Tom Swift and his house on wheels

by Victor Appleton

"But look here, Mr. Swift! Do you agree with him?"

"Absolutely!"

"And you won't consider the contracts further?"

"The matter is closed, I told you!" and Tom Swift's voice was a bit sharp now.

With an imperious gesture the burly Englishman gathered up his papers and began to stuff them into a leather brief case bulging with other documents. If possible the red of his face deepened.

"Well," he began, "of all the——"

Tom Swift looked up sharply. He was on the verge of saying something that, he himself admitted, he might later have been sorry for when the door of the private office opened and a veritable giant of a man fairly squeezed his way through the doorway.

"What is it, Koku?" asked Tom, not quite pleased with such an interruption at this time.

"Excuse, Master," murmured the foreign giant, whose struggle with a strange tongue sometimes got the best of him. "But new engine him have come an' Mr. Jackson say him got to be lift up—so I lift if you want."

As if to demonstrate his strength, the giant put one finger under the edge of the heavy table around which the three men sat and, with as much ease as if he were lifting a feather, tilted it.