siding, as well as the open
+switch into it, from the gaze of the engineer who held the throttle of
+the coming freight. His locomotive drew a string of empties, eastbound,
+and having had a heavy pull of it coming up the grade to Cliff City, as
+soon as he had got the highball from the yardmaster there, he had "let
+her out," and was now coming to the head of the down grade to Hammon at
+high speed.
+
+As it chanced, the wireless receiving station of Tom's new telephone
+system was not yet completed at Cliff City. The news of the wreck of
+the Hercules 0001 and her position had not been relayed to the master
+of the Cliff City yards.
+
+That employee of the H. & P. A. had taken a chance in letting the
+string of empties through his block. He knew the electric locomotive
+was somewhere ahead, but he thought it would be making its usual time
+and would have already passed Half Way.
+
+But the situation was serious. The freight was coming along at top
+speed and the switch into the siding was still open. Montagne Lewis and
+his crew of ruffians might well stand back and let what seemed sure to
+happen, happen! The driving freight must do more harm to Tom Swift's
+invention than they could have hoped to do with the sledges and bars
+they had brought with them to the spot.
+
+Mr. Wakefield Damon had shown his courage already. He would have been
+glad to do more to save Tom's locomotive from further injury, but he
+did not realize what was threatening. He did not hear the shriek of the
+freight engine's whistle.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+Putting the Enemy to Flight
+
+
+The pilot and headlight of the freight locomotive came around the turn
+and the freight thundered on toward the switch. Seeing the group of men
+standing by the stalled electric locomotive, and the locomotive itself
+in the clear of the siding, the driver of the freight did not suppose
+the switch was open. Nobody who was not a criminal would have stood by
+idly in such an emergency and let the freight run into an open switch.
+
+Therefore, for the first minute, the coming engineer did not observe
+his danger. Lewis and his gang stared at the head of the freight and
+did nothing. They had moved hastily back from the siding so as to be
+clear of the wreckage. Mr. Damon was in the front of the cab of
+Hercules 0001 and had no idea of the approaching menace.
+
+But of a sudden a loud shout echoed through the wood. Tom Swift came
+over the ridge and started toward his invention at top speed. From that
+height he saw the freight train coming, he observed the men standing at
+the siding, and he recognized Montagne Lewis, roughly as the railroad
+magnate was dressed.
+
+Instantly Tom realized what was about to happen--what would surely
+occur--and he saw what must be done if the utter wreck of his
+locomotive was to be averted. Yelling at the top of his voice, he
+leaped down the slope.
+
+"That's Swift!" shouted Lewis. "Stop him!" But the men he had hired to
+do his wicked work fell back instead of trying to halt the young
+inventor. It was not Tom's appearance that made them quail. Over the
+ridge there appeared a second figure--and a more fearful or threatening
+apparition none of them had ever before seen!
+
+Koku came running with the limp body of Andy O'Malley slung over his
+shoulder like a bag of meal. The fellows knew it was Andy from his
+dress.
+
+The giant came down the slope after Tom as though he wore the
+seven-league boots. The fellows Lewis had hired to wreck the electric
+locomotive shrank back from before both Tom and the giant.
+
+"Get him!" yelled the half blinded Lewis again.
+
+"Get your grandmother!" bawled one of the men suddenly. "Good-night!"
+
+He turned tail and ran, disappearing almost instantly into the thicker
+woods. And his mates, after a moment of wavering, sped after him. Lewis
+was left alone, quite helpless because of the ammonia fumes.
+
+As a matter of fact not all of O'Malley's predicament was due to Koku.
+The rascal, exhausted by his run and half blind through fright and
+rage, had stumbled, fallen, and struck his head on a root, which
+rendered him unconscious.
+
+This, of course, Lewis and his ruffians did not know. All the men of
+the railroad president's gang saw was the gigantic Koku coming along in
+great strides, bearing the unconscious O'Malley, who was a burly
+fellow, as though he were a featherweight. No wonder they fled from
+such a monster.
+
+Tom had reached the switch, and he was several seconds ahead of the
+freight locomotive. The engineer saw the open switch then; but he was
+too late to stop his train.
+
+Going into reverse, however, helped some. Tom seized the switch lever
+and threw it over, locking it in place, just as the forward trucks
+thundered upon the joint. The train swept by in safety, and the
+engineer leaned from his cab window to wave a grateful hand at the
+young inventor.
+
+Neither the engineer nor the crew of the freight understood the meaning
+of the scene at the timber siding. All they learned was that Tom Swift
+had saved the freight from a possible wreck.
+
+The young inventor turned sharply from the switch and motioned with his
+hand to Koku.
+
+"Throw that fellow into the cab, Koku," he commanded.
+
+The giant did as he was told, just as Ned Newton came panting to the
+spot.
+
+"Did they do any harm, Tom?" he cried. Then he saw Montagne Lewis
+standing by, and he seized his chum's arm. "Do you see what I see,
+Tom?" he demanded, earnestly.
+
+"I guess we both see the same snake," rejoined his chum. "And I mean to
+scotch it."
+
+"Montagne Lewis!" murmured Ned. "And we've got his chief tool."
+
+Tom said nothing to his chum, but he approached Lewis with determined
+mien.
+
+"I can see something has happened to you, Mr. Lewis, and I can guess
+what it is. The effect of that ammonia will blow away after a time. Ask
+your friend, Andy O'Malley. He knows all about it, for he sampled it
+back East, in Shopton."
+
+"I'm going to get square for this, young man," growled the railroad
+magnate. "You know who I am. And that fellow in the cab knew me, too.
+How dared he shoot that stuff into my face and eyes?"
+
+"I fancy it didn't take much daring on Mr. Damon's part," and Tom
+actually chuckled. "A big crook isn't any more important in our eyes
+than a little crook. We've got your henchman, O'Malley--"
+
+"And you'd better let him go. I'm telling you," snarled Lewis.  "I'll
+ruin you in this country, Tom Swift. I've got influence--"
+
+"You won't have much after this thing comes out. And believe me, I mean
+to spread it abroad. I've got nothing to win or lose from you, Mr.
+Lewis. As for O'Malley, I'll put him behind the bars for a good long
+term."
+
+"You'll do a lot--"
+
+"More than you think," said Tom. "Koku!" The giant had pitched
+O'Malley, who was still senseless, into the cab, and now was coming up
+behind Lewis.
+
+"Yes, Master," said the giant.
+
+"Get him!"
+
+"Yes, Master," said Koku, and to Lewis' startled amazement, the next
+instant he was in the hands of the giant!
+
+He screamed and threatened, and even kicked, to no avail. When he was
+pitched into the electric locomotive he was held under the threat of
+Mr. Damon's ammonia pistol until Tom and Ned and the giant entered and
+the door was shut. Then Koku proceeded to tie both the prisoners by
+wrist and ankle while the others examined the mechanism of the Hercules
+0001.
+
+The pantagraph had been torn off the trolley wires when the locomotive
+had gone on the siding. But now Tom climbed to the roof of the
+locomotive, and with Koku's aid managed to set the rear pantagraph at
+such an angle that its wheels caught the trolley cables again, and once
+more the current was pumped into the Hercules 0001.
+
+Tom tried out the several parts of the mechanism and found that,
+despite the jar of the collision, nothing was really injured.
+
+"I built this thing to withstand hard usage," he declared with pride.
+"The Swift Hercules Electric Locomotives will not be built for parlor
+ornaments. She is going to run into Hendrickton under her own power, in
+spite of a smashed cows catcher and target lights."
+
+"Is nothing really injured, Tom?" asked Mr. Damon. "Bless my dinner
+set! I thought everything had gone to smash when she hit that bumper."
+
+"She will be as good as new in a week," declared Tom, with conviction.
+
+This prophecy of the young inventor proved to be true. A week from that
+day the public test of the electric locomotive on the Hendrickton & Pas
+Alos Railroad was held. A picked delegation of railroad men was present
+to observe and marvel, with Mr. Bartholomew; but Montagne Lewis, the
+president of the H. & W., was not one of those who attended.
+
+Of course, Lewis soon got out of jail on bail. But the accusation
+against him was a serious one. His guilt would be proved by his own
+employee, Andy O'Malley, who was in a hospital for the time being.
+
+O'Malley had got enough. He had turned State's evidence and implicated
+his employer. Influential and wealthy as Lewis was, he could not escape
+trial with O'Malley when the time came.
+
+"One thing sure, Lewis has got all he wants. He isn't likely to try any
+more crooked work against the H. & P. A.," Mr. Bartholomew said. "I can
+thank you for that, Tom Swift, as well as for your invention. You
+have saved the day for my railroad."
+
+"You can thank Koku," chuckled Tom. "If he hadn't spied and identified
+'Big Feet,' we might not have caught O'Malley, and, through O'Malley,
+implicated Montagne Lewis. You give Koku a new suit of clothes, Mr.
+Bartholomew, and we will call it square. But be sure and have the
+pattern of the goods loud enough."
+
+This conversation took place while the party of guests was gathering to
+board Mr. Bartholomew's private car, attached to the Hercules 0001. Mr.
+Damon was one of the guests and so was Ned Newton. Tom took into the
+cab a crew of H. & P. A. men who would hereafter drive the huge
+locomotive and take care of her.
+
+The semaphore signal dropped and the electric locomotive started as
+quietly as a baby going to sleep! There was not a jar as the train
+moved off the siding and over the switches to the main line.
+
+The dispatcher had arranged a clear road for them. Tom knew that he had
+a free track ahead of him--a level of ninety-odd miles to the Hammon
+yards. As he passed the Hendrickton shops he touched the siren lever
+for a moment, and the shrill voice of the Hercules 0001 bade the town
+good-bye.
+
+The next minute the visitors in the private car grabbed out their
+split-second watches and began to murmur. The electric locomotive had
+begun to travel!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+Speed and Success
+
+
+"What town is that?"
+
+"Looks like a splotch of paint on a board fence, we went by so quick."
+
+"I've lost count, Bartholomew. Where are we?"
+
+Ned Newton listened to these comments from the visiting railroad men
+with delight. In reply to a question of his neighbor, the grinning
+financial manager of the Swift Construction Company paid:
+
+"No, sir. That isn't a picket fence. It's the telegraph poles you see,
+and they are no nearer together than on another railroad. But we're
+going some."
+
+"Bless my railroad stock!" shouted Mr. Damon, "I should say we were."
+
+The electric locomotive and the private car were hurled toward the Pas
+Alos Range at a speed that almost frightened some of the guests.
+
+"Three-quarters of an hour!" gasped one man as they began to see the
+outskirts of Hammon. "And ninety-six miles? Great Scott, Bartholomew!
+that's over two miles a minute!"
+
+"That is the speed we set out to get," Mr. Richard Bartholomew said,
+with quite as much pride as though he had done it all himself.
+
+But it had been his suggestion and his money that had accomplished this
+wonder. Tom Swift was willing to give the railroad president his share
+of the fame.
+
+The train scarcely slackened speed at Hammon, for Tom got the signal
+announcing a clear track ahead, and he bucked the grade with all the
+power he could get from the feed wires. This hill, so well known to him
+now, was surmounted at a slightly decreased speed; but it was a
+wonderful display of power after all.
+
+They went down the other side to Panboro and there linked up with an
+eastbound freight that the Hercules 0001 snatched over the mountain to
+Hammon at a pace slightly exceeding forty-five miles an hour--at least
+twice the speed that any two oil-burning locomotives could attain. As
+for the Jandels, they were not in the same class at all with Tom
+Swift's locomotive!
+
+"Bless my speedometer!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, when the train pulled down
+and stopped again at the Hendrickton terminal. "This is the greatest
+test of speed and power I ever heard of. Why, a coal burner or an oil
+burner isn't in it with this Hercules locomotive! What do you say, Mr.
+Bartholomew?"
+
+"I'll say I am satisfied--completely and thoroughly satisfied, Mr.
+Damon," said the president of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad
+frankly. "Mr. Swift has fulfilled his contract in every particular."
+
+An hour later the young inventor and his two friends were in conference
+with Mr. Bartholomew over a new contract. The bonus of a hundred
+thousand dollars would be paid at once to the Swift Construction
+Company. But as the elder Swift's name would be needed on the new
+contract for the building of other Hercules locomotives, Tom had an
+idea.
+
+"We won't send the papers East for father to sign," he said. "I want
+him to see the locomotive in real action. And I know where he can
+borrow a private car and come out here in comfort. Rad can come with
+him."
+
+"Bless my valentines!" ejaculated Mr. Damon, "I bet somebody else will
+come too."
+
+Mr. Damon must have been a prophet, for a fortnight later, when the
+borrowed car got in to the Hendrickton terminal at the tail of the
+transcontinental flyer, Tom Swift saw first of all Mary Nestor's rosy
+face on the platform of the car.
+
+"Tom! are you all right?" she cried, beaming down upon the young
+inventor.
+
+"No. Half of me is left," he said, grinning up at her. "You look great,
+Mary!"
+
+"Do you think so?" she cried, dimpling. "Well, if anybody should ask
+you, Mr. Tom Swift, you look very good to me."
+
+"Don't make me swell all up, Mary," he laughed. "How's father?"
+
+"Splendid! And Rad--"
+
+"Eradicate Sampson is sho' 'nough puffectly all right," broke in the
+voice of the old colored man, eager to make himself heard and seen.
+"Here I is, Massa Tom. What dat lizard doin' here?  Ain't he a sight?"
+
+The old man had caught sight of Koku in the wonderful new suit Mr.
+Bartholomew had ordered made for the giant. A Navajo blanket had
+nothing on that suit for a mixture of colors, and Koku strutted like a
+turkey-gobbler.
+
+"My lawsy!" gasped Rad again, "he's as purty as a sunset. Is dat de way
+de tailors out here build a man up? Sure's yo live, Massa Tom, I needs
+a new suit of clo'es myself."
+
+And before he got away from Hendrickton, Rad Sampson sported a suit off
+the same piece of goods as that of Koku's. Otherwise there might have
+been a lasting feud between the giant and the Swift's ancient serving
+man.
+
+Mr. Barton Swift had stood the easy journey in the private car very
+well. Before he would sign the contract that Mr. Bartholomew offered,
+he wished to see for himself just how good his son's invention was.
+
+They made another test from Hendrickton to Panboro, over the "official
+route," as Ned called it. The time made by Hercules 0001 was even a
+little better than before.
+
+That the invention was well nigh perfect, and that it could do even
+more than Mr. Bartholomew had hoped or Tom had claimed, was Mr. Swift's
+conviction.
+
+"Tom," he said to his son, "you have done a wonderful thing.  Not only
+have you completed a marvelous invention and gained thereby a lot of
+money, and more in prospect, but you have aided in the world's progress
+to no small degree.
+
+"Speed in transportation is the big problem before the world of
+commerce today. To move goods from point to point safely and cheaply,
+as well as rapidly, is the great task of this age. We are entering the
+Age of Speed. The railroads must solve the problem to compete with
+motor-truck traffic and fast boats on the lakes and rivers of our land.
+
+"You have, by your invention, shoved the clock of progress forward. I
+am proud of you, my boy. I know now that, no matter what may happen to
+me, you will make an enviable mark in the world of invention.
+
+"You have done much before for the Government in time of stress. But
+war engines of any kind are not worthy examples of inventive genius
+beside such a thing as this.
+
+"It is the inventions of peace, rather than those of war, that stand
+for human progress."
+
+Coming back over the mountain, Mary Nestor rode in the cab with Tom.
+She sat on the swivel stool, in fact, and handled the controls for part
+of the way. But she gave up the driver's place to Tom before they
+reached the timber siding east of Cliff City.
+
+"I cannot go by that place without a shudder," Mary said to the
+inventor. "Ned and Mr. Damon told me all about that accident.  Suppose
+you had been killed, Tom!"
+
+"I see I'll have to build an invention that will make that impossible,"
+chuckled the young fellow.
+
+"Make what impossible?"
+
+"Some invention that will make it positively certain that no matter
+what I do or where I go, nothing can harm me. Nothing else will suit
+you, Mary, I plainly see."
+
+"Well," returned the girl, smiling fondly at him. "I admit that would
+satisfy me completely!"
+
+
+
+
+
+This Isn't ALL!
+
+
+Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have made in
+this book?
+
+Would you like to read other stories continuing their adventures and
+experiences, or other books quite as entertaining by the same author?
+
+On the reverse side of the wrapper which comes with this book, you will
+find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store
+where you got this book.
+
+
+Don't throw away the Wrapper
+
+Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have.  But
+in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete
+catalog.
+
+
+THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
+
+By VICTOR APPLETON
+
+Uniform Style of Binding. Individual Colored Wrappers.
+           Every Volume Complete in Itself.
+Every boy possesses some form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is a
+bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make the most
+interesting kind of reading.
+
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR CYCLE
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE
+  TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS
+  TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE
+  TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER
+  TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
+  TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH
+  TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT OIL GUSHER
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS CHEST OF SECRETS
+  TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRLINE EXPRESS
+
+
+
+
+THE DON STURDY SERIES
+
+By VICTOR APPLETON
+
+Individual Colored Wrappers and Text illustrations by WALTER S. ROGERS
+
+Every Volume Complete in Itself
+
+In company with his uncles, one a mighty hunter and the other a noted
+scientist, Don Sturdy travels far and wide, gaining much useful
+knowledge and meeting many thrilling adventures.
+
+DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY;
+  Or, Autoing in the Land of the Caravans.
+
+An engrossing tale of the Sahara Desert, of encounters with wild
+animals and crafty Arabs.
+
+DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS;
+  Or, Lost in the Jungles of the Amazon.
+
+Don's uncle, the hunter, took an order for some of the biggest snakes
+to be found in South America--to be delivered alive! The filling of
+that order brought keen excitement to the boy.
+
+DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD;
+  Or, The Old Egyptian's Great Secret.
+
+A fascinating tale of exploration and adventure in the Valley of Kings
+in Egypt. Once the whole party became lost in the maze of cavelike
+tombs far underground.
+
+DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE;
+  Or, Cast Away in the Land of Ice.
+
+Don and his uncles joined an expedition bound by air across the north
+pole. A great polar blizzard nearly wrecks the airship.
+
+DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES;
+  Or, The Trail of the Ten Thousand Smokes.
+
+An absorbing tale of adventures among the volcanoes of Alaska in a
+territory but recently explored. A story that will make Don dearer to
+his readers than ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE RADIO BOYS SERIES (Trademark Registered)
+
+By ALLEN CHAPMAN
+
+Author of the "Railroad Series," Etc.  Individual Colored Wrappers.
+Illustrated.  Every Volume Complete in Itself.
+
+A new series for boys giving full details of radio work, both in
+sending and receiving--telling how small and large amateur sets can be
+made and operated, and how some boys got a lot of fun and adventure out
+of what they did. Each volume from first to last is so thoroughly
+fascinating, so strictly up-to-date and accurate, we feel sure all lads
+will peruse them with great delight.
+
+Each volume has a Foreword by Jack Binns, the well-known radio expert.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS' FIRST WIRELESS;
+  Or, Winning the Ferberton Prize.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS AT OCEAN POINT;
+  Or, The Messsage That Saved the Ship.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS AT THE SENDING STATION;
+  Or, Making Good in the Wireless Room.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS AT MOUNTAIN PASS;
+  Or, The Midnight Call for Assistance.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS TRAILING A VOICE;
+  Or, Solving a Wireless Mystery.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS WITH THE FOREST RANGERS;
+  Or, The Great Fire on Spruce Mountain.
+
+THE RADIO BOYS WITH THE ICEBERG PATROL;
+  Or, Making Safe the Ocean Lanes.
+
+RADIO BOYS WITH THE FLOOD FIGHTERS;
+  Or, Saving the City in the Valley.
+
+
+
+THE RAILROAD SERIES
+
+By ALLEN CHAPMAN
+
+Author of the "Radio Boys," Etc.
+
+Uniform Style of Binding. Illustrated.
+
+Every Volume Complete in Itself.
+
+
+In this line of books there is revealed the whole workings of a great
+American railroad system. There are adventures in abundance--railroad
+wrecks, dashes through forest fires, the pursuit of a "wildcat"
+locomotive, the disappearance of a pay car with a large sum of money on
+board--but there is much more than this--the intense rivalry among
+railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the
+getting through "on time" in spite of all obstacles, and the
+manipulation of railroad securities by evil men who wish to rule or
+ruin.
+
+RALPH OF THE ROUND HOUSE;
+  Or, Bound to Become a Railroad Man.
+
+RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER;
+  Or, Clearing the Track.
+
+RALPH ON THE ENGINE;
+  Or, The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail.
+
+RALPH ON THE OVERLAND EXPRESS;
+  Or, The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer.
+
+RALPH, THE TRAIN DISPATCHER;
+  Or, the Mystery of the Pay Car.
+
+RALPH ON THE ARMY TRAIN;
+  Or, The Young Railroader's Most Daring Exploit.
+
+RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER;
+  Or, The Wreck at Shadow Valley.
+
+RALPH AND THE MISSING MAIL POUCH;
+  Or, The Stolen Government Bonds.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDDLE CLUB BOOKS By ALICE DALE HARDY
+
+Individual Colored Wrappers. Attractively Illustrated.  Every Volume
+Complete in Itself.
+
+Here is as ingenious a series of books for little folks as has ever
+appeared since "Alice in Wonderland." The idea of the Riddle books is a
+little group of children--three girls and three boys decide to form a
+riddle club. Each book is full of the adventures and doings of these
+six youngsters, but as an added attraction each book is filled with a
+lot of the best riddles you ever heard.
+
+THE RIDDLE CLUB AT HOME
+
+An absorbing tale that all boys and girls will enjoy reading.  How the
+members of the club fixed up a clubroom in the Larue barn, and how
+they, later on, helped solve a most mysterious happening, and how one
+of the members won a valuable prize, is told in a manner to please
+every young reader.
+
+THE RIDDLE CLUB IN CAMP
+
+The club members went into camp on the edge of a beautiful lake. Here
+they had rousing good times swimming, boating and around the campfire.
+They fell in with a mysterious old man known as The Hermit of Triangle
+Island. Nobody knew his real name or where he came from until the
+propounding of a riddle solved these perplexing questions.
+
+THE RIDDLE CLUB THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS
+
+This volume takes in a great number of winter sports, including skating
+and sledding and the building of a huge snowman. It also gives the
+particulars of how the club treasurer lost the dues entrusted to his
+care and what the melting of the great snowman revealed.
+
+THE RIDDLE CLUB AT SUNRISE BEACH
+
+This volume tells how the club journeyed to the seashore and how they
+not only kept up their riddles but likewise had good times on the sand
+and on the water. Once they got lost in a fog and are marooned on an
+island. Here they made a discovery that greatly pleased the folks at
+home.
+
+
+
+
+THE HONEY BUNCH BOOKS
+
+By HELEN LOUISE THORNDYKE Individual Colored Wrappers and Text
+Illustrations Drawn by
+
+WALTER S. ROGERS
+
+
+A new line of fascinating tales for little girls. Honey Bunch is a
+dainty, thoughtful little girl, and to know her is to take her to your
+heart at once.
+
+HONEY BUNCH: JUST A LITTLE GIRL
+
+Happy days at home, helping mamma and the washerlady. And Honey Bunch
+helped the house painters too--or thought she did.
+
+HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST VISIT TO THE CITY
+
+What wonderful sights Honey Bunch saw when she went to visit her
+cousins in New York! And she got lost in a big hotel and wandered into
+a men's convention!
+
+HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST DAYS ON THE FARM
+
+Can you remember bow the farm looked the first time you visited it? How
+big the cows and horses were, and what a roomy place to play in the
+barn proved to be?
+
+HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST VISIT TO THE SEASHORE
+
+Honey Bunch soon got used to the big waves and thought playing in the
+sand great fun. And she visited a merry-go-round, and took part in a
+seaside pageant.
+
+HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST LITTLE GARDEN
+
+It was great sport to dig and to plant with one's own little garden
+tools. But best of all was when Honey Bunch won a prize at the flower
+show.
+
+HONEY BUNCH: HER FIRST DAYS IN CAMP
+
+It was a great adventure for Honey Bunch when she journeyed to Camp
+Snapdragon. It was wonderful to watch the men erect the tent, and
+wonderful to live in it and have good times on the shore and in the
+water.
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES
+
+By LAURA LEE HOPE
+
+Author of the "Bobbsey Twins," "Bunny Brown" Series, Etc.
+
+Uniform Style of Binding. Individual Colored Wrappers.
+
+Every Volume Complete in Itself.
+
+
+These tales take in the various adventures participated in by several
+bright, up-to-date girls who love outdoor life.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE;
+  Or, Camping and Tramping for Fun and Health.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE;
+  Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Motor Boat Gem.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR;
+  Or, The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP;
+  Or, Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA;
+  Or, Wintering in the Sunny South.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT OCEAN VIEW;
+  Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON PINE ISLAND;
+  Or, A Cave and What it Contained.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN ARMY SERVICE;
+  Or, Doing Their Bit for Uncle Sam.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT THE HOSTESS HOUSE;
+  Or, Doing Their Best For the Soldiers.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT BLUFF POINT;
+  Or, A Wreck and A Rescue.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT WILD ROSE LODGE;
+  Or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN THE SADDLE;
+  Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AROUND THE CAMPFIRE;
+  Or, The Old Maid of the Mountains.
+
+THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON CAPE COD;
+  Or, Sally Ann of Lighthouse Rock.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive, by
+Victor Appleton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SWIFT AND ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE ***
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