Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 23 – And His Aquatomic Tracker

174 AQUATOMIC TRACKER

hideaway known only to his closest henchmen.

“That guy doesn’t trust anyone,” Bud added with a chuckle. “When he came here to pull his latest job, he brought the loot along with him. From the way this place is rigged, I think he planned it as a permanent sub base. The guards told us the island was uninhabited and Vaxilis had leased it under a phony name.”

Carlow related that he had been kidnapped in Paris by men who had offered to buy his invention and flown him to the island in a seaplane. Actually they wanted to prevent him from clearing himself or revealing what he had discovered about Vaxilis’ true character.

Tom made no comment. Instead, he hastily inspected the house. Although it was purposely plain and unimposing from the outside, it was comfortably furnished and well stocked with provisions. The Delian Apollo and the stolen paintings were stored in a bedroom with drawn draperies over them. The gold bullion, also covered, had been stacked along one wall.

Noticing a powerful radio set and a phone, Tom asked, “What’s the phone for?”

“It communicates with the sub in the harbor, Bud replied. “And that switch on the wall controls the whirlpool machine.”

“Then the Sea Hound didn’t trigger off the whirlpool automatically?” Arv put in.

Bud shook his head. “It can be triggered by a TRAPPED BELOW 175

sonar buoy alarm syste-m, from what the guards said, but that’s not what happened this time. You must have been spotted by a lookout on the sub, because the guards got a call over the phone and then switched it on from up here.”