VIOLENT THREATS
Tom Swift's companion in the automobile was sufficiently acquainted
with this old expression to understand readily what it meant. And as he
directed his car as close as was safe to the blazing car, Mr. Damon
asked:
"Are you going to put out that fire for them, Tom?"
"I'm going to try," was the grim answer.
The young inventor was rapidly taking out of wrapping paper a metal
cylinder with a short nozzle on one end and a handle on the other. It
was, obviously, a hand fire extinguisher of a type familiar to all.
"Wait Tom, I'll slow up a little more," said Mr. Damon, as he applied
the brakes with more force. "Bless my court plaster! don't jump and
injure yourself."
But Tom Swift was sufficiently agile to leap from the automobile when
it was still making good speed. He did not want Mr. Damon to approach
too close to the burning car, for there might be an explosion. At the
same time, he rather discounted the risk to himself, for he ran right
in, while the two men, who had leaped from the blazing machine, hurried
to a safe distance.
Tom held in readiness a small hand extinguisher. It was one he had
constructed from an old one found in the shop, but it contained some of
his own chemicals, the original solution having been used at some time
or other. It was the intention of the young inventor to put on the
market a house-size extinguisher after he had disposed of his big
airship invention.
"Look out there! The gasoline tank may go up!" cried Field, the small
man with the big voice.
Tom did not answer, but ran in as close as was necessary and began to
play a small stream from his hand extinguisher on the blazing car. He
was thus able to direct the white, frothy chemical better than when he
had shot it from the airship, and in a few seconds only some wisps of
curling smoke remained to tell of the presence of the fire. The
automobile was badly charred, but the damage was not past redemption.
"Bless my check book! you did the trick, Tom," cried Mr. Damon, as he
alighted and came up to congratulate his companion.
"Yes. But this wasn't much," Tom said. "I didn't use half the charge.
Short circuit?" he asked Field and Melling who were now returning,
having seen that the danger was passed.
"I--I guess so," replied Melling, in his squeaky voice. "We--we are
much obliged to you."
"No thanks necessary," said Tom, a bit shortly, as he turned to go back
with Mr. Damon to their car. "It's what any one would do under like
circumstances."
"Only you did it very effectively," observed Field.
Tom was wondering if they knew who he was and of his association with
Josephus Baxter. He did not believe the men recognized him as the
person who had been at the Meadow Inn one day with Mary. They had
hardly glanced at him then, he thought.
"That's a mighty powerful extinguisher you have there, young man," said
Melling. "May I ask the make of it? We ought to carry one like it on
our car," he told his companion.
"It is the Swift Aerial Fire Extinguisher," said Tom gravely, with a
glance at Mr. Damon.
"The Swift--Tom Swift?" exclaimed Melling. "Do you mean--"
"I am Tom Swift," put in the young inventor quickly. "And this is one
of my inventions. I might add," he said slowly, looking first Melling
and then Field full in the face, "that I was aided in perfecting the
chemical extinguisher by Josephus Baxter."
The effect on the two men, whom Tom believed were scoundrels, was
marked.
"Baxter!" cried Field.
"Is he associated with you?" demanded Melling.
"Not officially," Tom answered, delighted at the chance to "rub it in,"
as he expressed it later. "I have been helping him, and he has been
helping me since he lost his dye formulae in--in your fire!"
"Does he say he lost them in the fire of our factory?" demanded Field
aggressively.
"He believes he did," asserted Tom. "I helped carry him out of the
laboratory of your place when he was almost dead from suffocation. He
remembers that he had the formulae then, but since has been unable to
find them."
"He'd better be careful how he accuses us!" blustered Field, in his big
voice.
"We could have the law on him for that!" squeaked the bigger Melling.
"He hasn't accused you," said Tom easily. "He only says the formulae
disappeared during the fire in your place, and he is just wondering,
that is all--just wondering!"
"Well, he--we, I--that is, we haven't anything from Baxter that we
didn't pay for," declared Field. "And if he goes about saying such
things he'd better be careful. I am going--"
But he suddenly became silent as his companion's elbow nudged him. And
then Melling took up the talk, saying:
"We're much obliged to you, Mr. Swift, for putting out the fire in our
car. But for you it would have been destroyed. And if you ever want to
sell the extinguisher process of yours, you'll find us in the market.
We are going into the dye business on a large scale, and we can always
use new chemical combinations."
"My extinguisher is not for sale," said Tom dryly. "Come on, Mr. Damon.
We can take you into town, I suppose," Tom went on, looking at his
eccentric friend for confirmation, and finding it in a nod. "But I
doubt if we could tow you, as we are in a hurry, and--"
"Oh, thank you, we'll look over our machine before we leave it," said
Melling. "It may be that we can get it to go."
Tom doubted this, after a look at the charred section, but he easily
understood the dislike of the men, upon whose heads he had heaped coals
of fire, to ride with him and Mr. Damon.
So Field and Melling were left standing in the road near their stranded
car, which, but for Tom Swift's prompt action, would have been only a
heap of ruins.
Tom first visited the man who had a candy machine, in which the owner
wanted to interest Mr. Damon. After seeing a demonstration and giving
his opinion, he attended to his own affairs, in which his hand
extinguisher played a part. Then he called on Mary Nestor at her
relative's home.
"Oh, but it's good to see you again, Tom!" cried Mary, after the first
greeting. "What have you been doing, and what's all that white stuff on
your coat?"
"Fire extinguisher chemical," Tom answered, and he related what had
happened.
"What's the matter with your aunt, Mary? She seems worried about
something," he said, after the aunt with whom Mary was staying had come
in, greeted Tom briefly, and gone out again.
"Oh, she and Uncle Jasper are worried over money matters, I believe,"
Mary said. "Uncle Jasper invested heavily in the Landmark Building
here, and now, I understand, it is discovered that it was put up in
violation of the building laws--something about not being fire-proof.
Uncle Jasper is likely to lose considerable money.
"It isn't that it will make him so very poor," Mary went on. "But
Uncle Barton Keith--you remember you went on the undersea search with
him--Uncle Barton warned Uncle Jasper not to go into the Landmark
Building scheme."
"And Uncle Jasper did, I take it," said Tom.
"Yes. And now he's sorry, for not only may he lose money, but Uncle
Barton will laugh at him, and Uncle Jasper hates that worse than losing
a lot. But tell me about yourself, Tom. What have you been doing? And
is Eradicate going to get better?"
"I hope so," Tom said. "As for me--"
But he was interrupted by loud voices in the hall. He recognized the
tones of Mary's Uncle Jasper saying:
"They're scoundrels, that's what they are! Just plain scoundrels! When
I accuse them of swindling me and others in that Landmark Building deal
they have the nerve to ask me to invest money in some secret dye
formulae they claim will revolutionize the industry! Bah! They're
scoundrels, that's what they are--Field and Melling are scoundrels, and
I'm going to have them arrested!"