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Page 39
"I suppose we had, but I don't believe we'll find anything. I
can pretty nearly guess, now, what it was."
"What?" asked Mr. Damon.
"Well, some chauffeur was out for a ride in his employer's car
without permission. He got here, had an accident--maybe some
friends he took for a ride were hurt and they called for help.
The chauffeur knew if there was any publicity he'd be blamed, and
so he got away as quickly as he could. Guess the accident--if
that's what it was--didn't amount to much, or they couldn't have
run the car off. We've had our trouble for our pains."
"Well, maybe you're right, Tom Swift, butt all the same, I'd
like to have a look among those trees," said Mr. Damon.
"Oh. we'll look, all right," assented Tom, "but I doubt if we
find anything."
And he was right. They walked in and about the little grove,
flashing the light at intervals, but beyond marks of auto wheels
in the dust of the road, which was near the clump of maples,
there was nothing to indicate what had happened.
"Though there was some sort of fracas," declared Tom. "Look
where the dust is trampled down. There were several men here,
perhaps skylarking, or perhaps it was a fight."
"Some one must have been hurt, or they wouldn't have cried for
help," said Mr. Damon.
"Well, that's so. But perhaps it was some one not used to
riding in autos, and he may have imagined the accident was worse
than it was, and called for help involuntarily. There is no
evidence of any serious accident having happened--no spots of
blood, at any rate," and Tom laughed at his own grimness. "It was
a new car, too, or at least one with new tires on."
"How do you know?" asked Mr. Damon.
"Tell by the plain marks of the rubber tread in the dust," was
the answer. "Look," and Tom pointed to the wheel marks in the
focus of his electric lamp. "It's a new tire, too, with square
protuberances on the tread instead of the usual diamond or round
ones. A new kind of tire, all right."
He and Mr. Damon remained for a few minutes looking about the
place whence had come the calls for help, and then the eccentric
man remarked:
"Well, as long as we can't do anything here, Tom, we might as
well travel on; what do you say?"
"I agree with you. There isn't any use in staying. We'll get
the Air Scout fixed up and travel back home. But this was
something queer," mused Tom. "I hope it doesn't turn out later
that a crime has been committed, and we didn't show enough
gumption to prevent it."
"We couldn't prevent it. We heard the cries as soon as we
landed."
"Yes, but if we had rushed over at once we might have caught
the fellows. But I guess it was only a slight accident, and some
one was more frightened than hurt. We'll have to let it go at
that."
But the more he thought about it the more Tom Swift thought
there was something queer in that weird cry for help on the
lonely meadow in the darkness of the night.
CHAPTER XIV
THE TELEPHONE CALL
The defect in the motor which had caused Tom Swift to shut off
the power and drift down to earth was soon remedied, once the
young inventor began an examination of the craft. One of the oil
feeds had become choked and this automatically cut down the
gasoline supply, causing one or more cylinders to miss. It was a
safety device Tom had installed to prevent the motor running dry,
and so being damaged.
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