Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive Part 28

He screamed and threatened, and even kicked, to no avail. When he was pitched into the electric locomotive he was held under the threat of Mr. Damon's ammonia pistol until Tom and Ned and the giant entered and the door was shut. Then Koku proceeded to tie both the prisoners by wrist and ankle while the others examined the mechanism of the Hercules 0001.

The pantagraph had been torn off the trolley wires when the locomotive had gone on the siding. But now Tom climbed to the roof of the locomotive, and with Koku's aid managed to set the rear pantagraph at such an angle that its wheels caught the trolley cables again, and once more the current was pumped into the Hercules 0001.

Tom tried out the several parts of the mechanism and found that, despite the jar of the collision, nothing was really injured.

"I built this thing to withstand hard usage," he declared with pride.

"The Swift Hercules Electric Locomotives will not be built for parlor ornaments. She is going to run into Hendrickton under her own power, in spite of a smashed cows catcher and target lights."

"Is nothing really injured, Tom?" asked Mr. Damon. "Bless my dinner set! I thought everything had gone to smash when she hit that b.u.mper."

"She will be as good as new in a week," declared Tom, with conviction.

This prophecy of the young inventor proved to be true. A week from that day the public test of the electric locomotive on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad was held. A picked delegation of railroad men was present to observe and marvel, with Mr. Bartholomew; but Montagne Lewis, the president of the H. & W., was not one of those who attended.

Of course, Lewis soon got out of jail on bail. But the accusation against him was a serious one. His guilt would be proved by his own employee, Andy O'Malley, who was in a hospital for the time being.

O'Malley had got enough. He had turned State's evidence and implicated his employer. Influential and wealthy as Lewis was, he could not escape trial with O'Malley when the time came.

"One thing sure, Lewis has got all he wants. He isn't likely to try any more crooked work against the H. & P. A.," Mr. Bartholomew said. "I can thank you for that, Tom Swift, as well as for your invention. You have saved the day for my railroad."

"You can thank Koku," chuckled Tom. "If he hadn't spied and identified 'Big Feet,' we might not have caught O'Malley, and, through O'Malley, implicated Montagne Lewis. You give Koku a new suit of clothes, Mr.

Bartholomew, and we will call it square. But be sure and have the pattern of the goods loud enough."

This conversation took place while the party of guests was gathering to board Mr. Bartholomew's private car, attached to the Hercules 0001. Mr.

Damon was one of the guests and so was Ned Newton. Tom took into the cab a crew of H. & P. A. men who would hereafter drive the huge locomotive and take care of her.

The semaph.o.r.e signal dropped and the electric locomotive started as quietly as a baby going to sleep! There was not a jar as the train moved off the siding and over the switches to the main line.

The dispatcher had arranged a clear road for them. Tom knew that he had a free track ahead of him--a level of ninety-odd miles to the Hammon yards. As he pa.s.sed the Hendrickton shops he touched the siren lever for a moment, and the shrill voice of the Hercules 0001 bade the town good-bye.

The next minute the visitors in the private car grabbed out their split-second watches and began to murmur. The electric locomotive had begun to travel!

Chapter XXV

Speed and Success

"What town is that?"

"Looks like a splotch of paint on a board fence, we went by so quick."

"I've lost count, Bartholomew. Where are we?"

Ned Newton listened to these comments from the visiting railroad men with delight. In reply to a question of his neighbor, the grinning financial manager of the Swift Construction Company paid:

"No, sir. That isn't a picket fence. It's the telegraph poles you see, and they are no nearer together than on another railroad. But we're going some."

"Bless my railroad stock!" shouted Mr. Damon, "I should say we were."

The electric locomotive and the private car were hurled toward the Pas Alos Range at a speed that almost frightened some of the guests.

"Three-quarters of an hour!" gasped one man as they began to see the outskirts of Hammon. "And ninety-six miles? Great Scott, Bartholomew!

that's over two miles a minute!"

"That is the speed we set out to get," Mr. Richard Bartholomew said, with quite as much pride as though he had done it all himself.

But it had been his suggestion and his money that had accomplished this wonder. Tom Swift was willing to give the railroad president his share of the fame.

The train scarcely slackened speed at Hammon, for Tom got the signal announcing a clear track ahead, and he bucked the grade with all the power he could get from the feed wires. This hill, so well known to him now, was surmounted at a slightly decreased speed; but it was a wonderful display of power after all.

They went down the other side to Panboro and there linked up with an eastbound freight that the Hercules 0001 s.n.a.t.c.hed over the mountain to Hammon at a pace slightly exceeding forty-five miles an hour--at least twice the speed that any two oil-burning locomotives could attain. As for the Jandels, they were not in the same cla.s.s at all with Tom Swift's locomotive!

"Bless my speedometer!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, when the train pulled down and stopped again at the Hendrickton terminal. "This is the greatest test of speed and power I ever heard of. Why, a coal burner or an oil burner isn't in it with this Hercules locomotive! What do you say, Mr.

Bartholomew?"

"I'll say I am satisfied--completely and thoroughly satisfied, Mr.

Damon," said the president of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railroad frankly. "Mr. Swift has fulfilled his contract in every particular."

An hour later the young inventor and his two friends were in conference with Mr. Bartholomew over a new contract. The bonus of a hundred thousand dollars would be paid at once to the Swift Construction Company. But as the elder Swift's name would be needed on the new contract for the building of other Hercules locomotives, Tom had an idea.

"We won't send the papers East for father to sign," he said. "I want him to see the locomotive in real action. And I know where he can borrow a private car and come out here in comfort. Rad can come with him."

"Bless my valentines!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Damon, "I bet somebody else will come too."

Mr. Damon must have been a prophet, for a fortnight later, when the borrowed car got in to the Hendrickton terminal at the tail of the transcontinental flyer, Tom Swift saw first of all Mary Nestor's rosy face on the platform of the car.

"Tom! are you all right?" she cried, beaming down upon the young inventor.

"No. Half of me is left," he said, grinning up at her. "You look great, Mary!"

"Do you think so?" she cried, dimpling. "Well, if anybody should ask you, Mr. Tom Swift, you look very good to me."

"Don't make me swell all up, Mary," he laughed. "How's father?"

"Splendid! And Rad--"

"Eradicate Sampson is sho' 'nough puffectly all right," broke in the voice of the old colored man, eager to make himself heard and seen.

"Here I is, Ma.s.sa Tom. What dat lizard doin' here? Ain't he a sight?"

The old man had caught sight of Koku in the wonderful new suit Mr.

Bartholomew had ordered made for the giant. A Navajo blanket had nothing on that suit for a mixture of colors, and Koku strutted like a turkey-gobbler.

"My lawsy!" gasped Rad again, "he's as purty as a sunset. Is dat de way de tailors out here build a man up? Sure's yo live, Ma.s.sa Tom, I needs a new suit of clo'es myself."

And before he got away from Hendrickton, Rad Sampson sported a suit off the same piece of goods as that of Koku's. Otherwise there might have been a lasting feud between the giant and the Swift's ancient serving man.