“There’s Eradicate!” yelled Ned.  “He’s got the hose all right!” The colored man was beginning to unreel a line.

“That’s what it needs!” exclaimed Tom.  “Now there’s some chance to save the shop.”

“We’ll be there ourselves to take a hand in a few seconds!” cried Mr. Damon, forgetting to bless anything.

“The scoundrel who started this fire, and those back of him, ought to be imprisoned for life!” declared Mr. Nestor.

A moment later Ned had landed the airship within a short distance of the shop.  In an instant the occupants of the craft had leaped out, and Tom, after a hasty glance to see that his valuable camera was safe, dashed toward the building crying: 

“Never mind the pails, dad!  Use the hose! there’s a nozzle at the back door.  Go around there, and play the water on from that end.”

Eradicate, with his line of hose, had disappeared into the shop through the front door, and the others pressed in after him, heedless of the dense smoke.

“Is it blazing much, Rad?” cried Tom.

“Can’t see no blaze at all, Mass a Tom,” replied the colored man.  “Dere’s a heap of suffin in de middle ob de flo’, an’ dat’s what’s raisin’ all de rumpus.”

They all saw it a moment later, a smoldering heap of rags and paper on the concrete floor of the shop.  Eradicate turned his hose on it, there was a hissing sound, a cloud of steam arose, and the fire was practically out, though much smoke remained.

“Jove! that was a lucky escape!” exclaimed Tom, as he looked around when the vapor had partly cleared away.  “No damage done at all, as far as I can see.  I wonder what the game was?  Did you see anything of a tramp around here?” he asked of his father.

“No, Tom.  I have been busy in the house.  So has Mrs. Baggert.  Suddenly she called my attention to the smoke coming from the door, and we ran out.”

“I seen it, too,” added Eradicate.  “I was doin’ some whitewashin’, an’ I run up as soon as I could.”

“We saw the tramp all right, but he got away,” said Tom, and he told how he had taken pictures of him.  “I don’t believe it would be much use to look for him now, though.”

“Me look,” spoke Koku significantly, as he hurried off in the direction taken by the tramp.  He came back later, not having found him.

“What do you think of it, Tom?” asked Ned, when the excitement had calmed down, and the pile of burned rags had been removed.  It was found that oil and chemicals had been put on them to cause a dense smoke.

“I think it was the work of those fellows who are after my camera,” replied the young inventor.  “They are evidently watching me, and when they saw us all go off in the airship they thought probably that the coast was clear.”

“But why should they start a fire?”

“I don’t know, but probably to create a lot of smoke, and excitement, so that they could search, and not be detected.  Maybe the fellow after he found that the camera was gone, wanted to draw those in the house out to the shop, so he could have a clear field to search in my room for any drawings that would give him a dew as to how my machine works.  They certainly did not want to burn the shop, for that pile of rags could have smoldered all day on the concrete floor, without doing any harm.  Robbery was the motive, I think.”