se facts enabled Tom, perhaps, to bear his loss with some fortitude.
The highwayman drew forth the wallet and thrust it into his own coat
pocket. He made no attempt to take anything else from the young
inventor.

"Now, beat it!" commanded the fellow. "Don't look back and don't run or
holler. Just keep moving--in the way you were headed before. Vamoose."

More than ever was Tom assured that the man was from the West. His
speech savored of Mexican phrases and slang terms used mainly by
Western citizens. And his abrupt and masterly manner and speech aided
in this supposition. Tom Swift stayed not to utter a word. It was true
he was not so frightened as he had at first been. But he was quite sure
that this man was no person to contend with under present conditions.

He strode away along the sidewalk toward the far corner of the wall
that surrounded this estate. Shopton had not many of such important
dwellings as this behind the wall. Its residential section was made up
for the most part of mechanics' homes and such plain but substantial
houses as his father's.

Prospering as the Swifts had during the last few years, neither Tom nor
his father had thought their plain old house too poor or humble for a
continued residence. Tom was glad to make money, but the inventions he
had made it by were vastly more important to his mind than what he
might obtain by any lavish expenditure of his growing fortune.

This matter of the electric locomotive that had been brought to his
attention by the Western railroad magnate had instantly interested the
young inventor. The possibility of there being a clash of interests in
the matter, and the point Mr. Bartholomew made of his enemies seeking
to thwart his hope of keeping the H. & P. A. upon a solid financial
footing, were phases of the affair that likewise concerned the young
fellow's thought.

Now he was sure that Mr. Bartholomew was right. The enemies of the H. &
P. A. were determined to know all that the railroad president was
planning to do. They would naturally suspect that his trip East to
visit the Swift Construction Company was no idle jaunt.

Tom had turned so many fortunate and important problems of invention
into certainties that the name of the Swift Construction Company was
broadly known, not alone throughout the United States but in several
foreign countries. Montagne Lewis, whom Tom knew to be both a powerful
and an unscrupulous financier, might be sure that Mr. Bartho