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Updated: June 30, 2025
"Does that look as if I lost the keys in your boathouse?" demanded the bully sneeringly. "I wouldn't have advertised them that way if I' been trying to keep my visit quiet. Besides, I can prove that I was out of town several nights. I was over to an entertainment in Mansburg one night and I didn't get home until two o'clock in the morning, because my machine broke down. Ask Ned Newton.
Andy Foger turned for an instant's glance behind. Then he opened the throttle still wider, and exclaimed: "Let it go, Sam. We can get another. I want to see what time I can make to Mansburg! I want to break a record, if I can." "Look out, or you'll break something else!" cried a lad on the rear seat. "There's a fellow on a bicycle just ahead of us. Take care, Andy!"
He picked up an envelope that had dropped where the stranger had been standing. "The man lost this from his pocket, dad," said Tom eagerly. "It's a telegram. Shall we look at it?" "I think we will be justified in protecting ourselves. Is the envelope open?" "Yes." "Then read the telegram." Tom drew out a folded yellow slip of paper. It was a short message. He read: "'Anson Morse, Mansburg.
To prevent any further information concerning my plans becoming public, I sent you to Mansburg to-day. But it seems that the precaution was of little avail. Another matter of surprise was the information that I was infringing on the patent of some one else. I had a very careful examination made, and I found that the syndicate of rich men was wrong. I was not infringing.
Coming in rather late from his trip to Mansburg, and thinking of some things he and Miss Nestor had talked about, Tom was rather surprised, on reaching the house, to see a light in his father's particular room, where the aged inventor did his reading and his planning of new devices. "Dad's up rather late," said Tom to himself. "I wonder if he's studying over some new machine."
We shall need a few more aluminum bolts, though, and if you don't mind you might jump on your motor-cycle and run to Mansburg for them. Merton's machine shop ought to have some." Mansburg was the nearest large city to Shopton, and Merton was a machinist who frequently did work for Mr. Swift. "All right," agreed Tom. "I'll start now. How many will you need?" "Oh, a couple of dozen."
"Oh, I've got to go to Mansburg to get some steel tubes for my new battery," he replied. "I thought I had some large enough, but I haven't." Mansburg was a good-sized town, near Shopton. "Then I wish you'd bring me a bottle of stove polish," requested the housekeeper. "The liquid kind. I'm out of it, and the stove is as red as a cow."
"I guess we'll smash some records, too, if that engine works as well when it's installed as it does now." Tom had purchased the bolts, and was on his way back with them, when, as he passed through one of the outlying streets of Mansburg, something went wrong with his motor-cycle.
Along the pleasant country roads on a fine day in April rode Tom Swift on his way to Mansburg to register the letter. As he descended a little hill he saw, some distance away, but coming toward him, a great cloud of dust. "Somebody must be driving a herd of cattle along the road," thought Tom. "I hope they don't get in my way, or, rather, I hope I don't get in theirs.
No one is allowed there!" and looking from an upper window, Tom saw his father running toward a stranger, who was just stepping inside the shop where Mr. Swift was constructing his turbine motor. Tom started as he saw that the stranger was the same black-mustached man whom he had noticed in the post-office, and, later, in the restaurant at Mansburg.
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