Chapter X
A Strange Conversation
Mr. Wakefield Damon frequently came to the shops, for he was not alonevery friendly with the Swifts, but he was greatly interested in Tom'snew invention.
"If it goes as good as what you did for my chicken run," he declared,chuckling, "bless my dampers! you'll beat all the electric locomotivesin the market."
"That is easy, perhaps," said Tom smiling. "There are not many in themarket at the present time. But I don't know what mine will be. This isgoing to be some job."
"Bless my flues and clinkers!" cried Mr. Damon, "you are not losinghope, Tom Swift? Look what you did for my chicken run. And believe me,that entanglement will give a shock that makes a man stand right up andshake."
"Have you tried it yourself?" asked Tom.
"No. But my servant did. I saw him through the window of my study doingsome kind of a shimmy with the shovel. Thought he'd gone crazy. Then Isaw what he had done. It was early in the morning and I hadn't turnedthe current off, and he had put one hand against the wires. When hedropped the shovel as I told him to, bless my plyers and nippers! hewas all right."
"The current would not seriously hurt him," said Tom. "I was carefulabout that."
"It killed two tomcats," said Mr. Damon. "I certainly was glad of that,for those two ash-barrel cats kept the whole neighborhood awake. Blessmy claws and whiskers! how those two cats did use to yell. But when onetried to climb the wires and the other sprang on him, it was all over!That is, all over but the burial party."
Mr. Damon was on the ground when the mechanical equipment and a part ofthe electrical equipment of the new locomotive arrived and was set upin the erection shed. The length of the machine was what firstimpressed Ned Newton as well as Mr. Damon.
"Bless my yardstick!" exclaimed the eccentric man, "it's as long as agossip's tongue. What a monster it will be!"
"How long is it, Tom?" asked Ned Newton.
"When completed, and standing on its drivers and bogie truck andtrailer truck, from cow-catcher to rear bumper it will be a few inchesover ninety feet. And that is slightly longer than the biggest electriclocomotive so far built. But length does not so much enter into thevalue of the machine. I would have it built more compactly if I could."
"What is the horsepower?" asked Mr. Damon.
"I figure on forty-four hundred horsepower. The power must be receivedfrom a three thousand-volt direct-current trolley. There are twelvedriving-wheels, as you can see. Each pair of drivers will be driven bya twin-motor geared to the axles through a system of flexible springdrive. Remember, I have got to obtain both speed as well as power inthis locomotive, for it is being built to pull a passenger train--afast cross-continent express--to compete with the best passengerequipment in the country."
"Bless my combination ticket!" murmured Mr. Damon. "You have picked outsome task, and no mistake, Tom Swift."
"He'll do it," cried Ned, with his usual optimism when Tom had oncestarted on any experimental work. "Of course he will. Just as shestands there now, only half put together, I would be willing to bet afarm that she is a better locomotive than the Jandel patent."
"Three cheers!" laughed Tom. "Ned is as enthusiastic as usual. Butbelieve me, friends, we are not going to turn out a better locomotivethan the Jandel without both thought and work."
His friends' enthusiasm was heartening, however. No doubt of that. Henever let them into his experiment room, any more than he allowed hisworkmen in there. Aside from his own father, nobody really knew whatTom Swift was doing behind that always-locked door.
The huge structure of the locomotive was set up on the driving wheelsand leading and trailing trucks by Tom's chief foreman and a pickedcrew. Just such another locomotive had never been seen anywhere aboutShopton. Naturally the men at work on the monster began to speak of itoutside the works.
Not that they betrayed any secrets regarding the locomotive. In fact,as yet none of them knew anything about what Tom intended to do withthe big machine. But the story soon circulated that Tom Swift, theyoung inventor, was about to show all the previous builders of electriclocomotives how such machines should be built.
It was even whispered that Tom's objective was a two-mile-a-minutelocomotive. And when this was publicly known the information was notlong in seeping to the ears of certain men who had been keeping asclose a watch as they dared on the Swift Construction Company and theactivities of Tom himself.
Ned Newton went to the bank one Friday for money for the payroll of theworking and clerical force of the Swift Company. It was an errand henever relegated to any employee.
Ned had once worked himself in the bank, and naturally he knew many ofits employees as well as the officials. With his back to the generalwaiting room, he sat at the vice president's desk discussing some minormatter. Only a railing divided the vice president's enclosure from thelong settee on which waiting customers of the bank were seated.
Ned knew that there were two men directly behind him, whisperingtogether; but he paid no attention to them until he heard this phrase:
"It's time to explode in just five hours; then good-night to thatinvention, whatever it is."
This statement might mean almost anything--or nothing. Ordinarily NedNewton might not have paid any consideration to the words. But"invention" was a term that he could not overlook. His mind then wasfixed upon Tom's invention almost as closely as the mind of the younginventor himself.
Ned turned around slowly, as though idly, indeed, and tried to see thefaces of the two men behind him. One was a small, neatly dressed man ofprofessional appearance. He wore a Vandyke beard and eyeglasses. Theother's face Ned could not see; but as they both rose just then andstrolled toward the door of the bank he could observe that the fellowwas big and burly.
Ned wheeled to his friend, the vice president, and asked:
"Who are those men, Mr. Stanley? Do you know them?"
The pair were just going out through the revolving door. The vicepresident craned his neck for a look at them.
"Don't know the small man, Ned. But the other is named O'Malley, Ibelieve. Somebody introduced him here and he gets a check cashedoccasionally. Not a customer of the bank."
At that moment the name "O'Malley" did not mean anything to Ned Newton.But he bade his friend good-bye and went out after the two men. Theyhad disappeared.
Rad was in the electric runabout, waiting for him. The words spoken byO'Malley (Ned thought it must have been he who spoke of the inventionbecause of his deep voice) continued to disturb Ned's thought.
"Rad," he said, as he got into the runabout, "did you ever hear thename O'Malley?"
"Sure has," declared the colored man. "And it's a bad name and a badman owns it."
"Do you mean that?" exclaimed the financial manager of the SwiftConstruction Company, with increasing apprehension. "Who is he?"
"Why, Mr. Newton, don't you 'member dat man?"
"Who is he?" repeated Ned.
"Dat Andy O'Malley is de one what tried to hold up Massa Tom dat time.O'Malley is de man what's been spyin' on Massa Tom--"
"Great grief!" exclaimed Ned, breaking in with excitement. "I'll driveas fast as I can, Rad. There is something wrong at the works, I dobelieve!"
"What's wrong, Mr. Ned?" demanded Rad. "We just come from dere, andeveryt'ing was all right."
"I just heard something that O'Malley said. I want to get back in ahurry. I believe that scoundrel is attempting to blow up Tom'slocomotive. We've got to get to the works just as quick as we can."
Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive; Or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails Page 10