outskirts of the small town of Shopton, in New York State. Mr. Swift
was quite wealthy, having amassed a considerable fortune from several
of his patents, as he was also an inventor. Tom's mother had been dead
since he was a small child, and Mrs. Baggert kept house for the
widower and his son. There was also, in their household, an aged
engineer, named Garret Jackson, who attended to the engine and boilers
that operated machinery and apparatus in several small shops that
surrounded the Swift homestead; for Mr. Swift did most of his work at
home.

As related in the first volume of this series, entitled "Tom Swift and
His Motor-Cycle," the lad had passed through some strenuous
adventures. A syndicate of rich men, disappointed in a turbine motor
they had acquired from a certain inventor, hired a gang of scoundrels
to get possession of a turbine Mr. Swift had invented. Just before
they made the attempt, however, Tom became possessed of a motor-cycle.
It had belonged to a wealthy man, Mr. Wakefield Damon, of Waterford,
near Lake Carlopa, which body of water adjoined the town of Shopton;
but Mr. Damon had two accidents with the machine, and sold it to Tom
cheap. Tom was riding his motorcycle to Albany, to deliver his
father's model of the turbine motor to a lawyer, in order to get a
patent on it, when he was attacked by the gang of bad men. These
included Ferguson Appleson, Anson Morse, Wilson Featherton, alias
Simpson, Jake Burke, alias Happy Harry, who sometimes masqueraded as a
tramp, and Tod Boreck, alias Murdock. These men knocked Tom
unconscious, stole the valuable model and some papers, and carried the
youth away in their automobile.

Later the young inventor, following a clue given him by Eradicate
Sampson, an aged colored man, who, with his mule, Boomerang, went