“I cotch him! I got him! Now I make him like jelly!”
Like an echo came a frightened voice begging:
“Let me go! Oh, let me go!”
“Greenbaum!” shouted Tom, springing to the door in time to see the giant holding the plotting man in a grasp that made him helpless.
“I cotch him!” cried Koku. “I be on watch out here like Mr. Tom always tell me. I see him sneak along and cut wire. He have big ball in his hand, too, but I knock it down. Over there in corner!”
Garret Jackson made a jump for the corner indicated and picked up something which made him utter an exclamation of dismay.
“It’s a bomb!” the superintendent shouted.
There was a pail of water near by and into that the infernal machine was dropped just in time, for the fuse was spluttering and burning down.
Greenbaum, choked into senselessness by Koku’s powerful grip, sank to the floor. Tom turned to the assembled moving picture and theater men. There was an implied accusation in his glance.
“I hope you will believe us when I say we had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Mr. X. “We have not seen Greenbaum since his former unauthorized attack on you. This is a terrible surprise to us.”