A NIGHT OF WORRY
About nine o’clock on the night when Tom Swift had witnessed the strange
actions of the man who so mysteriously disappeared, the telephone bell
tinkled in the Swift home. As Tom’s father was reading a scientific book
in which he was much engrossed, Mrs. Baggert went to the instrument.
Half-interested in the conversation, Mr. Swift listened to the one-sided
talk, hearing Mrs. Baggert say:
“Oh, how do you do, Miss Nestor? No, Tom isn’t here. I haven’t seen him
since supper. His father is here. Do you want to speak to him? What’s
that? Oh, all right. Yes, I’ll be sure to tell him.”
“Isn’t Tom over at Mary’s house?” asked the aged inventor, with a shade
of anxiety in his voice as he looked up from his book. He had guessed at
what he had not heard.
“No, he isn’t there, and Miss Nestor is getting tired of waiting, I
guess,” answered the housekeeper.
“Where is Tom?” asked his father.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Baggert replied. “He started for Shopton right
after supper, saying he had to buy some things at the hardware store
before it closed. I heard Mr. Ned tell him not to be late and Tom
promised he wouldn’t. I didn’t know then what Mr. Ned warned him not to
be late for, but I can guess now that it was in calling on Miss Nestor.”
“And he hasn’t arrived there yet,” murmured Mr. Swift. “That’s a bit
odd, for Tom doesn’t usually break his engagements—especially with Mary
Nestor,” and he smiled a little.
“Oh, Miss Nestor told me to say to you that she wasn’t in the least
worried,” Mrs. Baggert made haste to add. “She says she knows Tom is
very busy and something may have come up at the last moment. She says he
promised to take her to see a moving picture this evening. She has been
waiting some time, and she called up to say if he couldn’t come it would
be all right, and she would go to the second show with her mother.
That’s all the message was about.”
“Oh, well, I guess it’s all right then,” returned Mr. Swift, with an air
of relief. “Tom is probably delayed in Shopton, getting what he wanted.
But he should have telephoned, either here or to Mary. It isn’t fair to
keep a young lady waiting like that.”
“Miss Nestor said to be sure and tell him she wasn’t at all put out
because he didn’t come,” said Mrs. Baggert. “She knows it must be some
good reason that kept him away.”
“I hope it is,” said Mr. Swift. “But it isn’t like Tom to stay away
without sending some word.”
As the hours passed and the young inventor neither returned nor
communicated, the anxiety in his father’s mind grew, until, about
midnight when the front door was heard to open, Mr. Swift cried:
“Is that you, Tom? Where have you been? Why didn’t you send some word?
And you have broken your promise to call on Mary!”
“This isn’t Tom,” came in the voice of Ned Newton, who, of late, had
been living at the Swift home. “But you don’t mean to tell me Tom isn’t
here! I was just going to tell him he was in for a bad half hour the
next time he called on Mary.”
“No, Ned, Tom isn’t here,” said Mr. Swift, who had sat up past his usual
retiring hour to meet his son when he should arrive. “And he isn’t over
at Mary’s house, either.”
“I know he isn’t there,” Ned said. “Helen and I stopped in on our way
back from the pictures to find out why we hadn’t seen those two at the
show. We found Mary a bit disturbed because Tom had neither called nor
telephoned. That’s why I was going to tell him he was in for a bad time
when next he sees Mary.”
“But he isn’t here,” said Mr. Swift. “I can’t understand it. He went
over to Shopton directly after supper, Mrs. Baggert says, and he hasn’t
returned.”
“Oh, yes, he came back,” Ned replied quickly. “I saw him.”
“Where?” cried the aged inventor.
“Just outside the big fence—on the landing field, in fact. Tom was on
his way here then. He found what he wanted in some Shopton store, he
told me, and I said he’d better hurry if he was going to keep his date
with Mary. I was a bit late myself, so I left him and hurried on and he
started for the house.”
“Then something has happened to him, for he never got here!” exclaimed
Mr. Swift. “Something has happened!” He was getting excited and Ned did
not like that, for the aged man’s health was far from good.
“Oh, not necessarily,” said Ned, in easier tones than his own feelings
justified. “Tom’s all right, you can be sure of that. He knows how to
take care of himself. Besides, how could anything happen at his own
doorstep, so to speak? He was near the big fence.”
“Well, I’m sure something has happened,” Mr. Swift declared.
But Ned shook his head and smiled.
“More than likely,” he said, “Tom went into his private office to leave
what he had bought in Shopton. Once he was at his desk he saw something
he had forgotten to do, or he was taken with a sudden idea, and he sat
down to make some note about it before it slipped out of his mind.
“It isn’t the first time he has done that, nor the first time he has
made dates with Mary and then forgotten all about them. Don’t worry, Mr.
Swift, you’ll find Tom in his private office over at the works.”
“That is easily settled,” was the answer. “I’ll call him on the
telephone.”
There was an instrument in the living room where this conversation took
place. The Swift home and works were linked by intercommunicating
telephones, and Mr. Swift was soon plugging in on the circuit that
connected with Tom’s private office. While he was waiting Mrs. Baggert
came quietly into the room behind Mr. Swift.
“Is Tom home?” she asked of Ned, forming the words with her lips but not
speaking, since she did not want to disturb Mr. Swift. Ned shook his
head in negation, and a puzzled look spread over the face of the
housekeeper.
“They’re too easily worried,” mused Ned, half-smiling. “Tom is all
right, I’m sure.”
But this certainty gradually disappeared when several seconds went by
and there was no answer to the bell that must be ringing in Tom’s office
at the works.
“Isn’t he there?” Ned could not help asking.
“He doesn’t seem to be,” Mr. Swift replied.
“Maybe he’s on his way home,” Ned was saying when Mr. Swift suddenly
exclaimed:
“Some one is at the ’phone now! Oh, hello, Koku!” he called into the
transmitter. “Yes, I am here. But where’s Tom? Is he there? What? He
isn’t? Has he been there? No!”
The silence on Mr. Swift’s part, following his last word, told Ned and
Mrs. Baggert, more than anything else, how worried he was. He appeared
to be listening to what the giant at the other end of the wire was
saying. Then he spoke again:
“We’ll be right over, Koku. Yes, I’m coming and so is Mr. Newton. Don’t
bring Eradicate? Well, he might be of some help. There’s no use in you
being jealous. Look around until we get there. Tom may be in some of the
other buildings!”
Slowly Mr. Swift replaced the receiver on the hook and then, turning to
Ned and the housekeeper, he said:
“Tom isn’t there and hasn’t been since he left early in the afternoon.
Koku has just made his rounds and hasn’t seen him, but I told him to go
over the place again and have the other watchmen go with him. We’ll go
ourselves and help search. I’m sure something has happened to Tom!”