"Yes, over from Canada. Maybe you have seen something in the papers about our department thinking airships were used at night to slip the goods over the border."
"We saw it!" cried Tom eagerly. "But how does that concern me?"
"I'll come to that, presently," replied Mr. Whitford. "In the first place, we have been roundly laughed at in some papers for proposing such a theory. And yet it isn't so wild as it sounds. In fact, after seeing your airship, Tom Swift, I'm convinced--"
"That I've been smuggling?" asked Tom with a laugh.
"Not at all. As you have read, we confiscated some smuggled goods the other day, and among them was a scrap of paper with the words Shopton, New York, on it."
"Was it a letter from someone here, or to someone here?" asked Ned. "The papers intimated so."
"No. they only guessed at that part of it. It was just a scrap of paper, evidently torn from a letter, and it only had those three words on it. Naturally we agents thought we could get a clew here. We imagined, or at least I did, for I was sent to work up this end, that perhaps the airships for the smugglers were made here. I made inquiries, and found that you, Tom Swift, and one other, Andy Foger, had made, or owned, airships in Shopton."
"I came here, but I soon exhausted the possibility of Andy Foger making practical airships. Besides he isn't at home here any more, and he has no facilities for constructing the craft as you have. So I came to look at your place, and I must say that it looks a bit suspicious, Mr. Swift. Though, of course, as I said," he added with a smile, "you may be able to explain everything."
"I think I can convince you that I had no part in the smuggling," spoke Tom, laughing. "I never sell my airships. If you like you may talk with my father, the housekeeper, and others who can testify that since my return from taking moving pictures, I have not been out of town, and the smuggling has been going on only a little while."
"That is true," assented the custom officer. "I shall be glad to listen to any evidence you may offer. This is a very baffling case. The government is losing thousands of dollars every month, and we can't seem to stop the smugglers, or get much of a clew to them. This one is the best we have had so far."