A Trip to the Mountain of Mystery

By VICTOR APPLETON

Author of "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle," "Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers," "Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures," "The Don Sturdy Series," Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1929, by GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.

"A RACE! WE'LL SEE WHAT YOU CAN DO AGAINST THE HOUSE ON WHEELS!"

CHAPTER I

STRONG WORDS

Tom Swift, with a negative shake of his head, shoved several papers across the table that separated him from a burly, red-faced man whose eyes narrowly observed the young inventor.

"Then you refuse this contract, Mr. Swift—a contract for constructing over one hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery on which you can make a handsome profit? You absolutely refuse it?"

The red-faced man in his eagerness was leaning forward now.

"Yes, Mr. Cunningham, I refuse!" was Tom's crisp answer. "The Swift Construction Company does not care to handle it."

Mr. Barton Swift, father of the young man who thus calmly turned down what seemed like a good business proposition, nodded in affirmation of what his son had said.

"Is that your last word?" asked Basil Cunningham, who plainly showed his English ancestry, not only in his face and figure but in his general bearing and manner. "This refusal is final?" he inquired.

"Quite final and complete," answered Tom, as he added another document to the pile of those he had pushed toward his visitor. They were blue prints, specifications, and contract forms, but they all went across the table. "The matter is closed."

"But, look here! I say, now!" and Mr. Cunningham began to wax excited, not to say wroth. "I can't understand——"

"Do you mean to say you don't understand English?" asked Mr. Swift, and the smile on the face of the aged inventor took away whatever sting there might otherwise have been in the words. "I thought my son spoke very plainly. He said 'no,' and that's what he means."

"But look here, Mr. Swift! Do you agree with him?"

"Absolutely!"

"And you won't consider the contracts further?"

"The matter is closed, I told you!" and Tom Swift's voice was a bit sharp now.

With an imperious gesture the burly Englishman gathered up his papers and began to stuff them into a leather brief case bulging with other documents. If possible the red of his face deepened.

"Well," he began, "of all the——"

Tom Swift looked up sharply. He was on the verge of saying something that, he himself admitted, he might later have been sorry for when the door of the private office opened and a veritable giant of a man fairly squeezed his way through the doorway.

"What is it, Koku?" asked Tom, not quite pleased with such an interruption at this time.

"Excuse, Master," murmured the foreign giant, whose struggle with a strange tongue sometimes got the best of him. "But new engine him have come an' Mr. Jackson say him got to be lift up—so I lift if you want."

As if to demonstrate his strength, the giant put one finger under the edge of the heavy table around which the three men sat and, with as much ease as if he were lifting a feather, tilted it.

"My word, man! Don't do that!" cried Mr. Cunningham, for one of his feet was close to the leg of the table and he evidently feared the weight would come down on his toes when Koku let go.

"Don't worry," said Tom, with a smile. "Koku won't drop it."

Fascinated by this remarkable exhibition of strength, by which the giant raised several hundred pounds on one finger, the Englishman started to move from his proximity to Koku. But there was no need of alarm, though the timely entrance of Tom Swift's gigantic henchman had evidently stopped a tirade that was on the lips of the visitor.

"That will do, Koku," said Tom, in a low voice. "I will see Mr. Jackson shortly and look at the new engine."

"Yes, Master," murmured the giant, whose whisper, however, was a hoarse bellow in contrast with others.

Koku took himself out and Cunningham, staring at the closed door as though he could not believe what he had seen, continued to stuff his rejected contracts into his case.

"I'm sorry about this," said the Englishman in more subdued tones than he had used before the advent of Koku. "I'm not only sorry, but I'm disappointed and I think I haven't been fairly treated." His anger was rising again, that was evident.

"How do you mean—not fairly treated?" asked Tom sharply.

"Why, dash it all, when I first broached this matter to you I was as much as given to understand that your firm would go ahead and make the apparatus for me."

"You were given to understand nothing of the sort," replied Tom quietly.

"I say I was!" and the Englishman banged his fist hard on the heavy table that Koku had raised with one finger. "I tell you I have been shamefully treated here, and I'm not going to stand it. I——"

Again the door suddenly opened and Basil Cunningham made a move as if to hide beneath the table he had so lately pounded. But instead of Koku, this time the intruder was an aged and decrepit colored man whose whitening, curly hair made a pathetic frame for his black, wizened face. No gentler creature, as a man, could well have been visioned, and Mr. Cunningham, who had evidently been expecting a return of the giant, looked a bit foolish.

"Did yo' all call me, Massa Swift?" asked the negro gently.

"No, Rad, we didn't call," said Tom, with a kind smile at the aged servant who often claimed, regarding the young inventor: "I done nussed him from a baby, dat's whut I done!"

"'Scuse me, Massa Tom," went on Eradicate. "But I thought I done heard a noise in here, an'——"

"We were just talking, Rad, that was all. We have about finished," and Tom looked significantly at the red-faced Briton. "I'll call you if I need you, Rad."

"Yes, sah," and Eradicate shuffled out.

"There is no use in further wasting your time or my own, Mr. Cunningham," proceeded Tom Swift, when the three again faced each other. "My mind is fully made up, and you see that my father agrees."

"I agree fully with my son," added aged Mr. Swift.

"Then I'll have to get somebody else to carry out this contract!" snapped Mr. Cunningham. "I'll go to some firm that knows how to take a big profit when it's offered."

"That's your privilege," replied Tom, smiling. "We don't want it."

There was something so final in his words that Mr. Cunningham knew better than to try other arguments. The last paper was thrust into the case, and the way in which the Englishman snapped the lock showed his anger. He caught up his hat, muttered a "good-day," and hurried out.

"Well, that's that," said Tom Swift, with something between a sigh of relief and regret.

"Tom, you did just right!" exclaimed his father. "I didn't want to interfere, but you gave him the right answer. We want nothing to do with his sort, even though we may have to close down the plant on account of lack of orders."

"We are running a bit short," Tom admitted. "And with all I spent on the talking pictures, with no prospect of any substantial revenue from them for some time, we may be financially up against it soon, Dad."

"Don't worry, Tom. We'll pull through, somehow. You can keep busy, can't you?"

"Oh, yes, I've got to finish my House on Wheels," and Tom fairly spoke of it in capital letters, so near to his heart was this newest invention.

"Ah, yes, Tom, your House on Wheels," and Mr. Swift chuckled a little. "I've been looking it over now and again. Seems as if you had a pretty good thing there."

"I hope it will work out," responded the young man.

"Looks as if you were fitting it up for a trip around the world," went on his father smiling. "Are you?"

"Not exactly, Dad."

"I might make another guess, Tom, my boy," and still the aged man was laughing.

"Well, there's no law that I know of, Dad, to stop you from making guesses," and Tom busied himself over several papers that seemed to need close attention.

"Well, then, Tom, I'll guess that you're going to use your new House on Wheels for a wedding journey. How about that?"

"Who says anything about a wedding trip?" cried Tom, his face almost as red as the Englishman's had been.

"Oh, no one has said anything, Tom," his father answered mildly. "But from the manner in which you and Mary Nestor have been going about of late, looking into furniture store windows and——"

"Oh, there's too much talk going on in this town!" exclaimed Tom, and his father laughed heartily at his son's evident discomfiture.

"Well, wedding trip or world tour, your new House on Wheels appears to be a clever bit of work," went on Mr. Swift. "When will it be finished?"

"Can't say, exactly. Though now that the new engine has arrived, as Koku informed me, I can rush things. I've been waiting for the machinery. That's why I'm glad, in a way, I didn't have to take on the Cunningham contracts."

"Valuable as they were," remarked Mr. Swift.

"Valuable as they were," agreed his son. "And now, if you'll excuse me, Dad, I'll go take a look at that new engine."

"I have some matters to attend to myself," said old Mr. Swift, who, though he had given up active participation in the plant some time before, still maintained a general supervision over certain matters. He left the private office just as Ned Newton, the young financial manager, entered in some haste. Nodding to Tom's father, Ned turned to the young inventor and asked:

"What's this I hear about you turning down Cunningham's work?"

"I don't know, Ned, what you heard, nor how, so I can't reply."

"I was just coming in through the yard when I saw Cunningham getting into an auto with a man who had a face like a rat's. He was a stranger to me; but I knew Cunningham, of course. Say, he was mad, that Englishman! I heard him muttering something about your having refused his contracts and, as nearly as I could make out, he was cussing you up hill and down dale and threatening not only to take his contracts to another firm but to get even with you as well."

"Yes he was angry when he left here," admitted Tom. "But that's all bosh about his going to get even. It was a plain business proposition. Cunningham is a good business man, whatever else he may be, and business men don't look for revenge just because one firm won't do their manufacturing for them."

"Maybe not. It might have been a lot of superheated atmosphere. But I can't understand, Tom, why you didn't take his work. There would have been a good profit in it, you told me, after the preliminary investigation."

"Yes, the profit was there."

"Well, then, what was wrong with such a handsome contract for the very kind of machinery that we are so well equipped to manufacture?"

"If you really want to know, Ned, I'll tell you."

"Of course I want to know."

"Well, then, it's my opinion that Basil Cunningham is a plain, unvarnished, first-water crook!"

CHAPTER II

THE NEW INVENTION

Ned Newton stood for several seconds intently gazing at his chum and business associate after Tom Swift's emphatic rejoinder. Then, feeling that as financial manager of the Swift plant he ought not too easily give up a chance for making money, Ned remarked:

"Well, Tom, I suppose you know your own business best, but you ought to have something to back up your opinion that Cunningham isn't straight."

"I've got enough to convince myself, Ned, though maybe not enough to make you see things the way I do. In fact, I haven't any documentary evidence, but I still maintain that Cunningham is a crook."

"In that case, of course we don't want anything to do with him," agreed Ned. "But what sort of evidence have you, Tom?"

"I may be mistaken," replied Tom, who was willing to give any man the benefit of a doubt; "but I have a very strong suspicion that the delicate machinery Cunningham wanted us to manufacture for him would infringe on the patents of certain English machines used for scientific and optical work."

"Infringement!" exclaimed Ned.

"That's what it would be if we undertook it, and if it were found out we would be liable to prosecution," stated Tom. "Even if we weren't found out, of course I wouldn't undertake such work."

"Of course," agreed Ned heartily. "But are you sure? You have been making some strong assertions against Cunningham."

"I don't believe I'll be called on to prove them in court, for this is just between us," said Tom. "But I looked over the preliminary sketches of the machinery this Englishman wanted us to make for him. At first I was inclined to go on with it. But the other day I saw a notice in an English publication concerning some new scientific machinery just completed and it was almost identical with the blue prints and specifications Cunningham showed me. If we turned out the machinery for him he'd set up a shop over here for making those instruments and it would get us in Dutch once it came out."

"That's right, Tom. I guess you acted wisely in turning him down. He's mad, mad as a wet hen, but let him splutter. That's what he was doing to the Queen's taste when he got in the auto with that rat-faced individual."

"Yes, let him splutter," agreed Tom. "He can't harm us."

However, later on, he was to revise that opinion of the Englishman.

"Of course it's too bad to lose all that good money," mused Ned. "On a hundred-thousand-dollar contract we could probably knock down twenty per cent. at least."

"Yes," agreed Tom, "it would have been picking up a nice bunch of cash. But I'm not going to make patent imitations under cover for anybody. I want nothing to do with fraudulent stuff. We can get enough good contracts, I think."

"Well," remarked Ned, with a shrug of his shoulders, "good contracts aren't going around these days begging some one to take them into their shop. But I dare say we shall pull through."

"Maybe I can get a lot of orders for my House on Wheels when I get it completed," chuckled Tom.

"Nothing doing!" declared Ned, with a laugh. "You'll make only one House on Wheels and I can see you and Mary rolling off in that to the music of——"

"Hey! Where do you get that stuff?" exploded Tom, making an ineffectual reach to punch his chum. "That's the second crack to-day. Dad made one and now you. Where do you get it?"

"Well, since you turned down the Cunningham contract," went on Ned somewhat hastily, producing some papers from his pocket, "suppose we go into this Blakely matter. It isn't such a big thing, but we want to keep the wheels turning."

"Sure," agreed Tom, and the two were soon deep in calculations.

To the old readers of these books Tom Swift needs no introduction. But those to whom this volume comes as their first venture, it may be necessary to say that Tom Swift was a brilliant young inventor who lived with his father in the town of Shopton on Lake Carlopa.

The initial volume, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle," related how Tom became possessed of a machine that was damaged when Mr. Wakefield Damon, its rider, tried to climb a tree.

That was the beginning of Tom's mechanical activities, for he bought the motorcycle cheap, repaired it, and had some wonderful adventures on it. The tree-climbing incident also served to start the friendship of Tom and Mr. Damon, a friendship that had lasted, though the eccentric man, who blessed everything from his fountain pen to his boots, was much older than Tom Swift.

After his experience with the motorcycle, the young inventor had many startling and dangerous experiences in aircraft, submarines, and in turning out, with the help of his father and with Ned Newton as financial adviser, many strange machines.

Tom's latest invention is told of in the volume just before this one you are now reading, entitled "Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures." He made a machine which brought the images and voices of public performers directly into the home. The making of this machine had taken considerable cash, and though Tom had sold certain rights to a syndicate, the money would not be coming in for some time.

"And that's one reason I was so anxious for this Cunningham contract to go through," remarked Ned, who was talking business matters over with Tom following the departure of the Englishman.

"We'll get other work to do," declared Tom. "To tell you the truth, I'm not over anxious to clutter the shop up with any other stuff until I get my House on Wheels well out of the way."

"Say, just what is this new invention, anyhow?" asked Ned. "I've been so busy I haven't paid much attention to it."

"Well, the name tells just what it is," said Tom. "Briefly, it is a glorified auto—a veritable house that one can not only live in but travel in."

"You mean a house with rooms and a bath and—and—everything?" asked Ned.

"That's it—a bath and everything. Of course, the rooms aren't large, and the beds are to be folded back against the wall when they aren't in use."

"What about eats?" asked Ned.

"There's to be a kitchen with an electric stove," replied Tom.

"Run a stove from a storage battery?" exclaimed Ned. "Say, it can't be done! You'd have to have such a big battery that it would be a job to cart it around."

"Not a storage battery," explained Tom. "My House on Wheels is to be operated like some of the new, big jitneys, by a gas-electric motor. There's a gasolene engine of twelve cylinders, and, by the way, it's just arrived from Detroit, so Koku told me. Well, that motor operates a dynamo which furnishes the current that drives the auto, operates the stove and other appliances."

"Then you don't take power directly from the gasolene engine?" asked Ned.

"Only in case of emergency; that is, if the electric motor goes on the fritz. By using my gasolene motor to generate the current to run the car I get a much smoother flow of power, and there are other advantages."

"Does the dingus look anything like a house?" asked Ned.

"I object to your calling it a 'dingus,'" laughed the young inventor. "But in outward appearance it is like a small house."

"With doors and windows?"

"Yes, and even window shutters. Aside from an entrance back of the driver's seat, there is only one door, however, and that is at the rear."

"How about a pair of steps?" asked Ned, thinking to stump his chum.

"I've provided for those, too. There are steps at the rear for easy access to the interior, as my catalogs will say. Only, to keep small boys from hitch-hiking on them, the steps fold up out of the way when the House on Wheels is moving."

"Then you're really going to tour in it?" asked Ned.

"Sure!"

"Going to be pretty heavy, isn't it?"

"Oh, around two tons, I guess."

"It's no flivver, at any rate. But won't it move like a canal boat?"

"Canal boat! Do you want to insult me?" cried Tom. "On good roads she'll do fifty or sixty miles an hour."

"Whew!" whistled Ned. "Guess I'd better go and take a look at this thing."

"Come on," invited Tom.

He was preparing to lead the way out of his private office to that part of the shop where he was constructing the new invention, when Mr. Jackson, the manager, entered with an air that caused Tom suddenly to ask:

"What's the matter?"

CHAPTER III

NED'S SUSPICIONS

"Have you given any orders about unpacking the new engine that just arrived from Detroit?" asked Mr. Jackson of Tom Swift.

"You mean the twelve-cylinder engine for my House on Wheels?" the young inventor inquired.

"That's the one."

"Why, no. Koku informed me only a little while ago that it had come. But I couldn't come out to look at it because that Cunningham chap was in the office. Why, is it being unpacked? And by whom?"

"It is, and by a couple of strange young men who say you just put them on the pay roll yesterday to help with your new invention. They went at the work as though they knew what they were about, but I thought I'd speak to you."

"I'm glad you did!" exclaimed Tom. "I've hired no new hands, young or old, for a long time. I wouldn't without consulting you."

"That's what I thought. But these fellows seemed to know what they were about, and I didn't like to tell them to lay off."

"There's something crooked here!" exclaimed Tom. "This must be looked into. Come on!" he called to Ned Newton.