“I have got to have Tom’s help. I want him to take a journey with me.”
“A journey—just now—when I’ve so much on my hands?” demanded the young inventor, in considerable doubt.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” said Mr. Damon quickly. “I’ve got to go to Iceland. There’s money in it——”
“Money in Iceland?” interrupted Tom.
“So they tell me. And a lot of it is mine,” returned the excited visitor. “I want you to go there with me, Tom, to get a fortune. A fortune, boy! It will pay us big.”
CHAPTER II
THE TREASURE CHEST
Since the Swifts had first known Mr. Wakefield Damon that eccentric character had brought to their attention a number of strange affairs, and some of them had resulted in the betterment of his own and the Swifts’ finances. So, no matter how ridiculous his first proposition might sound, Tom and his father were both ready to listen.
A trip to Iceland would scarcely absorb Tom Swift’s attention just now, but the fortune Mr. Damon promised him a share of might be a thing not to be scorned. In spite of the inventor’s several sources of income and the great sums already invested in the Swift Construction Company and in other well-paying concerns, Tom never saw the time when he could not make good use of more money.
From the time the reader was introduced to “Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle,” the title of the first book of this series, down to the twenty-fifth volume, the one preceding this present story, “Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive,” the young inventor has found good use for much money.
His inventions—some of them marvels as his father intimated—had brought them in much money, it is true. But it “takes money to breed money;” and always this is true as well as trite in the construction and marketing of inventions.