"Oh, maybe it will all turn out right," said Tom consolingly. "My friend Mr. Damon has a little stock in the same structure."
"Nothing those two scoundrels have anything to do with will turn out right," declared Mary's uncle. "And to think of their nerve when they ask me to go in with them on a dye scheme!"
"That's what interests me," said Tom.
"Well, take my advice and don't become interested to the extent of investing any money," warned Mr. Blake. "I'm not going to."
"I didn't mean that way," said Tom. "But I happen to be acquainted with an expert dye maker who lost some secret formulae during a fire in Field and Melling's factory."
"You don't say so!" cried Mr. Blake. "Tom Swift, there's something wrong here! Let you and me talk this over. I begin to see how I may be able to take a peep through the hole in the grindstone," a colloquial expression which was as well understood by Tom as were some of Mr. Damon's blessing remarks.
"If you're going to talk business I think I'll excuse myself," said Mary.
"Don't go," urged Tom, but she said to him that she would see him before he left, and then she went out, leaving her uncle and the young inventor busily engaged in talking.
But though Mr. Blake had certain suspicions regarding Field and Melling, and though Tom Swift, too, believed they had something to do with the disappearance of Baxter's secret formulae, it was another matter to prove anything.
Impetuous as he often was, Mr. Blake was for calling in the police at once, and having the two men arrested. But Tom counseled delay.