“Very likely. But I’ve got to get him quieted down so I can question him. He will be the best one to give us clews by which we may trace these fellows.”
Accordingly Tom talked to his giant helper and finally got an account of what had happened. Tom could do more with Koku and understand his peculiar English better than any one else. Also Tom knew something of the giant’s own language.
Gradually a coherent story emerged. Koku had been left on guard the previous night in Tom’s private office building, following the attack on the young inventor. The early part of the evening had passed without anything to disturb the giant’s sleep. Later, however, the alarm bell over his bed rang. Tom had not trusted altogether to his giant remaining awake when on guard, and, as old readers know, the whole place was wired in burglar alarm fashion.
So that, even though the door was opened with a skeleton key, as was proved later to have been done, the swinging of the portal set off one signal, the wire to which had remained intact, and Koku awakened.
He had been awakened some months before by the alarm bell, but that time it was Tom himself who entered the place late at night to make notes on a certain plan before he should forget the idea that occurred to him. Tom forgot about the burglar alarm, and set it off, bringing Koku running with a gun in his hands.
Of course Tom laughed at the incident, but Koku now remembered this, and, thinking it might be another false alarm, he did not at once rush to the floor below, but proceeded cautiously. If the intruder should prove to be some one with a right to enter, Koku would go back to bed again.
Going down softly, and looking in the room where the big oak box was kept, the giant saw several strange men trying to force the locks. This being beyond them, one of the men had cried, as Koku understood it:
“Let’s take the whole shooting match along! The Blue Bird will carry it and we can open it in the woods.”
So they had picked up Tom Swift’s chest of secrets and carried it out of the office. Even then Koku did not give the alarm, for his brain did not work as fast as the brain of an ordinary person. Then, too, the giant thought he had plenty of time, and could, when he got ready, sweep the robbers off their feet and take the chest away from them.
But he delayed too long. Following the men—there were eight of them, he counted on his fingers—Koku went out of the office building into the darkness. The men carried the chest to a large automobile that was waiting in the road, the motor running and the lights off. Then, just as they loaded it in and Koku was about to spring on them, the men discovered his presence and jumped on the giant before he could get into action.