“Can I be dreaming?” gasped Tom. “How did this happen? Koku must be drugged! How did he get that fash? And what does it all mean?”
As he started forward a noise behind him attracted his attention.
CHAPTER XV
A SINISTER WARNING
Like an electrical flash it came into the mind of Tom Swift that there was something wrong here—something terribly and dangerously wrong. The drugged giant—nothing less than a drug could account for the helplessness of Koku—the appearance of that strange fruit, the noise behind—all these were warnings not to be ignored.
So, though his first impulse was to hasten to the aid of the giant, when he heard that noise back of him Tom turned.
He was only just in time. He had a glimpse of a figure gliding toward him out of the shadows, for that part of the corridor was not brightly lighted. And the figure was that of the man lately discharged—Greenbaum!
With uplifted hand, in which was some sort of a weapon Tom could not distinguish, Greenbaum glided toward him. Tom was taken so by surprise and was so off his guard because of what had happened to Koku that he might have fallen a victim to Greenbaum.
But at that moment occurred an interruption and a diversion that saved the situation, and perhaps Tom’s life. The door farther down the corridor opened and Mr. Damon and Ned, preceded by Eradicate, who had been serving as guard there, came out. The two performers, receiving no answer to their telephonic signal, had rightly concluded that Tom had finished experimenting for the night.