"I say I was!" and the Englishman banged his fist hard on the heavy table that Koku had raised with one finger. "I tell you I have been shamefully treated here, and I'm not going to stand it. I——"
Again the door suddenly opened and Basil Cunningham made a move as if to hide beneath the table he had so lately pounded. But instead of Koku, this time the intruder was an aged and decrepit colored man whose whitening, curly hair made a pathetic frame for his black, wizened face. No gentler creature, as a man, could well have been visioned, and Mr. Cunningham, who had evidently been expecting a return of the giant, looked a bit foolish.
"Did yo' all call me, Massa Swift?" asked the negro gently.
"No, Rad, we didn't call," said Tom, with a kind smile at the aged servant who often claimed, regarding the young inventor: "I done nussed him from a baby, dat's whut I done!"
"'Scuse me, Massa Tom," went on Eradicate. "But I thought I done heard a noise in here, an'——"
"We were just talking, Rad, that was all. We have about finished," and Tom looked significantly at the red-faced Briton. "I'll call you if I need you, Rad."
"Yes, sah," and Eradicate shuffled out.
"There is no use in further wasting your time or my own, Mr. Cunningham," proceeded Tom Swift, when the three again faced each other. "My mind is fully made up, and you see that my father agrees."
"I agree fully with my son," added aged Mr. Swift.
"Then I'll have to get somebody else to carry out this contract!" snapped Mr. Cunningham. "I'll go to some firm that knows how to take a big profit when it's offered."