“What’s the matter?” asked his father, who had started toward one of several machine shops on the premises—­shops where Mr. Swift and his son did inventive work.

“Guess I’d better get a blank check and some money,” replied Tom as he entered the house.  “I’ll need to pay a deposit if I secure the boat.”

“That’s so.  Well, good luck,” and with his mind busy on a plan for a new kind of storage battery, the inventor went on to his workroom.  Tom got some cash and his checkbook from a small safe he owned and was soon speeding over the road to Lanton, his motor-cycle making quite a cloud of dust.  While he is thus hurrying along to the auction I will tell you something about him.

Tom Swift, son of Barton Swift, lived with his father and a motherly housekeeper, Mrs. Baggert, in a large house on the outskirts of the town of Shopton, in New York State.  Mr. Swift had acquired considerable wealth from his many inventions and patents, but he did not give up working out his ideas simply because he had plenty of money.  Tom followed in the footsteps of his parent and had already taken out several patents.

Shortly before this story opens the youth had become possessed of a motor-cycle in a peculiar fashion.  As told in the first volume of this series, entitled “Tom Swift and His Motor-cycle,” Tom was riding to the town of Mansburg on an errand for his father one day when he was nearly run down by a motorcyclist.  A little later the same motorcyclist, who was a Mr. Wakefield Damon, of Waterfield, collided with a tree near Tom’s home and was severely cut and bruised, the machine being broken.  Tom and his father cared for the injured rider, and Mr. Damon, who was an eccentric individual, was so disheartened by his attempts to ride the motor-cycle that he sold it to Tom for fifty dollars, though it had cost much more.

About the same time that Tom bought the motor-cycle a firm of rascally lawyers, Smeak & Katch by name, had, in conjunction with several men, made an attempt to get control of an invention of a turbine motor perfected by Mr. Swift.  The men, who were Ferguson Appleson, Anson Morse, Wilson Featherton, alias Simpson, and Jake Burke, alias Happy Harry, who sometimes disguised himself as a tramp, tried several times to steal the model.

Their anxiety to get it was due to the fact that they had invested a large sum in a turbine motor invented by another man, but their motor would not work and they sought to steal Mr. Swift’s.  Tom was sent to Albany on his motor-cycle to deliver the model and some valuable papers to Mr. Crawford, of the law firm of Reid & Crawford, of Washington, attorneys for Mr. Swift.  Mr. Crawford had an errand in Albany and had agreed to meet Tom there with the model.

But, on the way, Tom was attacked by the gang of unscrupulous men and the model was stolen.  He was assaulted and carried far away in an automobile.  In an attempt to capture the gang in a deserted mansion, in the woods on the shore of Lake Carlopa, Tom was aided by Mr. Damon, of whom he had purchased the motor-cycle.  The men escaped, however, and nothing could be done to punish them.