“No more than usual. There’s always danger when you have rivals. But I never heard of this Blodgett that I know of. As for the other matters: As I said, Mr. Damon opened the subject but I told him to head off any visit of the men to me, for I wouldn’t do business with them. And from the fact that they haven’t called on me, I took it that they had dropped the matter.”
“It doesn’t seem so, though, does it?” asked Mary.
“I should say not! I don’t like this at all!” Tom seemed anxious and upset over the matter. “And what I particularly don’t like is the way they said Blodgett would fix it. Is that the word they used?”
“Yes. It was ‘fix,’ I’m sure of it.”
“Smacks of desperation,” commented Tom. “I wonder if the owner of the restaurant would know those men, Mary?”
“He might.”
“Then I’m going to drop in and have a talk with him. Give me the address. Oh, I don’t mean I’m going to drop in off the Hummer and let you run the machine alone,” he went on with a laugh, as he saw Mary’s momentary gasp of surprise. “I’ll go over and see him to-morrow. Just now we’ll go for a ride. I need a little free breathing space in the upper air.”
“Yes, it’s a wonderful day for a ride, Tom. And there’s no sign at all of rain.”
“We need rain, too,” said the young inventor. “The woods and fields are as dry as tinder. If a forest fire should start now it would do a lot of damage. But as long as it hasn’t rained for some time, we’ll hope it will hold off until we get back from our spin. Come on—let’s go!”