“Both gone!” cried Mr. Jackson. “Is there any coincidence here, Tom? Maybe Koku took the chest!”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Tom. “I’d trust that giant with my last dollar. Besides, Koku hasn’t any more notion of the value of the plans and patent papers in my chest than he has of how to work out a cross-word puzzle. It isn’t in him to plan or carry out anything like this, even if he had the wish, which he hasn’t.”
“What’s your theory, Tom, of the two disappearing at the same time?” asked Ned.
“Well, Koku must have surprised the robbers at work lifting my chest out,” explained Tom. “That being so, he went at them. They killed him and carried him off with them, or else his body is hidden around here somewhere. That’s why I summoned you men,” he went on to his foremen. “I want a search made of every part of the house and grounds. Let the work go for the day. Koku and the chest must be found!”
“It would take a pretty big and husky bunch of robbers to overcome Koku,” suggested Ned. “And if there was such a big gang here they would have made a noise, which I should think you’d have heard up at the house, Tom.”
“I didn’t hear a thing. Perhaps having taken a headache powder would account for that. But neither Eradicate nor Mrs. Baggert heard anything out of the ordinary, I’m sure, or they would have said something about it to me. As for dad, when he goes to bed he sleeps, and does little else.”
“Even if you didn’t hear a row, Tom, there must have been one,” insisted Ned. “Koku wouldn’t let that chest be taken away without a fight, and when he starts to fight something breaks.”
“Yes, that’s the puzzling part of it,” admitted the young inventor. “There isn’t any evidence of anything having been disturbed here. But I found one of the outer doors open, and the electric alarm cut, which shows how the robbers entered and left. They probably used a skeleton key to open the place, and didn’t lock the door after them when they left. I wish I had done what I’ve been planning to do—kept my plans in a burglar-proof vault. Now I’m going to start to build one right here.”
“Any signs of a fight or a struggle in Koku’s bedroom?” asked the foreman of the pattern shop.
“No. The clothes are thrown back off the bed as though the giant got up in the usual way,” answered Tom. “There is no sign of violence. But several heads are better than one, and that’s why I summoned you all here—I’d like your advice on the matter.”