the yard last night or
not. I don't want him touched. I didn't even want him to know that we
guessed he had been sneaking about the house. Understand?"

"Of a courseness," grumbled Koku. "Koku understand everything Master
say."

"Well, you don't act as though you did. Next time when I want any help
I may have to bring Rad with me."

"Oh, no, Master! Not that old man. He don't know how to help Master.
Koku do just what Master say."

"Like fun you do," said Tom, still apparently very angry with the
simple-minded giant. "Get back into the car and sit still, if you can,
until we get to Mr. Damon's house." Then to himself he added: "I don't
blame that fellow, whoever he is, for lighting out. I bet he's running
yet!"

He knew that Koku would say nothing regarding the incident. The giant
had wonderful powers of silence! He sometimes went days without
speaking even to Rad. And that was one of the sources of irritation
between the voluble colored man and the giant.

"'Tain't human," Rad often said, "for nobody to say nothin' as much as
dat Koku does. Why, lawsy me! if he was tongue-tied an' speechless, an'
a deaf an' dumb mute, he couldn't say nothin' more obstreperously dan
he does--no sir! 'Tain't human."

So Tom had not to warn the giant not to chatter about meeting the
stranger on the road to Waterfield. If that person with dried red mud
on his boots was the spy who had followed Mr. Richard Bartholomew East
and was engaged by Montagne Lewis to interfere with any attempt the
president of the H. & P. A. might make to pull his railroad out of the
financial quagmire into which it was rapidly sinking, Tom would have
preferred to have the spy not suspect that he had been identified after
his fiasco of the previous evening.

For if this Western looking fellow was Andy O'Malley, whose name had
been mentioned by the railroad man, he was the person who had robbed
Tom of his wallet and had afterward attempted reprisal upon the young
inventor because the robbery had resulted in no gain to the robber.

Of course, the fellow had been unable to read Tom's shorthand notes of
the agreement that he had discussed with Mr. Bartholomew. Just what the
nature of that agreement was, would be a matter of interest to the
spy's employer.

Having failed in this attempt to learn something which was not his
business, the spy might make other and more serious attempts to learn
the particulars of the agreement between the railroad president