INTO THE STORM.
"Carry him into the house and get him to bed," cried Mrs. Bagley, the housekeeper, wringing her hands distractedly. "Oh dear! poor gentleman, he's bin a-workin' too hard, that's what's the matter."
Jupe and Hank Hawkins, the handy man, picked the unconscious man up and carried him to bed, where he was made comfortable.
Jack and Tom made an investigation of the workshop. At first the cut on Mr. Chadwick's head had given Jack the impression that he might have been the victim of foul play.
But a brief survey of the place soon dispelled these conclusions. When he fell, the inventor struck his head against the sharp corner of a table right behind him, Jack concluded, and in this way inflicted the wound.
The letter that his father had been reading when he was stricken still lay on the floor. Jack picked it up. It was from the brokers in New York, the same missive Mr. Chadwick had referred to over the radio 'phone just before the silence that so alarmed Jack.
Glancing over it Jack's eyes widened. He perceived at once that the cause of his father's sudden attack no doubt lay in the shock he had received when he opened the envelope. The letter was curt and to the point.
"Your securities wiped out in panic," it said. "Wire us and advise what to do."
That was all, but it was enough. Jack knew that most of his father's money was invested with the firm that had written the letter, and now they had been wiped out in a money panic. Jack had no idea how much of his father's fortune was affected, but it was evident from Mr. Chadwick's collapse that he had been dealt a heavy blow.
He was in the midst of talking to Tom about the letter when the housekeeper came running from the house.