"Where are you worst hurt, Rad?" asked Tom, with a view to getting a line on which physician would be the best one to summon.

"It's all in mah face, Ma.s.sa Tom," moaned the colored man. "It's mah eyes. Dat stuff done sploded right in 'em! I can't see--nevah no mo'!"

"Oh, I guess it isn't as bad as that," said Tom. But when he had a glimpse of the seared and wounded face of his faithful servant he could not repress a shudder.

A physician was summoned by telephone, and he arrived in his automobile at the same time that Mr. Damon reached Tom's house.

"Bless my bottle of arnica, Tom!" exclaimed the eccentric man, with sympathy in his voice. "What's this I hear? One of your men tells me old Eradicate is killed!"

"Not as bad as that, yet," replied Tom, as he came out, leaving the doctor to make his first examination. "It was an explosion of my new aerial fire-fighting chemicals that I left Rad to mix for me. If anything serious results to him from this I'll drop the whole business!

I'll never forgive myself!"

"It wasn't your fault, Tom. Perhaps he did something wrong," said Mr.

Damon.

"Yes, it was my fault. I should not have let him take the chance with a mixture I had tried only a few times. But we'll hope for the best. How is he, Doctor?" Tom asked a little later when the physician came out on the porch.

"He's doing as well as can be expected for the present," was the answer. "I have given him a quieting mixture. His worst injury seems to be to his face. His hands are cut by broken gla.s.s, but the hurts are only superficial. I think we shall have to get an eye specialist to look at him in a day or two."

"You mean that he--that he may go blind?" gasped Tom.

"Well, we'll not decide right away," replied the doctor, as cheerfully as he could. "I should rather have the opinion of an oculist before making that statement. It may be only temporary."

"That's bad enough!" muttered Tom. "Poor old Rad!"

"Me take care ob him," put in Koku, who had been humbly standing around waiting to hear the news. "Me never be mad at dat black man no more!

Him my best friend! I lub him like I did my brudder!"

"Thank you, Koku," said Tom, and his mind went back to the time when he had escaped in his airship from the gigantic men, of whom Koku and his brother were two specimens. The brother had gone with a circus, and Koku, for several years, only saw him occasionally.

Everything possible was done for Eradicate, and the doctor said that it would be several days, until after the burns from the exploding chemicals had partly healed, before the eye-doctor could make an examination.

"Then we can only wait and hope," said Tom.

"And hope for the best!" advised Mr. Damon.

"I'll try," promised Tom. He went back to the laboratory with his eccentric friend and with Ned, who had come over as soon as he heard the news. Not much of an examination could be made, as the place was in such ruins. But it was surmised that in combining the two chemical mixtures a new one had been created, or at least one that Tom had not counted on. This had exploded, blowing Eradicate down, flaring a sheet of flame up into his face, scattering broken gla.s.s about, and generally creating havoc.

"I can't understand it," said Tom. "I was trying to make a fire extinguishing liquid, and it turned out to be a fire creator. I don't see what was wrong."

"One chemical might have been impure," suggested Ned.

"Yes," agreed Tom. "I'll check them over and try to find out where the mistake happened."

"This place will have to be rebuilt," observed Ned. "It's in bad shape, Tom."

"I don't mind that in the least, if Rad doesn't lose his eyesight," was the answer of the young inventor, and his friends could see that he was much worried, as well he might be.

In silence Tom Swift looked about the ruins of what had been a fine chemical laboratory.

"It will take a month to get this back in shape," he said ruefully. "I guess I shall have to postpone my experiments."

"Why not ask Mr. Baxter to help you?" suggested Ned.

"What can he do?" Tom wanted to know. "He hasn't any laboratory."

"He has a sort of one," Ned rejoined. "You know you told me to keep track of him and give him any help I could."

"Yes," Tom nodded.

"Well, the other day he came to me and said he had a chance to set up a small laboratory in a vacant shop near the river. He needed a little capital and I lent it to him, as you told me to."

"Glad you did," returned Tom. "But do you suppose his plant is large enough to enable me to work there until mine is in shape again?"

"It wouldn't do any harm to take a look," suggested Ned.

"I'll do it!" decided Tom, more hopefully than he had spoken since the accident.

CHAPTER VII

A FORCED LANDING

Josephus Baxter seemed to have recovered some of his spirits after his narrow escape from death in the fireworks factory blaze. He greeted Tom and Ned with a smile as they entered the improvised laboratory he had been able to set up in what had once been a factory for the making of wooden ware, an industry that, for some reason, did not flourish in Shopton.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Swift," said the chemist, who seemed to have aged several years in the few weeks that had intervened since the fire.

"I want to thank you for giving me a chance to start over again."

"Oh, that's all right," said Tom easily. "We inventors ought to help one another. Are you able to do anything here?"

"As much as possible without my secret formulae," was the answer. "If I only had those back from the rascals, Field and Melling, I would be able to go ahead faster. As it is, I am working in the dark. For some of the formulae were given to me by a Frenchman, and I had only one copy. I kept that in the safe of the fireworks concern, and after the fire it could not be found."

"Was the safe destroyed?" asked Tom.

"No. But the doors were open, and much of what had been inside was in ashes and cinders. Amos Field claimed that the explosion had blown open the safe and burned a lot of their valuable fireworks formulae too."

"And you believe they have yours?" asked Ned.

"I'm sure of it!" was the fierce answer. "Those men are unprincipled rogues! They had been at me ever since I was foolish enough to tell them about my formulae to get me to sell them a share. But I refused, for I knew the secret mixtures would make my fortune when I could establish a new dye industry. Field and Melling claimed they wanted the formulae for their fireworks, but that was only an excuse. The formulae were not nearly so valuable for pyrotechnics as for dyes. The fireworks business is not so good, either, since so many cities have voted for a 'Sane Fourth of July.'"

"I can appreciate that," said Tom. "But what we called for, Mr. Baxter, is to find if you have room enough to let me do a little experimenting here. I am working on a new kind of fire extinguisher, to be dropped on tall buildings from an airship."

"Sounds like a good idea," said the chemist, rather dreamily.

"Well, I have the airship, and I can see my way clear to perfecting a device to drop the chemicals in metal tanks or bombs," went on Tom.