"Well, he found out in some way."
"Very likely. And when I refused to help him make machinery to turn out infringements on English patented apparatus, he turned nasty and decided to make me sorry."
"So it looks, Tom. Lucky you caught the plot in time."
"That's due to Mr. Jackson's foresight. It was a narrow escape. Half an hour later and that motor would be fit only for the scrap-heap. Look here!"
Tom held up a small bottle of a very powerful acid—one capable of eating into and corroding the hardest steel.
"I picked that up where one of the scoundrels dropped it," Tom said. "They evidently wanted to get at some of the valves on the cylinders. A few drops of this acid in each one and the walls would have been so scored that even reboring would not have made them fit to use again."
"A dirty trick!" exclaimed Ned. "I wish we could have caught them."
"So do I, for the sake of what may happen in the future."
Leaving Koku and Eradicate on guard over the new motor, Tom took Ned to where the chassis and body of the House on Wheels were being constructed. It was the first time Ned had seen the new invention and at a glimpse of it, standing in the middle of the shop where it was receiving its final coat of paint, the young manager exclaimed:
"Say, that's a peach!"