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.