"Nothing doing!" declared Ned, with a laugh. "You'll make only one House on Wheels and I can see you and Mary rolling off in that to the music of——"
"Hey! Where do you get that stuff?" exploded Tom, making an ineffectual reach to punch his chum. "That's the second crack to-day. Dad made one and now you. Where do you get it?"
"Well, since you turned down the Cunningham contract," went on Ned somewhat hastily, producing some papers from his pocket, "suppose we go into this Blakely matter. It isn't such a big thing, but we want to keep the wheels turning."
"Sure," agreed Tom, and the two were soon deep in calculations.
To the old readers of these books Tom Swift needs no introduction. But those to whom this volume comes as their first venture, it may be necessary to say that Tom Swift was a brilliant young inventor who lived with his father in the town of Shopton on Lake Carlopa.
The initial volume, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle," related how Tom became possessed of a machine that was damaged when Mr. Wakefield Damon, its rider, tried to climb a tree.
That was the beginning of Tom's mechanical activities, for he bought the motorcycle cheap, repaired it, and had some wonderful adventures on it. The tree-climbing incident also served to start the friendship of Tom and Mr. Damon, a friendship that had lasted, though the eccentric man, who blessed everything from his fountain pen to his boots, was much older than Tom Swift.
After his experience with the motorcycle, the young inventor had many startling and dangerous experiences in aircraft, submarines, and in turning out, with the help of his father and with Ned Newton as financial adviser, many strange machines.
Tom's latest invention is told of in the volume just before this one you are now reading, entitled "Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures." He made a machine which brought the images and voices of public performers directly into the home. The making of this machine had taken considerable cash, and though Tom had sold certain rights to a syndicate, the money would not be coming in for some time.
"And that's one reason I was so anxious for this Cunningham contract to go through," remarked Ned, who was talking business matters over with Tom following the departure of the Englishman.