Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 04 – And His Giant Robot

he said. “Tomorrow we’ll put a tracer through on second cousins and casual outside friends of the friends of employees, if necessary. Somewhere we’ll find the leak and then-”

Suddenly Ames leaped into the air, yelling, “Ouch! My footl I just jabbed it on something sharp.”

As Tom focused the beam of his flashlight on the floor, Ames hopped around on one foot, clutching the other with his hand.

“Went right through the sole of my shoe,” he said.

“Here’s what you stepped on,” said Tom. A sharp metal point was sticking out of the floor boards.

“Watch it, Tom,” cautioned Bud. “This may be a scheme to accomplish what the crows were supposed to do. We never thought of checking the cellar!”

58 TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT ROBOT

Tom motioned the others to back away while he probed at the surrounding boards. “I think that this metal is attached to something underneath. Doesn’t look like a bomb from here.”

Bud, Radnor, and Ames helped him wrench loose more of the flooring. Below was a shallow cellar, containing a unit of gears and motors.

“Well, that couldn’t be what manipulated those crows,” Bud said.

“No,” Tom agreed. “I have an idea the control unit was probably mobile-maybe built into big vans-and that’s how they managed to clear out so soon.”

Tom studied the large mechanism after Radnor and Ames lifted it from the cellar. “This looks like a timing control of some sort. I’ve seen only one other like it. That was in the door of a bank safe! I’ll bet that this is a duplicate of a vault’s timing mechanism and someone was using it to experiment with.”