When Tom Swift got to the Shopton House he found his electric runabout standing at the curb. Mary had gone home, for it was now quite late in the evening. Tom ran the shaken car to the nearest garage and then went into the hotel to leave word for the stranger where his property could be found.
“You just had a guest come in, didn’t you?” Tom asked the clerk.
The latter began to grin. “You mean the foreign feller?”
“Some kind of a Dutchman, I guess,” said the young inventor. “What’s his name?”
“Look on the book and see,” was the reply. “I can’t read it, and I don’t know what to call him. He not only speaks broken English, but he writes broken English.”
“Really?” responded Tom, with a laugh. “Let’s take a squint at it.”
He wheeled the register about on its swivel and peered at the crabbed writing. He could read “NewYork,U.S.of Amerika.” But the name of the man looked as much like a hen track as it did like anything written in the English language.
“He’s one of these foreign musicians, I bet,” said the clerk to Tom. “And he wanted a room with a bath and hot running water!”
“There isn’t anything like that in this house,” answered Tom, with a laugh.
“If there was, I’d rent it myself,” declared the other. “He sniffed a lot about ‘de pad accommodations’; but he’s staying the night. Want to see him?”