Ames had said that on the pretext of wanting to date the secretary, Amby would come to her desk. Then, when she was not looking, he would sneak into the Swifts’ private office and pick up information. Once he had almost been caught-he was the eavesdropper who had bumped into the shelves of bottles and models of inventions.
Amby had also been responsible for the marred printing plates and had made up the story of the dog being the cause of the “accident.” The disloyal employee had been working with a crooked lawyer using the alias of Hampshire and both men had become dupes of a foreign ring.
“The ones we’re going to look up on the way back to earth are part of the group,” Tom said.
Horton added that both Amby and Hampshire in their underhanded work had concentrated on Ted Spring in order to get secret information about the solartron from him. Both had phoned Ted and had also deliberately planned the car accident. Furthermore, a recheck on the servo units in Mr. Spring’s cracked-up test plane had upheld the original findings. The accident was not the result of any carelessness on the part of the Swifts.
“Hampshire thought Ted would fall for his
A RACE TO THE RESCUE 181
story right away,” said Ken Horton. “By the way, Hampshire is in jail.”
As Horton continued, Tom learned that the unscrupulous scientist members of the foreign group had been traced and exposed by patiently checking every name on the Journal’s mailing list. Receiving the design equation for the solartron had whetted the group’s appetite for further knowledge of Tom’s marvelous invention. They had planned the double kidnaping as a means of extorting the complete plans for the machine.