Chapter IX
Where was Koku?
Tom reached up swiftly and pushed over the lever that locked the twowindow sashes. In doing this he set his own patent burglar alarm. Ifthat lever was turned back again, or broken, the buzzers would be setringing 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 couldhave seen the flash of his shirt-sleeved arm. But he took no chance ofbeing observed from outside by rising to his feet.
On his hands and knees he crept away from the window, and out of thebathroom. Once there, he stood up, grabbed the portfolio, and withoutcoat or vest and as he was, dashed out of the bedroom. He had beenpositive that nobody but himself was astir in the big house, and he wasright.
He did not punch the light button when he entered the library. He knewwhere to put his hand upon an electric torch in the table drawer, andhe gained possession of this.
Then he went to the safe and twirled the knob and watched the indicatorfind the four numbers which were the "open sesame" to the burglar andfire-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 thefront 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 worsethan useless at such a time.
After all, the giant, Koku, was his main dependence under thesecircumstances. Tom crept to the outer door, opened it carefully, andslipped out, letting the spring lock click behind him. For the firsttime he realized that he was in his shirt and trousers and wore onlyfelt slippers on his feet.
But he was locked out now. He had no key. He must run the risk of thefine rain and the chill of the night air.
He stepped off the end of the porch and ran around the house. It wasto the roof of the rear porch that the marauder had climbed. But peeras he might from down in the yard, Tom could see no moving figure upthere near the bathroom window. It was pitch dark against the wall ofthe house.
He turned to glance up at the window of the sleeping room over thegarage where Koku was supposed to spend the night. But Tom knew thegiant was seldom there during the dark hours. He was as much of anight-prowler as a wildcat or an owl.
There was no light there in any case. But Koku did not use a lightmuch. He could see in the dark, like a wild animal. Tom did not want tocall him. If he must have Koku's help, he would have to climb thestairs to his bedside. The giant always aroused as wide awake as atnoonday.
But while the young inventor hesitated a sudden, but muffled, snap--thebreaking of metal--sounded. Tom knew instantly the direction from whichthe sound came.
Although he could see nothing up there at the bathroom window becauseof the rain and the deep shadow, he knew that the snapping sound meantthe severing of the window lock that he had so recently closed. Someinstrument had been forced under the bottom of the lower sash andpressure enough been brought to bear to break the thin steel lever.
On the heels of this sound came another. A muffled buzzing somewhere inthe house--again! again! And then, startlingly clear from the room overthe garage, the burglar alarm went off in Koku's chamber.
"It's all off now!" gasped Tom, and he ran to the foot of thehoneysuckle ladder up which he knew the enemy had climbed to get to theroof 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 washeard to announce. "No, it's da'k as--" And the voice trailed off intosilence.
"Tom! Tom!" the young fellow heard his aroused father shouting.
Tom knew that his father was in no danger. In fact Mr. Swift's voicedid not even betray apprehension. It was to the garage Tom looked foran explosion. But none came.
If Koku was up there the prolonged buzzing of the alarm did not awakehim. Therefore he could not be there. Tom realized that if the burglarwas 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 thatwe saw on the Waterfield Road the other day," muttered the younginventor.
Nothing stirred on the porch roof. Moment after moment slipped by. Tombegan 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 theroofed porch, Tom saw a light in Mr. Swift's room. Rad had evidentlygone to sleep again. It would take more than an intermittent buzzer torouse fully that colored man.
"When old Morpheus has a strangle hold on Rad, Gabriel's trump wouldscarcely awaken him," Tom muttered.
What had become of the enemy? If it was an ordinary burglar he wouldhave feared the electric alarm instantly. The buzzers were stillworking. But there was no sign of the man who had set them off at thebathroom window.
Suddenly Tom heard a door slam. It was from the front of the house. Hadhis father come downstairs to look around and see what the matter was?
The young fellow started around the house on a run. He heard heavybootsoles spurning the gravel of the path to the front gate. He arrivedat the far corner of the house in time to see a man dash through thegateway and run down the street, disappearing finally into thefast-driving rain.
"Fooled me! He went in and right through and down the stairs! Out thefront door!" gasped Tom. "Did he get anything? I wonder!"
He sprang up to the front porch and tried the door. It was lockedagain, of course. Should he ring the bell and get Rad or his fatherdown to the door?
And then, of a sudden, the principal mystery of all this affair bitinto Tom Swift's mind. The burglar had made his escape. He couldrelieve his father's anxiety later. It was his own puzzlement of mindthat he first wished to ease.
Where was Koku?
Even had the giant been circling the stockade around the shops hesurely must have come up to the home premises by this time. His keenears could not fail to hear the buzzers. They were still going andwould go until the switch was turned.
If the giant was in his room--Tom turned suddenly and started on a runfor the rear premises. He still carried the hand-lamp and it lit hisway into the garage door and up the narrow stairway. He shot the roundbeam of the lamp into Koku's room.
He had been obliged to have an iron bedstead made to order for thegiant. It stood against one wall of the room. The buzzer was snarlinglike a huge bumblebee above the head of the couch. Below it sprawledthe giant, eyes tightly closed and mouth slightly ajar. From the lipsof Koku were emitted sounds worthy of Rad Sampson in his deepestslumbers!
"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 airthat Tom smelled.
A folded cloth lay on the floor beside the couch. The young fellow sawat once that it had been originally placed over the giant's face, buthad slid off. And lucky for Koku that it had been dislodged!
"Chloroform!" muttered Tom. "He's drugged. It is no wonder he did nothear the burglar alarm."
In any event, the incident made one deep impression on Tom's mind. Thespies who he believed were working for the Hendrickton & WesternRailroad and its owner, Montagne Lewis, were desperate men. Tom couldnot believe that the fellow with the big feet was alone in Shopton andwas 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'sface had, perhaps, saved the man from suffocation.
Tom did not tell the giant when he aroused what the matter with himwas. Koku was ill enough! He was wrenched by interior spasms thatseemed almost to tear his huge body to pieces.
"What done got into dat big lump o' bone an' grizzle?" demandedEradicate. "He looks like, he
swallowed a volcano, and it just got towo'kin' right. My lawsy!"
"He is a sick man, all right," admitted Tom. "Looks like he wouldn'ttry to stab me to deaf wid no spear no mo'," went on Rad, inclined toapprove 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 callousresponse.
Just the same, the crotchety old colored man began to hop around inlively fashion with hot water, and later with coffee and otherstimulants; 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 laythe trouble to an evil genius of some kind. Perhaps, in spite of hishalf-civilized state, he was still a devil-worshiper. At any rate, hehad a vital respect for the forces of evil.
Naturally he considered this unknown and unexpected misery he sufferedthe result of malignant influences of some kind. Tom did not want himto suspect that the man with the big feet had any possible part in themystery. 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 workagain. In all probability he would have said that he had had enough.
Meanwhile Tom made a point of considering each step he took alonethereafter with particular care. He had a bodyguard--usually the giantafter the latter had recovered--between the works and the house. He didnot bring home any more the schedules or drawings connected with theelectric locomotive that he proposed to have built and to test insidethe stockade of the Swift Construction Company.
He even put a private detective to work on the matter of finding a mannamed Andy O'Malley who might be lurking around Shopton. He had apretty clear description of the fellow, for he had not only seen himonce, face to face by daylight, but Tom had written to the president ofthe H. & P. A. and had got from that gentleman a clear picture in wordsof the spy whom Mr. Bartholomew believed was working in the interestsof Montagne Lewis.
"If O'Malley appears in Shopton, look out. He is a bad character. He isnot only a notorious gunman, with several warrants out for him in theseparts, but he is a cruel and desperate man in any event. The minute youmark him, have him arrested and telegraph me. We'll get him extraditedand put him through for ten years or more right in this county." Theprivate investigator, however, as the weeks went by, could not find anyman who filled O'Malley's description.
Meanwhile Tom Swift had got what he called "a lead" and was working dayand night upon the invention that he believed might make even theJandel people respectful, if not a bit envious.
First of all Tom had arranged to have built all around inside thestockade a track of rails heavy enough to stand the wear and tear ofthe heaviest locomotive built. Meanwhile the various parts of hislocomotive were being built in several shops, but would be shipped tothe Swift Construction Company and assembled in Tom's try-out shed.
Great secrecy was of course maintained. Aside from the fact that thenew invention had something to do with electric motive power, nobodyabout the shops could say what the new industry portended. Save, ofcourse, the Swifts themselves, Ned Newton, and Mr. Damon, who was theSwifts' closest friend and sometimes had furnished additional capitalfor Tom's experiments.
There was a thing that Mr. Damon furnished Tom at this time that provedin the end to be of much importance. Before Tom had seized upon thisidea of his eccentric friend, and had made proper use of it, somethinghappened that came near to wrecking utterly Tom's invention andcompletely putting an end to Tom himself as an inventor.