“Oh, is it?” asked Tom.
Again he stood in front of a window and, as he had done before, though unseen by the plotters, Tom raised and flashed the pocket electric torch he had brought with him. Once more, in answer to his signal, came more flashes from without. Tom’s friends were on the alert.
“I guess that settles it,” Mr. X was forced to admit. “Turn on the light here, Tom Swift, and we’ll talk this matter over again.”
“No!” exclaimed the young inventor in ringing tones. “I’ll do the talking now—you’ll do the listening. I’m in a position to dictate my terms, and I’ll do it. I owe you something for the manner in which you had me and my manager kidnapped and brought to this place, also for what your tool Greenbaum did.”
“Now listen here!” broke in Mr. B, his whole, fat body quivering with fear as Tom switched on the main light again. “That Greenbaum fellow, he went farther than we told him to. We never told him to try to blow you up, and we immediately discharged him when we learned of it.”
“That is correct,” assented Mr. X. “We do not countenance deeds of violence. Greenbaum, whom we have since discharged, went beyond his instructions—far beyond. But he was half crazy.”
“Half crazy?” inquired Tom. “He always impressed me as being very level-headed—too much so.”
“Still he was not right in his head,” said Mr. B. “He lost a small fortune in a moving picture investment, and when he learned your invention might spell the ruin of that industry, so he could never recoup his losses, he went to desperate lengths.”
“I should say he did,” agreed Tom, with a grim smile, as he remembered his ruined laboratory and the pains he had suffered. “But I will exact payment for what he did.”
“You would be within your rights there,” said Mr. X.