erstand.

There was no reply to Tom's question, so he walked down the steps and
out at the gate. It was not a long distance to the Nestor house, and
the air was brisk and keen, in spite of the fact that threatening
clouds masked the stars.

Two blocks from the house he came to a high wall which separated the
street from the grounds of an old dwelling. Tom suddenly noticed that
the usual street lights on this block had been extinguished--blown out
by the wind, perhaps.

Involuntarily he quickened his steps. He reached the archway in the
wall. Here was the gate dividing the private grounds from the street.
As he strode into the shadow of this place a voice suddenly halted Tom
Swift.

"Hands up! Put 'em up and don't be slow about it!" A bulky figure
loomed in the dark. Tom saw the highwayman's club poised threateningly
over his head.

Chapter II

Trouble Starts

The fact that he was stopped by a footpad smote Tom Swift's mind as not
a particularly surprising adventure. He had heard that several of that
gentry had been plying their trade about the outskirts of the town. To
a degree he was prepared for this sudden event.

Then there flashed into Tom's mind the thought of what Mr. Richard
Bartholomew had said regarding the spy he believed had followed him
from the West. Could it be possible that some hired thug sent by
Montagne Lewis and his crooked crowd of financiers considered that Tom
Swift had obtained information from the president of the H. & P. A.
that might do his employers signal service?

Tom Swift had fallen in with many adventures--and some quite thrilling
ones--since, as a youth, he was first introduced to the reader in the
initial volume of this series, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motor
Cycle." His first experiences as an inventor, coached by his father,
who had spent his life in the experimental laboratory and workshop, was
made possible by his purchase from Mr. Wakefield Damon, now one of his
closest friends, of a broken-down motor cycle.

Through a series of inventions, some of them of a marvelous kind, Tom
Swift, aided by his father, had forged ahead, building motor boats,
airships, submarines, monoplanes, motion picture cameras, searchlights,
cannons, photo-telephones, war tanks. Of late, as related in "Tom Swift
Among the Fire Fighters," he had engaged in the invention of an
explosive bomb carrying flame-quenching chemicals that would, in time,
revolutionize fire-fighting in tall bui