Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope | Page 4

her and not go off on any wild trips, as the good lady called them.
"But I don't see--well, suppose you explain," suggested Tom.
[Illustration: "Bless My Headache Pills!"]
"My wife wants me to go on a week-end house party with her next Friday and I detest 'em. Bless my headache pills, but it's enough to drive a man distracted. Now, I heard you boys talking about South America as I came in and I want to go along!"
"Well, Mr. Damon, if we were going South you know I'd be only too pleased to have you a member of the party. But Ned and I were merely talking about a shipment of freight I'm expecting from Giant Land."
"Koku's country?" asked Mr. Damon, somewhat astonished. "I thought Ambolata was still unknown to commerce. Bless my bill-of-lading, if the world isn't moving faster than I thought!"
[Illustration: Some Freight From Giant Land]
Tom smiled. "I had to arrange for an expedition through the consular office at Buenos Aires to get what I want. It seems we didn't receive all of that strange meteorite even with the help of your magic wig."
[Illustration: Tom Smiled and Explained]
Even Mr. Damon had to laugh when he recalled the ludicrous situation in which he had been placed in the jungles of South America. Surrounded by savages, he had absent-mindedly taken off his wig, thereby frightening the simple natives half out of their wits. They had thought he could scalp himself at will. Nevertheless, this action had saved the lives of Tom Swift and his party, ultimately enabling them to escape when the giants turned against them.
[Illustration: They Thought He Could Scalp Himself]
"Ah, those were the days, Tom," sighed the eccentric man, "those were the days! Even if you're not going off to the wilds, maybe you might give me some kind of a job here so that my wife can't drag me off to that house party. I feel it in my very bones that old Hiram Leatherby will be there and he ALWAYS singles me out to talk about his fossil collection!"
"I can sympathize with you," muttered Ned. "Mr. Leatherby used to be a director in the bank where I worked before Tom made me his business manager, and I've often thought he was a bit fossilized himself!"
[Illustration: "I'll See What Can Be Done."]
"Well, Mr. Damon, I'll see what can be done," promised Tom.
"Good!" came an enthusiastic exclamation. "Bless my cup of tea, I'm counting on you!"
"In the meantime, why don't you go up to the house and have our housekeeper, Mrs. Baggert, make you a cup of tea? Stop in the library and see Dad. He's been working too hard lately on his electrical book and he needs company."
[Illustration: "Stop in and See Dad."]
"I will, Tom. Your father is a mighty fine man. Oh, my goodness! Bless my poor memory, Tom, but I had some news for you. Good or bad I don't know, but I feel uneasy about it."
"Tell us what it is," suggested the young inventor.
[Illustration: "Two Men Called on Me."]
"It's a rather odd thing. You see, last evening I was reading my paper on the porch when two men called on me. Said they were long-lost relatives--cousins, or something of the sort--just back from a stay in South Africa. They seemed nice enough fellows, but bless my family tree, I had never heard of 'em! At any rate, they seemed to know a good deal about the Damon family and so I asked them to dinner. What got me thinking something might not be right was the way those chaps tried to pump me about you, Tom."
"Pump you?" asked young Swift, a puzzled look on his face. "About what?"
"Glass," said the eccentric character promptly. "Some kind of glass. Bless my windshield-wiper, what was it? Oh, yes! Flexible glass, that was it."
[Illustration: "They Tried to Pump Me."]
Tom and Ned exchanged startled glances. For many months experiments directed toward the production of a glass as bendable as rubber had been going forward in the Swift plant. Every possible precaution had been taken to cloak the work in deepest secrecy, yet somewhere evidently a leak had developed among Tom's employees.
[Illustration: Tom and Ned Exchanged Glances]
"Are these men still at your home, Mr. Damon?" asked Ned, a worried look on his face.
"No, they left after dinner. Mr. Brown said they had some important business up state. Is this glass business some new invention, Tom?"
"I hope it will be. So far my experiments haven't turned out successfully. But I can't understand how anyone outside our plant could have known about them."
[Illustration: "They Left After Dinner."]
Mr. Damon could tell little more about his self-styled relatives. After giving a description of the two men he took his leave. The boys were rather worried about the information he had brought along.
"It's not so much the