“Bless my eyeglasses, that’s what I say!” cried Mr. Damon. “Come on—we’ll get in my airship—it must be repaired by this time—and we’ll rescue Tom! Don’t lose any more time!”
“But we don’t know where he is,” said Ned. “It would be worse than useless to go scouring around the country looking for Tom in an airship. He might be only five miles from here or he might be five hundred.”
“Yes,” agreed Mary Nestor. “The thing for us to do is to follow Tom’s advice—watch the plant, get Mr. Swift to a place of safety, and look out for bombs.”
“Are you actually going to hunt through the plant for hidden bombs?” demanded Mr. Damon.
“Certainly,” Ned answered. “It’s the only thing to do after Tom’s warning message. While I don’t know what the game is, I think it likely that his enemies kidnapped Tom to get him out of the way so they could have a free run of the plant to search for and take away his models and papers of the newest invention—the airline express. Well, they got Tom, but he managed to escape, and their first attempt to sneak into the plant was a failure.
“Now they may have secreted some time bombs around the place. These may go off any minute, but, it is probable, they have been set to explode after dark. They hope to throw the place into confusion, and then to rush in and get what they want. But Tom has put us on guard.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Damon. “Then, as I understand it, we are now going to search for bombs that may go off at any minute?”
“That’s right,” assented Ned.
“Well, I’m glad I carry a large accident insurance,” said the eccentric man, forgetting to bless anything just then.
“Oh, there may not be much danger,” Ned stated. “If the plotters hope to get Tom’s models and papers it isn’t likely they would use bombs of very great force. To do so would be to blow things so much apart that they couldn’t get anything out of the ruins.