"Oh, I forgot about Mary Nestor being there!" laughed Mr. Damon. "Sly dog, Tom! Sly dog!" and he nudged the youth in the ribs.

"It isn't altogether Mary. Though I am going to see her," Tom admitted.

"It has to do with a little apparatus I am getting up. I can capture several birds in the same auto, so I'll go along."

This pleased Mr. Damon, and he and Tom were soon speeding over the road. It was just outside Newmarket that they saw an automobile stalled at the foot of a hill which they topped. It needed but a glance to show that there was serious trouble. As Mr. Damon's car went down the slope two men could be seen leaping from the other machine. And, as they did so, flames burst out of the rear of the stalled machine.

"Fire! Fire!" cried Mr. Damon, rather needlessly it would seem, as any one could see the blaze.

"Another chance!" exclaimed Tom, reaching down between his feet for a wrapped object he had placed in Mr. Damon's car. "It's Field and Melling!" he cried. "The two men who boasted of having put it over on Mr. Baxter. Their car is blazing. Here's where I get a chance to heap coals of fire on their heads!"

CHAPTER XVI

VIOLENT THREATS

Tom Swift's companion in the automobile was sufficiently acquainted with this old expression to understand readily what it meant. And as he directed his car as close as was safe to the blazing car, Mr. Damon asked:

"Are you going to put out that fire for them, Tom?"

"I'm going to try," was the grim answer.

The young inventor was rapidly taking out of wrapping paper a metal cylinder with a short nozzle on one end and a handle on the other. It was, obviously, a hand fire extinguisher of a type familiar to all.

"Wait Tom, I'll slow up a little more," said Mr. Damon, as he applied the brakes with more force. "Bless my court plaster! don't jump and injure yourself."

But Tom Swift was sufficiently agile to leap from the automobile when it was still making good speed. He did not want Mr. Damon to approach too close to the burning car, for there might be an explosion. At the same time, he rather discounted the risk to himself, for he ran right in, while the two men, who had leaped from the blazing machine, hurried to a safe distance.

Tom held in readiness a small hand extinguisher. It was one he had constructed from an old one found in the shop, but it contained some of his own chemicals, the original solution having been used at some time or other. It was the intention of the young inventor to put on the market a house-size extinguisher after he had disposed of his big airship invention.

"Look out there! The gasoline tank may go up!" cried Field, the small man with the big voice.

Tom did not answer, but ran in as close as was necessary and began to play a small stream from his hand extinguisher on the blazing car. He was thus able to direct the white, frothy chemical better than when he had shot it from the airship, and in a few seconds only some wisps of curling smoke remained to tell of the presence of the fire. The automobile was badly charred, but the damage was not past redemption.

"Bless my check book! you did the trick, Tom," cried Mr. Damon, as he alighted and came up to congratulate his companion.

"Yes. But this wasn't much," Tom said. "I didn't use half the charge.

Short circuit?" he asked Field and Melling who were now returning, having seen that the danger was pa.s.sed.

"I--I guess so," replied Melling, in his squeaky voice. "We--we are much obliged to you."

"No thanks necessary," said Tom, a bit shortly, as he turned to go back with Mr. Damon to their car. "It's what any one would do under like circ.u.mstances."

"Only you did it very effectively," observed Field.

Tom was wondering if they knew who he was and of his a.s.sociation with Josephus Baxter. He did not believe the men recognized him as the person who had been at the Meadow Inn one day with Mary. They had hardly glanced at him then, he thought.

"That's a mighty powerful extinguisher you have there, young man," said Melling. "May I ask the make of it? We ought to carry one like it on our car," he told his companion.

"It is the Swift Aerial Fire Extinguisher," said Tom gravely, with a glance at Mr. Damon.

"The Swift--Tom Swift?" exclaimed Melling. "Do you mean--"

"I am Tom Swift," put in the young inventor quickly. "And this is one of my inventions. I might add," he said slowly, looking first Melling and then Field full in the face, "that I was aided in perfecting the chemical extinguisher by Josephus Baxter."

The effect on the two men, whom Tom believed were scoundrels, was marked.

"Baxter!" cried Field.

"Is he a.s.sociated with you?" demanded Melling.

"Not officially," Tom answered, delighted at the chance to "rub it in,"

as he expressed it later. "I have been helping him, and he has been helping me since he lost his dye formulae in--in your fire!"

"Does he say he lost them in the fire of our factory?" demanded Field aggressively.

"He believes he did," a.s.serted Tom. "I helped carry him out of the laboratory of your place when he was almost dead from suffocation. He remembers that he had the formulae then, but since has been unable to find them."

"He'd better be careful how he accuses us!" bl.u.s.tered Field, in his big voice.

"We could have the law on him for that!" squeaked the bigger Melling.

"He hasn't accused you," said Tom easily. "He only says the formulae disappeared during the fire in your place, and he is just wondering, that is all--just wondering!"

"Well, he--we, I--that is, we haven't anything from Baxter that we didn't pay for," declared Field. "And if he goes about saying such things he'd better be careful. I am going--"

But he suddenly became silent as his companion's elbow nudged him. And then Melling took up the talk, saying:

"We're much obliged to you, Mr. Swift, for putting out the fire in our car. But for you it would have been destroyed. And if you ever want to sell the extinguisher process of yours, you'll find us in the market.

We are going into the dye business on a large scale, and we can always use new chemical combinations."

"My extinguisher is not for sale," said Tom dryly. "Come on, Mr. Damon.

We can take you into town, I suppose," Tom went on, looking at his eccentric friend for confirmation, and finding it in a nod. "But I doubt if we could tow you, as we are in a hurry, and--"

"Oh, thank you, we'll look over our machine before we leave it," said Melling. "It may be that we can get it to go."

Tom doubted this, after a look at the charred section, but he easily understood the dislike of the men, upon whose heads he had heaped coals of fire, to ride with him and Mr. Damon.

So Field and Melling were left standing in the road near their stranded car, which, but for Tom Swift's prompt action, would have been only a heap of ruins.

Tom first visited the man who had a candy machine, in which the owner wanted to interest Mr. Damon. After seeing a demonstration and giving his opinion, he attended to his own affairs, in which his hand extinguisher played a part. Then he called on Mary Nestor at her relative's home.

"Oh, but it's good to see you again, Tom!" cried Mary, after the first greeting. "What have you been doing, and what's all that white stuff on your coat?"

"Fire extinguisher chemical," Tom answered, and he related what had happened.