TOM SWIFT AND HIS
TALKING PICTURES
OR
The Greatest Invention on Record
BY
VICTOR APPLETON
AUTHOR OF
“TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORCYCLE,”
“TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS,”
“TOM SWIFT CIRCLING THE GLOBE,”
“THE DON STURDY SERIES,”
ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
‾Made in the United States of America‾
[Illustration: TOM SWIFT WAS THROWN OVERBOARD.]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
B O O K S F O R B O Y S
By VICTOR APPLETON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORCYCLE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORBOAT
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
TOM SWIFT CIRCLING THE GLOBE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS TALKING PICTURES
THE DON STURDY SERIES
DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY
DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS
DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD
DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE
DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES
DON STURDY IN THE PORT OF LOST SHIPS
DON STURDY AMONG THE GORILLAS
DON STURDY CAPTURED BY HEAD HUNTERS
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Copyright, 1928, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.
Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BLASTING FIRE........................... 1
II. NED DISAPPEARS.......................... 12
III. SUSPICIONS.............................. 24
IV. A STRANGE MESSAGE....................... 33
V. ON A MYSTERIOUS TRAIL................... 45
VI. TOO LATE................................ 55
VII. A WILD CHASE............................ 64
VIII. TWO CAPTIVES............................ 72
IX. ON THE ISLAND........................... 78
X. THE ESCAPE.............................. 90
XI. RESCUED................................. 100
XII. GREENBAUM THREATENS..................... 109
XIII. MR. DAMON DANCES........................ 115
XIV. KOKU IS DRUGGED......................... 125
XV. A SINISTER WARNING...................... 133
XVI. A STARTLING DISCOVERY................... 143
XVII. USELESS PLEADINGS....................... 151
XVIII. AN ANONYMOUS ADVERTISEMENT.............. 159
XIX. THE MEETING............................. 166
XX. MASKED MEN.............................. 171
XXI. A TEMPTING OFFER........................ 179
XXII. FLASHING LIGHTS......................... 186
XXIII. TOM ACCEPTS............................. 194
XXIV. A FINAL TEST............................ 201
XXV. A BRIGHT FUTURE......................... 209
TOM SWIFT AND HIS
TALKING PICTURES
CHAPTER I
BLASTING FIRE
ENTERING Tom Swift’s private laboratory from a room farther down the
hall, Ned Newton, who seemed somewhat out of breath, glanced at the
young inventor and asked:
“Do you seem to be getting anywhere with it, Tom?”
For a moment there was no reply. Tom, who had been leaning over a
complicated apparatus of wires, switches, and radio bulbs that glowed
dimly, was slowly turning a dial. Ned repeated his question, adding:
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“Trouble?” queried Tom, looking at Ned with eyes, however, that did not
see him.
“There must be some trouble,” insisted Ned, “or you’d have been capering
around here on one leg when I came in after doing my stuff back there,”
and he nodded toward the room farther down the hall. “How about it?”
Tom Swift glanced away from the apparatus, which very much resembled a
radio receiving set, to a yard-square burnished sheet of metal hanging
in front of him and connected to the other mechanism by several wires.
This burnished sheet appeared to be made of a mirror of some metal with
a square of heavy plate glass covering it.
“Can’t you answer?” inquired Ned, with a chuckle. “Boy, I certainly did
some acting back there all by myself! And I’d like to know whether I got
it through to you. Did I? Bet I did that song and dance for the fiftieth
time just now. Come on—wake up—did it come through? What’s the matter,
anyhow?”
“I—I’m thinking,” said Tom slowly.
“Don’t need an interpreter to tell me that!” and again Ned chuckled. “I
can see it with half an eye. But was it a success?”
“Yes, and no,” replied Tom, turning a switch which seemed to cut off
some electrical current, for at once a faint hum that had been audible
in the laboratory ceased. “Yes, and no. It came through all right; that
is, part of it did, but the rest——”
Tom ceased speaking and bent over his apparatus. He adjusted some set
screws, turned a couple of dials, and changed three of the radio tubes
which, now that the power was cut off, no longer glowed with light
beneath the quicksilver coatings on the thin glass.
“Do you want me to go back there and do it over?” asked Ned. “I’m
willing, if you say so,” and he started for the room he had just left—a
room wherein, under the focused rays of a battery of powerful lights and
close to a box containing a strange assortment of tubes and
transmitters, Ned had done his “stunt,” which consisted of singing and
dancing about on a small stage. He performed alone—there was no
audience but the distant one of Tom Swift in his laboratory several
hundred feet away.
“Wait a minute, Ned!” Tom Swift called sharply, when his chum, who was
also the financial manager of the Swift Construction Company, was about
to leave the room. “I guess we might as well call it a day’s work and
quit.”
“A night’s work, you mean!” retorted Ned, pointing to the window which
reflected the darkness outside. “Must be past twelve.”
“I guess it is,” admitted the young inventor, somewhat wearily. “I
didn’t notice. It’s a shame to keep you at it so long, Ned.”
“Oh, I don’t mind!” said the other quickly. “Not as long as it’s going
to be a success. But is it?”
Tom Swift hesitated, looked at the complicated machine in front of him
and slowly shook his head.
“Frankly, Ned, I can’t say,” he admitted. “You came through in a
measure. Of course I heard you plainly enough over the radio—that part
is simple enough. But the picture of you was too shadowy to be
satisfactory. It’s coming, though. I’ll make it come!” and Tom, in spite
of his weariness, showed some fighting spirit in his voice and manner.
“Could you identify me there?” and Ned pointed to that burnished metal
mirror with its covering of glass in the lower edge of which were fused
several wires.
“Oh, yes, I knew it was you, Ned, of course. But, as I say, the
projected picture was too visionary. It didn’t stand out clearly and
with depth the way I want it to. It was like a moving picture when the
man up in the booth goes to sleep on the job and the projector gets out
of focus. I’m rather disappointed.”
“I don’t mind going back and going through my stunt again, even for the
fifty-first performance,” offered Ned, with enthusiasm. “I don’t care
how late it is. Helen won’t expect me now.”
“Did you have an engagement?” asked Tom, looking sharply at his friend.
“And I kept you here doing a song and dance act half the night when
Helen expected you! That’s too bad! If I’d known——”
“Keep your hair on!” chuckled Ned. “I didn’t _really_ have a date with
Helen. I said I might drop around if there wasn’t anything to do here.
But she knows you well enough to make allowances for emergency work—and
this was just that.”
“Yes, it is an emergency all right,” returned Tom slowly. “But I shall
give it up for the night. No use keeping you any longer, Ned. Go on home
and I’ll try it again to-morrow with a different wave length. I think
that’s where the difficulty is. We’ll tackle it again in the morning.”
“All right,” assented Ned Newton, and he could not keep out of his voice
a little note of satisfaction and relief. Truth to tell, he was a bit
tired. For several weeks now he had been helping Tom Swift on the
latter’s newest idea—an invention, Tom declared, that would be the
greatest on record and one that would tend to revolutionize the radio
and moving picture industries.
This was a daring plan Tom had conceived of making a radio machine, both
sending and receiving, that would enable a person or any number of
persons not only to hear a distant performance in their own home, but
also see those taking part.
“I’ll make it possible,” declared Tom Swift, “for a man to sit in his
easy chair, smoking a cigar in his library, and, by a turn of a switch,
not only to hear the latest opera but also to see each and every
performer and witness the whole play.”
When Ned had asked how the vision would appear to the man, Tom had
replied:
“On an electrified screen attached to his radio receiver by which he
listens to the songs and music.”
As Tom said, the problem of transmitting an entire opera through the air
was simple enough. That had been done many times. So had the
transmitting of photographs by wireless. Also, in a limited way,
television had made it possible for a person in a dark room to be
visible to lookers-on in another apartment some distance away.
“But I am going to combine the two!” declared Tom Swift. “I want to make
it possible for a synchronized performance of seeing and hearing to take
place. Thus when a theater is equipped with my sending apparatus and I
have perfected my receiver, one need never go outside the house to enjoy
a theatrical performance or a concert.”
“But even if you’re successful, you won’t make any money out of it,”
declared Ned Newton, after first hearing of his chum’s ambitions. “Look
at the radio people! The air is free. Anybody who wants to can tune in
and listen to a million dollar concert without paying a cent. They don’t
even have to buy any special kind of receiver—they can roll their own,
so to speak. What’s to prevent them from stealing your stuff—your—what
do you call it, anyhow?”
“I haven’t settled on a name,” Tom said, with a smile. “Call it talking
pictures for the time being. Of course it’s entirely different from
moving pictures with phonograph attachment.”
“Well, what’s to prevent any one from tuning in on your talking
pictures?” asked Ned.
“This,” answered Tom, pointing to a small tube on one side of the
receiving apparatus. “This is a new device. Without it no one can see
and hear my pictures that will talk. This is protected by patents and no
one can use it without my sanction. That’s the secret.”
“Well, maybe you’ve got something there,” Ned admitted.
So, during the past months, he had helped Tom Swift bring the new
apparatus to such perfection as it now had.
The present night’s performance was only one of many. At first there had
been only blank failure. But by using different kinds of receiving
screens, finally settling on a mirror covered with electrified glass,
Tom had achieved a measure of success. Still, even now, the projected
image of the singing or talking performer in a distant room was too dim
to be commercially successful.
“We’ll go at it again to-morrow,” Tom told his chum as he let him out of
the laboratory and locked the door after him.
“It’s the biggest thing I ever attempted,” he said to himself, when Ned
had gone and he was alone in the room, “the very biggest, and I’m not
going to have it stolen from me. No one suspects as yet what I am
working on—no one except dad and Ned. But I wish I were nearer success.
I thought the image would come through clear to-night, but there was
that same haze—that same haze. I wonder——”
He paused and listened intently. Outside his door he heard
footsteps—cautious footsteps.
“Is that you, Ned?” he called. “Anything wrong?”
Tom did not open the door—he was taking no chances.
“That you, Ned?” he asked again, more sharply.
“No, Mr. Swift,” came back a voice with a foreign accent. “I am just
leaving my own laboratory. I think I have perfected that new magnetic
gear shift we have been working on.”
“That’s good,” Tom responded. He recognized the voice of Jacob
Greenbaum, a clever inventor whom he had recently engaged to work on
some side lines that occupied the Swift factory. Tom had an idea for a
new device to make easier the shifting of gears on automobiles. It was
an adaptation of the old magnetic selection that has often been tried
and which, up to date, had not been successful.
“Do you want to take a look at it?” asked Greenbaum, and from the
nearness of the voice Tom knew that the man was just outside the locked
door.
“No, thank you, Greenbaum, not now,” the young inventor replied. “I am
busy at something else. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You are working late, Mr. Swift,” went on the man. “Could I be of any
service to you? I should be glad——”
“No, thank you,” Tom said. “As for lateness, you are doing a bit of
overtime yourself.”
“Oh, yes; but I do not mind. I think I am on the right track. If you
would take a look——”
“No, not now,” and Tom’s voice was a bit sharp. “I am busy. Good night!”
There was no response for a moment, and then came a short:
“Good night!”
Greenbaum, however, did not immediately move away from the door and a
look of annoyance passed over Tom’s face as he bent over his secret
apparatus.
“What’s he hanging around for?” thought Tom. “I wonder if he can be a
spy? Two or three times I’ve caught him lurking around my private
laboratory. But he can’t get in since I put on the new lock, and I know
he hasn’t so much as poked his nose in during the times I have been here
experimenting. Still, I wonder——”
He was about to call out, to tell the man to go away when footsteps were
heard moving down the corridor and toward the outer door of the small
shop where most of the experimental work was carried on.
“Good riddance,” murmured Tom Swift. “I don’t want to be unjust to a
good workman, and Greenbaum is all of that, but I must confess I don’t
like the way he hangs around me. As soon as he finishes that magnetic
gear shift I’ll pay him well and let him go. Now let’s see if I can
think up another way of doing this. Perhaps if I hooked up the wave
distributor to the vibratory selector instead of to the polarizer we’d
get better vision. I’ll try that and have Ned perform again to-morrow.
Now I’ll take a look to see that my wire connections are all right and
then I think I’ll go to bed. I’m tired.”
Tom spent perhaps another half hour in getting things in readiness for
some new experiments, and, having made sure that everything connected
with his secret was put out of sight of possible prying eyes, the young
inventor started toward the door.
He inspected the new combination lock he had had put on, noting that it
was properly set, and then opened the door to step out. The experimental
laboratory was only a short walk from Tom’s home, the back of the Swift
Construction plant being some distance away.
As Tom opened the door there was a click, followed at once by a blinding
flash of blasting fire. Then a dull explosion shook the building. Tom
had no chance to leap back. The force of the blast hurled him forward,
across the corridor and out through a wire-screened window into the
yard. He fell heavily, uttered an inarticulate cry, and then seemed to
be sinking down into a pit of dense blackness.