villa deserted. Its occupants-including the famous hydronauts, Tom Swift and Bud Barclay-had vanished. Vaxilis’ yacht and helicopter were also missing. No mention was made of the Delian Apollo, nor of the other stolen masterpieces.
152 AQUATOMIC TRACKER
Tom, grim with worry, and his associates waited tensely for developments.
When no clue to Vaxilis’ whereabouts had materialized after forty-eight hours, Ames persuaded them all to fly back to the United States.
There was nothing to do now but stand by patiently while Interpol put out a worldwide dragnet for the fugitives. The FBI, meanwhile, was still unable to locate Tristan Carlow.
Tom stayed in seclusion on Fearing Island, letting the newspapers believe that he too had disappeared with all the others on the yacht. Ames and the Swift family, who were in on the plan to lure Vaxilis out of hiding, refused any comment to the press.
Two more days dragged by. Tom chafed at his forced inactivity and tried to forget his worry over Bud by puttering in his laboratory. But he was unable to concentrate. At last he snatched up the telephone and called Harlan Ames at Enterprises.
“What’s up?” the security chief asked.
“Nothing-that’s the whole trouble,” Tom replied. ”Harlan, I have a scheme to bait a trap for Vaxilis.”
CHAPTER XVIII
SONAR SIGNAL
AMES had a well-developed respect for Tom’s “schemes.” He knew the young inventor would not have called unless he had a shrewd and well-thought-out plan for trapping his enemy.
“Okay, skipper-I’ll fly over right away.”
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127