"What's the matter?" asked his father, who had started toward one of
several machine shops on the premises--shops where Mr. Swift and his
son did inventive work.

"Guess I'd better get a blank check and some money," replied Tom as he
entered the house. "I'll need to pay a deposit if I secure the boat."

"That's so. Well, good luck," and with his mind busy on a plan for a
new kind of storage battery, the inventor went on to his workroom. Tom
got some cash and his checkbook from a small safe he owned and was soon
speeding over the road to Lanton, his motor-cycle making quite a cloud
of dust. While he is thus hurrying along to the auction I will tell
you something about him.

Tom Swift, son of Barton Swift, lived with his father and a motherly
housekeeper, Mrs. Baggert, in a large house on the outskirts of the
town of Shopton, in New York State. Mr. Swift had acquired
considerable wealth from his many inventions and patents, but he did
not give up working out his ideas simply because he had plenty of
money. Tom followed in the footsteps of his parent and had already
taken out several patents.

Shortly before this story opens the youth had become possessed of a
motor-cycle in a peculiar fashion. As told in the first volume of this
series, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motor-cycle," Tom was riding to the
town of Mansburg on an errand for his father one day when he was nearly
run down by a motorcyclist. A little later the same motorcyclist, who
was a Mr. Wakefield Damon, of Waterfield, collided with a tree near
Tom's home and was severely cut and bruised, the machine being broken.
Tom and his father cared for the injured rider, and Mr. Damon, who was
an eccentric individual, was so disheartened by his attempts to ride
the motor-cycle that he sold it to Tom for fifty dollars, though it had
cost much more.

About the same time that Tom bought the motor-cycle a firm of rascally
lawyers, Smeak & Katch by name, had, in conjunction with several men,
made an attempt to get control of an invention of a turbine motor
perfected by Mr. Swift. The men, who were Ferguson Appleson, Anson
Morse, Wilson Featherton, alias Simpson, and Jake Burke, alias Happy
Harry, who sometimes disguised himself as a tramp, tried several times
to steal the model.

Their anxiety to get it was due to the fact that they had invested a
large sum in a turbine motor invented by another man, but their motor
would not work and they sought to steal Mr.