CHAPTER X

UGLY THREATS

FOR a moment no one seemed to know what to do, and after the first excited cries the only sounds audible were the pattering of the feet of the pursued and the pursuer on the flagged pavement of the hotel veranda.

“Bless my courthouse,” gasped Mr. Damon, “there’ll be murder done by that mad scoundrel!”

“Unless somebody stops him!” ejaculated Mr. Nestor.

Tom pushed back his chair and scrambled through the low window near his table and out on the broad porch. A moment later he was chasing after Tobini, who was rapidly drawing nearer to Mr. Thorndyke. The manager was a portly person, and evidently not accustomed to running. But fear lent him some speed.

“Drop that knife, you scoundrel!” cried Tom, hastening after what was, if not a madman, a man mad with rage.

“I kill him! I kill him!” screamed Tobini. “No one shall kill my roses and live!”

He was almost upon the panting manager now, but when Mr. Thorndyke looked back again and saw that murderous, gleaming knife, he took a desperate chance and leaped over the low balustrade of the veranda into some shrubbery at a place where it was not far to the ground.

“Good!” cried Tom Swift.

With a cry of rage Tobini reached the same place and started to leap down, but the young inventor was close behind him and, reaching forth a hand, tore the upraised knife from the gardener. At the same time Tom stuck out his foot and tripped Tobini so that he fell heavily. Tom was upon him in an instant, seeking to hold his hands to prevent the drawing of any other weapon. Tom had cast the knife back of him.

There was a fierce struggle for a few moments, Tobini seeking to tear himself loose; but Tom Swift was strong and would not let go. He got the fellow on his face and sat upon his back, twisting his arms up and around behind him.

By this time Mr. Damon, Mr. Nestor, and several other guests had hurried to Tom’s aid, and the raging, fuming gardener was subdued, but not without a further struggle. Like all such persons, he seemed to possess the strength of several men.

“Did he kill poor Thorndyke?” asked Mrs. Nestor, after the hands and feet of Tobini had been tied with large table napkins in lieu of ropes.

“I think not,” Tom said. “I believe he jumped over the railing in time.”

This proved to be true, for a few moments later the manager, rather pale and disheveled from his leap into the shrubbery, came back up on the veranda and surveyed the now subdued and temporarily quiet Italian.

“I’ve put up with enough of your tricks!” said the incensed manager. “You are a good workman, Tobini; but we have had too many complaints from our guests about you. This is the end!”

“What are you going to do with me?” growled the fellow.

“Send you to jail where you belong. Telephone for the state troopers,” he said to one of the waiters, that constabulary being the nearest authority to the isolated hotel.

“To jail!” growled Tobini.

“Yes. That is my last word to you!”

“But it is not my last word to you!” screamed the man, trying to break from his napkin bonds and from his captors. “You shall hear from me again! I shall have my revenge!”

His face was distorted with rage and his body writhed like that of a captive snake. But Tom Swift and the others had tied the napkins well and they held. The man was led from the veranda to a secure closet on the basement floor until the state troopers should arrive. Then the interrupted meal went on.

“He must be insane,” stated Mary.

“A bad number, whatever he is,” agreed Tom.

“I wish you didn’t have to go, Tom,” said Mary wistfully.

“So do I. But business is business.”

“I know, my dear. But I—I——”

“What is it?” asked Tom, as she hesitated.

“I have such a strange feeling, as if something were going to happen,” she said, looking over her shoulder apprehensively. “I feel as if we were surrounded by great danger.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Tom. “Mr. Thorndyke was the only one in any danger, and the cause has been removed, or soon will be. I think the troopers are coming now,” he went on, as the sound of an auto was heard in the lower road. “I’ll go and see.”

“No, Tom, stay with me, please!” begged Mary. They were out on the veranda after dinner.

“What’s the danger?” he asked. “That fellow is well trussed.”

“He might break loose,” said Mary. “And he made such a dreadful threat—about revenge and killing people. I’d rather you wouldn’t go. Let the state troopers take him away.”

“All right,” assented Tom, with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

A little later the madman, for such he was, temporarily at least, was taken away by the police and, so the hotel manager said, locked securely in the jail of a small town several miles away.

The excitement caused by Tobini passed away with the evening, though it was a fruitful source of conversation the next day among the guests, one and all of whom praised Tom Swift highly for so quickly disarming the fellow.

The season was now in full swing, and the hotel was well filled with guests who enjoyed the various forms of amusement and the activities provided by the manager and his helpers.

Tom and Mary went off much by themselves, as newly married couples have done since the beginning of the world and probably always will do. Mary showed Tom the various points of interest about the big estate. They went on excursions in the surrounding forests and once or twice met fire wardens who spoke of the danger of fires on account of the continued dryness.

“But we’re on the watch,” one deputy warden said, talking to Tom and Mary at the foot of his observation tower, from which he had descended for a little walk.

“I’ll feel more at ease when I’ve gone back to know that the firemen are on the alert,” Tom said to his wife as they returned to the hotel.

“If anything happens, will you come and get me, Tom?” Mary asked.

“Of course!” he exclaimed and, there being none to see, he put his arms around her and kissed her.

Tom had intended to stay four days at Mt. Camon with Mary, but the second night a long distance telephone call came for him.

“It’s from Mr. Jackson,” he said, when he had finished the talk. “He wants me back as soon as possible. I’ll go in the morning.”

“Anything wrong?” asked Mr. Swift.

“Oh, Jardine is making a fuss about a lot of things regarding his dirigible,” Tom said, in annoyed tones. “I’ve got to go and help Jackson and Ned straighten matters out.”

“I hope that dwarf won’t make any trouble,” said Mary.