OR The Greatest Invention on Record

BY VICTOR APPLETON

AUTHOR OF “TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORCYCLE,” “TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS,” “TOM SWIFT CIRCLING THE GLOBE,” “THE DON STURDY SERIES,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1928, by GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.

Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures

TOM SWIFT WAS THROWN OVERBOARD.

BOOKS FOR BOYS By VICTOR APPLETON

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

THE TOM SWIFT SERIES

TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORCYCLE TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORBOAT TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT OIL GUSHER TOM SWIFT AND HIS CHEST OF SECRETS TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRLINE EXPRESS TOM SWIFT CIRCLING THE GLOBE TOM SWIFT AND HIS TALKING PICTURES

THE DON STURDY SERIES

DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES DON STURDY IN THE PORT OF LOST SHIPS DON STURDY AMONG THE GORILLAS DON STURDY CAPTURED BY HEAD HUNTERS

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York.

CHAPTER I

BLASTING FIRE

Entering Tom Swift’s private laboratory from a room farther down the hall, Ned Newton, who seemed somewhat out of breath, glanced at the young inventor and asked:

“Do you seem to be getting anywhere with it, Tom?”

For a moment there was no reply. Tom, who had been leaning over a complicated apparatus of wires, switches, and radio bulbs that glowed dimly, was slowly turning a dial. Ned repeated his question, adding:

“What seems to be the trouble?”

“Trouble?” queried Tom, looking at Ned with eyes, however, that did not see him.

“There must be some trouble,” insisted Ned, “or you’d have been capering around here on one leg when I came in after doing my stuff back there,” and he nodded toward the room farther down the hall. “How about it?”

Tom Swift glanced away from the apparatus, which very much resembled a radio receiving set, to a yard-square burnished sheet of metal hanging in front of him and connected to the other mechanism by several wires. This burnished sheet appeared to be made of a mirror of some metal with a square of heavy plate glass covering it.

“Can’t you answer?” inquired Ned, with a chuckle. “Boy, I certainly did some acting back there all by myself! And I’d like to know whether I got it through to you. Did I? Bet I did that song and dance for the fiftieth time just now. Come on—wake up—did it come through? What’s the matter, anyhow?”

“I—I’m thinking,” said Tom slowly.

“Don’t need an interpreter to tell me that!” and again Ned chuckled. “I can see it with half an eye. But was it a success?”

“Yes, and no,” replied Tom, turning a switch which seemed to cut off some electrical current, for at once a faint hum that had been audible in the laboratory ceased. “Yes, and no. It came through all right; that is, part of it did, but the rest——”

Tom ceased speaking and bent over his apparatus. He adjusted some set screws, turned a couple of dials, and changed three of the radio tubes which, now that the power was cut off, no longer glowed with light beneath the quicksilver coatings on the thin glass.

“Do you want me to go back there and do it over?” asked Ned. “I’m willing, if you say so,” and he started for the room he had just left—a room wherein, under the focused rays of a battery of powerful lights and close to a box containing a strange assortment of tubes and transmitters, Ned had done his “stunt,” which consisted of singing and dancing about on a small stage. He performed alone—there was no audience but the distant one of Tom Swift in his laboratory several hundred feet away.

“Wait a minute, Ned!” Tom Swift called sharply, when his chum, who was also the financial manager of the Swift Construction Company, was about to leave the room. “I guess we might as well call it a day’s work and quit.”

“A night’s work, you mean!” retorted Ned, pointing to the window which reflected the darkness outside. “Must be past twelve.”

“I guess it is,” admitted the young inventor, somewhat wearily. “I didn’t notice. It’s a shame to keep you at it so long, Ned.”

“Oh, I don’t mind!” said the other quickly. “Not as long as it’s going to be a success. But is it?”

Tom Swift hesitated, looked at the complicated machine in front of him and slowly shook his head.

“Frankly, Ned, I can’t say,” he admitted. “You came through in a measure. Of course I heard you plainly enough over the radio—that part is simple enough. But the picture of you was too shadowy to be satisfactory. It’s coming, though. I’ll make it come!” and Tom, in spite of his weariness, showed some fighting spirit in his voice and manner.

“Could you identify me there?” and Ned pointed to that burnished metal mirror with its covering of glass in the lower edge of which were fused several wires.

“Oh, yes, I knew it was you, Ned, of course. But, as I say, the projected picture was too visionary. It didn’t stand out clearly and with depth the way I want it to. It was like a moving picture when the man up in the booth goes to sleep on the job and the projector gets out of focus. I’m rather disappointed.”

“I don’t mind going back and going through my stunt again, even for the fifty-first performance,” offered Ned, with enthusiasm. “I don’t care how late it is. Helen won’t expect me now.”

“Did you have an engagement?” asked Tom, looking sharply at his friend. “And I kept you here doing a song and dance act half the night when Helen expected you! That’s too bad! If I’d known——”

“Keep your hair on!” chuckled Ned. “I didn’t really have a date with Helen. I said I might drop around if there wasn’t anything to do here. But she knows you well enough to make allowances for emergency work—and this was just that.”

“Yes, it is an emergency all right,” returned Tom slowly. “But I shall give it up for the night. No use keeping you any longer, Ned. Go on home and I’ll try it again to-morrow with a different wave length. I think that’s where the difficulty is. We’ll tackle it again in the morning.”

“All right,” assented Ned Newton, and he could not keep out of his voice a little note of satisfaction and relief. Truth to tell, he was a bit tired. For several weeks now he had been helping Tom Swift on the latter’s newest idea—an invention, Tom declared, that would be the greatest on record and one that would tend to revolutionize the radio and moving picture industries.

This was a daring plan Tom had conceived of making a radio machine, both sending and receiving, that would enable a person or any number of persons not only to hear a distant performance in their own home, but also see those taking part.

“I’ll make it possible,” declared Tom Swift, “for a man to sit in his easy chair, smoking a cigar in his library, and, by a turn of a switch, not only to hear the latest opera but also to see each and every performer and witness the whole play.”

When Ned had asked how the vision would appear to the man, Tom had replied:

“On an electrified screen attached to his radio receiver by which he listens to the songs and music.”

As Tom said, the problem of transmitting an entire opera through the air was simple enough. That had been done many times. So had the transmitting of photographs by wireless. Also, in a limited way, television had made it possible for a person in a dark room to be visible to lookers-on in another apartment some distance away.

“But I am going to combine the two!” declared Tom Swift. “I want to make it possible for a synchronized performance of seeing and hearing to take place. Thus when a theater is equipped with my sending apparatus and I have perfected my receiver, one need never go outside the house to enjoy a theatrical performance or a concert.”

“But even if you’re successful, you won’t make any money out of it,” declared Ned Newton, after first hearing of his chum’s ambitions. “Look at the radio people! The air is free. Anybody who wants to can tune in and listen to a million dollar concert without paying a cent. They don’t even have to buy any special kind of receiver—they can roll their own, so to speak. What’s to prevent them from stealing your stuff—your—what do you call it, anyhow?”

“I haven’t settled on a name,” Tom said, with a smile. “Call it talking pictures for the time being. Of course it’s entirely different from moving pictures with phonograph attachment.”

“Well, what’s to prevent any one from tuning in on your talking pictures?” asked Ned.

“This,” answered Tom, pointing to a small tube on one side of the receiving apparatus. “This is a new device. Without it no one can see and hear my pictures that will talk. This is protected by patents and no one can use it without my sanction. That’s the secret.”

“Well, maybe you’ve got something there,” Ned admitted.

So, during the past months, he had helped Tom Swift bring the new apparatus to such perfection as it now had.

The present night’s performance was only one of many. At first there had been only blank failure. But by using different kinds of receiving screens, finally settling on a mirror covered with electrified glass, Tom had achieved a measure of success. Still, even now, the projected image of the singing or talking performer in a distant room was too dim to be commercially successful.

“We’ll go at it again to-morrow,” Tom told his chum as he let him out of the laboratory and locked the door after him.

“It’s the biggest thing I ever attempted,” he said to himself, when Ned had gone and he was alone in the room, “the very biggest, and I’m not going to have it stolen from me. No one suspects as yet what I am working on—no one except dad and Ned. But I wish I were nearer success. I thought the image would come through clear to-night, but there was that same haze—that same haze. I wonder——”

He paused and listened intently. Outside his door he heard footsteps—cautious footsteps.

“Is that you, Ned?” he called. “Anything wrong?”

Tom did not open the door—he was taking no chances.

“That you, Ned?” he asked again, more sharply.

“No, Mr. Swift,” came back a voice with a foreign accent. “I am just leaving my own laboratory. I think I have perfected that new magnetic gear shift we have been working on.”

“That’s good,” Tom responded. He recognized the voice of Jacob Greenbaum, a clever inventor whom he had recently engaged to work on some side lines that occupied the Swift factory. Tom had an idea for a new device to make easier the shifting of gears on automobiles. It was an adaptation of the old magnetic selection that has often been tried and which, up to date, had not been successful.

“Do you want to take a look at it?” asked Greenbaum, and from the nearness of the voice Tom knew that the man was just outside the locked door.

“No, thank you, Greenbaum, not now,” the young inventor replied. “I am busy at something else. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You are working late, Mr. Swift,” went on the man. “Could I be of any service to you? I should be glad——”

“No, thank you,” Tom said. “As for lateness, you are doing a bit of overtime yourself.”

“Oh, yes; but I do not mind. I think I am on the right track. If you would take a look——”

“No, not now,” and Tom’s voice was a bit sharp. “I am busy. Good night!”

There was no response for a moment, and then came a short:

“Good night!”

Greenbaum, however, did not immediately move away from the door and a look of annoyance passed over Tom’s face as he bent over his secret apparatus.

“What’s he hanging around for?” thought Tom. “I wonder if he can be a spy? Two or three times I’ve caught him lurking around my private laboratory. But he can’t get in since I put on the new lock, and I know he hasn’t so much as poked his nose in during the times I have been here experimenting. Still, I wonder——”

He was about to call out, to tell the man to go away when footsteps were heard moving down the corridor and toward the outer door of the small shop where most of the experimental work was carried on.

“Good riddance,” murmured Tom Swift. “I don’t want to be unjust to a good workman, and Greenbaum is all of that, but I must confess I don’t like the way he hangs around me. As soon as he finishes that magnetic gear shift I’ll pay him well and let him go. Now let’s see if I can think up another way of doing this. Perhaps if I hooked up the wave distributor to the vibratory selector instead of to the polarizer we’d get better vision. I’ll try that and have Ned perform again to-morrow. Now I’ll take a look to see that my wire connections are all right and then I think I’ll go to bed. I’m tired.”

Tom spent perhaps another half hour in getting things in readiness for some new experiments, and, having made sure that everything connected with his secret was put out of sight of possible prying eyes, the young inventor started toward the door.

He inspected the new combination lock he had had put on, noting that it was properly set, and then opened the door to step out. The experimental laboratory was only a short walk from Tom’s home, the back of the Swift Construction plant being some distance away.

As Tom opened the door there was a click, followed at once by a blinding flash of blasting fire. Then a dull explosion shook the building. Tom had no chance to leap back. The force of the blast hurled him forward, across the corridor and out through a wire-screened window into the yard. He fell heavily, uttered an inarticulate cry, and then seemed to be sinking down into a pit of dense blackness.

CHAPTER II

NED DISAPPEARS

Scarcely had the echoes of the explosion in Tom Swift’s laboratory died away, being swallowed up in the blackness and silence of the night, than members of the Swift household began stirring.

Mr. Swift, Tom’s aged and rather infirm father, sat up in bed and called:

“What was that? Thunder?”

“No, Massa Swift,” answered Eradicate, the faithful colored servant, who, now that Mr. Swift had declined so, was his personal attendant, sleeping in the next room. “No, Massa Swift,” he repeated. “Dat wa’n’t no thunder.”

By this time Eradicate was moving about and fumbling for a light. Mr. Swift, however, had reached up and switched on the reading lamp attached to the head of his bed.

“What was it then?” asked the aged inventor, for Mr. Swift had begun invention work when Tom was a mere baby.

“I spects, Massa, dat it was somethin’ Tom been doin’ out in his lab’tory,” the colored man answered. He had his own light on now and was beginning to dress, preparatory to making an investigation.

“If Tom was in the midst of anything that made a noise like that he must be hurt!” declared Mr. Swift. “That was a sharp explosion. Hurry, Rad, and see what it was.”

“Yes, sah, Massa Swift, I’s a-hurryin’!” answered Eradicate.

From a room farther down the hall in the Swift home came a deep, heavy voice exclaiming:

“Fire! Fire! Koku see much blaze!”

Koku was a gigantic specimen of a man whom Tom had brought back with him from an airship trip to a distant, mysterious land. The giant was rather simple, and never seemed to be able to master the English language. But he was a faithful servant and, because of his enormous strength, Tom frequently used Koku as a guard about the plant.

“Fire?” cried Mr. Swift, fumbling for his clothes. “Is there a fire, Koku?”

“Much blaze in Master Tom’s workshop,” the giant replied. He could not twist his tongue around “laboratory.”

“Dey suah is a fire!” cried Eradicate, running to his window. “By golly, whole place looks like it was burnin’!”

By this time Mrs. Baggert, the housekeeper, several other servants, and Garret Jackson, the shop manager and superintendent, who was spending the night at the Swift home, had been aroused. Several workmen in the Swift plant, who lived not far from the experimental laboratory, had also been aroused by the explosion and the glare of flames and were now running to help, adding their voices to the others giving the alarm.

By this time Mr. Swift, with Eradicate and Koku, had descended to the yard that was between the laboratory and the house, and by the glare of the flames Tom’s inert body was seen stretched out on the grass.

Eradicate and Koku bent over the body of the young inventor. Koku felt for the heart and found it beating.

“Master Tom no dead,” said the giant simply.

“Then carry him into the house, and send for a doctor at once,” directed Mr. Swift. “Oh, what could have happened? The whole place will go up in flames and Tom’s valuable new invention will be destroyed!”

“Dat fire’ll soon be out!” predicted Eradicate, and Koku, lifting Tom like a child, started toward the house with him. “Fire not so bad, after all, Massa Swift!”

While the injured inventor is being ministered to I shall take a brief moment to acquaint new readers with, a few facts regarding Tom Swift.

He was a young man, well set up physically, and in spite of the fact that he was young, had to his credit many important inventions, not a few of which had been adopted by the United States Government.

Tom’s mother was dead, but he and his father, were well looked after by Mrs. Baggert, the housekeeper. As related in the first volume of this series, entitled “Tom Swift and His Motorcycle,” the youth began his inventive activities early. Wakefield Damon, who lived in the neighboring town of Waterfield, had, some years before this present story opens, bought a motorcycle. Not knowing much about such machines, Mr. Damon soon found himself climbing a tree near Tom’s home.

Tom rescued the eccentric individual and, “blessing” many animate and inanimate objects from his rubber boots to his collar button, Mr. Damon declared he was through with motorcycles. Tom bought the damaged machine, repaired and improved it and had several thrilling adventures on it. From then on his inventions followed one another and they were not yet ended. In the volume immediately preceding this and named “Tom Swift Circling the Globe,” you may read of the further doings of the young inventor.

Tom had many friends and not a few enemies, the latter chiefly unscrupulous men who had tried to steal his inventions but who had been worsted by Tom, with the aid of Mr. Damon, Ned Newton, Eradicate and Koku.

Tom always insisted that Mary Nestor, a beautiful girl to whom the young inventor was practically engaged, had a lot to do with his success, but Mary always smiled tolerantly when her friend said this.

“What do I do, Tom?” she would ask.

“You give me inspiration,” he would answer, “and that, to an inventor, is the one thing needed.”

Whether Mary Nestor was the inspiration for Tom’s latest talking-picture invention does not matter, but the fact remains that Tom was in the midst of perfecting that machine when the explosion occurred.