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Page 32
"I was going to ask for work. I'm a. good machinist and I
wanted a job."
"How did you get in? Who admitted you at the gate?"
"I--I jest walked in," said the man, but Tom knew this could
not be true, as no strangers were admitted without a permit and
none had been issued. The man denied knowing anything about
Bower, but the latter's flight was evidence enough that something
was wrong.
Not wishing to go to the trouble of having the man arrested
merely as a trespasser, Tom let him go after his clothes had been
dried on a boiler in one of the shops.
"Take him to the gate, and tell him if he comes back he'll get
another dose of the same kind of medicine," ordered Tom to one of
the guards at the plant, and when the latter had reported that
this had been done, he added in an earnest tone:
"He went off talking to himself and saying he'd get even with
you, Mr. Swift."
"All right," said Tom easily. "I'll be on the watch."
The young inventor made a thorough examination of his
experiment shop and the test motor. No damage seemed to have been
done, and Tom began to think he had been too quick for the
conspirators, if such they were. His plans and drawings were
intact, and though Bower might have given a copy to the stranger
with the gold tooth, the latter did not take any away with him.
That he had some papers he wished to conceal and escape with,
seemed certain, but the splash into the mud hole had ended this.
No trace was found of Bower, and an effort Tom made to
ascertain if the man was a spy in the employ of Gale and Ware
came to naught. The machinist had come well recommended, and the
firm where he was last employed had nothing but good to say of
him.
"Well, it's a mystery," decided Tom. "However, I got out of it
pretty well. Only if that gold-tooth individual shows up again he
won't get off so easily.
CHAPTER XI
A NIGHT TRIP
Taking a lesson from what had happened, Tom was very much more
careful in the following experiments on his new, silent motor. He
made some changes in his shop, and took Jackson in to help on the
new machine, thus insuring perfect secrecy as the apparatus
developed.
Tom also changed the safe in which he kept his plans, for the
one he had used previous to the episode in which Bower and the
stranger who took the mud bath figured, was one the combination
of which could easily be ascertained by an expert. The new safe
was more complicated, and Tom felt that his plans,
specifications, and formulae which he had worked out were in less
danger.
"I can just about figure out what happened," said Ned Newton to
Tom, when told of the circumstances. "These Universal people were
provoked because you wouldn't give them the benefit of your
experience on their flying machines, and so they sent a spy to
get work with you. They, perhaps, hoped to secure some of your
ideas for their own, or they may have had a deeper motive."
"What deeper motive could they have, Ned?" "They might have
hoped to disable you, or some of your machines, so that you
couldn't compete with them. They're unscrupulous, I hear, and
will do anything to succeed and make money. So be on your guard
against them."
"I will," Tom promised. "But I don't believe there's any more
danger now. Anyhow, I have to take some chances."
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