THE NEW INVENTION
Ned Newton stood for several seconds intently gazing at his chum and
business associate after Tom Swift's emphatic rejoinder. Then, feeling
that as financial manager of the Swift plant he ought not too easily
give up a chance for making money, Ned remarked:
"Well, Tom, I suppose you know your own business best, but you ought to
have something to back up your opinion that Cunningham isn't straight."
"I've got enough to convince myself, Ned, though maybe not enough to
make you see things the way I do. In fact, I haven't any documentary
evidence, but I still maintain that Cunningham is a crook."
"In that case, of course we don't want anything to do with him," agreed
Ned. "But what sort of evidence have you, Tom?"
"I may be mistaken," replied Tom, who was willing to give any man the
benefit of a doubt; "but I have a very strong suspicion that the
delicate machinery Cunningham wanted us to manufacture for him would
infringe on the patents of certain English machines used for scientific
and optical work."
"Infringement!" exclaimed Ned.
"That's what it would be if we undertook it, and if it were found out
we would be liable to prosecution," stated Tom. "Even if we weren't
found out, of course I wouldn't undertake such work."
"Of course," agreed Ned heartily. "But are you sure? You have been
making some strong assertions against Cunningham."
"I don't believe I'll be called on to prove them in court, for this is
just between us," said Tom. "But I looked over the preliminary sketches
of the machinery this Englishman wanted us to make for him. At first
I was inclined to go on with it. But the other day I saw a notice
in an English publication concerning some new scientific machinery
just completed and it was almost identical with the blue prints and
specifications Cunningham showed me. If we turned out the machinery for
him he'd set up a shop over here for making those instruments and it
would get us in Dutch once it came out."
"That's right, Tom. I guess you acted wisely in turning him down.
He's mad, mad as a wet hen, but let him splutter. That's what he was
doing to the Queen's taste when he got in the auto with that rat-faced
individual."
"Yes, let him splutter," agreed Tom. "He can't harm us."
However, later on, he was to revise that opinion of the Englishman.
"Of course it's too bad to lose all that good money," mused Ned. "On a
hundred-thousand-dollar contract we could probably knock down twenty
per cent. at least."
"Yes," agreed Tom, "it would have been picking up a nice bunch of cash.
But I'm not going to make patent imitations under cover for anybody.
I want nothing to do with fraudulent stuff. We can get enough good
contracts, I think."
"Well," remarked Ned, with a shrug of his shoulders, "good contracts
aren't going around these days begging some one to take them into their
shop. But I dare say we shall pull through."
"Maybe I can get a lot of orders for my House on Wheels when I get it
completed," chuckled Tom.
"Nothing doing!" declared Ned, with a laugh. "You'll make only one
House on Wheels and I can see you and Mary rolling off in that to the
music of----"
"Hey! Where do you get that stuff?" exploded Tom, making an ineffectual
reach to punch his chum. "That's the second crack to-day. Dad made one
and now you. Where do you get it?"
"Well, since you turned down the Cunningham contract," went on Ned
somewhat hastily, producing some papers from his pocket, "suppose we
go into this Blakely matter. It isn't such a big thing, but we want to
keep the wheels turning."
"Sure," agreed Tom, and the two were soon deep in calculations.
To the old readers of these books Tom Swift needs no introduction.
But those to whom this volume comes as their first venture, it may be
necessary to say that Tom Swift was a brilliant young inventor who
lived with his father in the town of Shopton on Lake Carlopa.
The initial volume, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle," related
how Tom became possessed of a machine that was damaged when Mr.
Wakefield Damon, its rider, tried to climb a tree.
That was the beginning of Tom's mechanical activities, for he bought
the motorcycle cheap, repaired it, and had some wonderful adventures
on it. The tree-climbing incident also served to start the friendship
of Tom and Mr. Damon, a friendship that had lasted, though the
eccentric man, who blessed everything from his fountain pen to his
boots, was much older than Tom Swift.
After his experience with the motorcycle, the young inventor had many
startling and dangerous experiences in aircraft, submarines, and
in turning out, with the help of his father and with Ned Newton as
financial adviser, many strange machines.
Tom's latest invention is told of in the volume just before this one
you are now reading, entitled "Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures."
He made a machine which brought the images and voices of public
performers directly into the home. The making of this machine had
taken considerable cash, and though Tom had sold certain rights to a
syndicate, the money would not be coming in for some time.
"And that's one reason I was so anxious for this Cunningham contract to
go through," remarked Ned, who was talking business matters over with
Tom following the departure of the Englishman.
"We'll get other work to do," declared Tom. "To tell you the truth,
I'm not over anxious to clutter the shop up with any other stuff until
I get my House on Wheels well out of the way."
"Say, just what is this new invention, anyhow?" asked Ned. "I've been
so busy I haven't paid much attention to it."
"Well, the name tells just what it is," said Tom. "Briefly, it is a
glorified auto--a veritable house that one can not only live in but
travel in."
"You mean a house with rooms and a bath and--and--everything?" asked
Ned.
"That's it--a bath and everything. Of course, the rooms aren't large,
and the beds are to be folded back against the wall when they aren't in
use."
"What about eats?" asked Ned.
"There's to be a kitchen with an electric stove," replied Tom.
"Run a stove from a storage battery?" exclaimed Ned. "Say, it can't be
done! You'd have to have such a big battery that it would be a job to
cart it around."
"Not a storage battery," explained Tom. "My House on Wheels is to be
operated like some of the new, big jitneys, by a gas-electric motor.
There's a gasolene engine of twelve cylinders, and, by the way, it's
just arrived from Detroit, so Koku told me. Well, that motor operates
a dynamo which furnishes the current that drives the auto, operates the
stove and other appliances."
"Then you don't take power directly from the gasolene engine?" asked
Ned.
"Only in case of emergency; that is, if the electric motor goes on
the fritz. By using my gasolene motor to generate the current to run
the car I get a much smoother flow of power, and there are other
advantages."
"Does the dingus look anything like a house?" asked Ned.
"I object to your calling it a 'dingus,'" laughed the young inventor.
"But in outward appearance it is like a small house."
"With doors and windows?"
"Yes, and even window shutters. Aside from an entrance back of the
driver's seat, there is only one door, however, and that is at the
rear."
"How about a pair of steps?" asked Ned, thinking to stump his chum.
"I've provided for those, too. There are steps at the rear for easy
access to the interior, as my catalogs will say. Only, to keep small
boys from hitch-hiking on them, the steps fold up out of the way when
the House on Wheels is moving."
"Then you're really going to tour in it?" asked Ned.
"Sure!"
"Going to be pretty heavy, isn't it?"
"Oh, around two tons, I guess."
"It's no flivver, at any rate. But won't it move like a canal boat?"
"Canal boat! Do you want to insult me?" cried Tom. "On good roads
she'll do fifty or sixty miles an hour."
"Whew!" whistled Ned. "Guess I'd better go and take a look at this
thing."
"Come on," invited Tom.
He was preparing to lead the way out of his private office to that
part of the shop where he was constructing the new invention, when Mr.
Jackson, the manager, entered with an air that caused Tom suddenly to
ask:
"What's the matter?"