The two men, first looking through the hole in the shed to make sure they were not observed, went out, carrying Tom, who was no light load.  Morse followed them, pushing the motor-cycle, and carrying under one arm the bundle containing the valuable model, which he had detached.

“I think this is the time we get ahead of Mr. Swift,” murmured Morse, pulling his black mustache, when he and his companions had reached the car in the field.  “We have just what we want now.”

“Yes, but we had hard enough work getting it,” observed Appleson.  “Only by luck we saw this lad come in here, or we would have had to chase all over for him, and maybe then we would have missed him.  Hurry, Simpson—­I mean Featherton.  It’s getting late, and we’ve got lots to do.”

The chauffeur sprang to his seat, Appleson taking his place beside him.  The motor-cycle was tied on behind the big touring car, and with the unconscious form of Tom in the tonneau, beside Morse, who stroked his mustache nervously, the auto started off.  The storm had passed, and the sun was shining brightly, but Tom could not see it.

CHAPTER XV.

A VAIN SEARCH

Several hours later Tom had a curious dream.  He imagined he was wandering about in the polar regions, and that it was very cold.  He was trying to reason with himself that he could not possibly be on an expedition searching for the North Pole, still he felt such a keen wind blowing over his scantily-covered body that he shivered.  He shivered so hard, in fact, that he shivered himself awake, and when he tried to pierce the darkness that enveloped him he was startled, for a moment, with the idea that perhaps, after all, he had wandered off to some unknown country.

For it was quite dark and cold.  He was in a daze, and there was a curious smell about him—­an odor that he tried to recall.  Then, all at once, it came to him what it was—­chloroform.  Once his father had undergone an operation, and to deaden his pain chloroform had been used.

“I’ve been chloroformed!” exclaimed the young inventor, and his words sounded strange in his ears.  “That’s it.  I’ve met with an accident riding my motor-cycle.  I must have hit my head, for it hurts fearful.  They picked me up, carried me to a hospital and have operated on me.  I wonder if they took off an arm or leg?  I wonder what hospital I’m in?  Why is it so dark and cold?”

As he asked himself these questions his brain gradually cleared from the haze caused by the cowardly blow, and from the chloroform that had been administered by Featherton.

Tom’s first act was to feel first of one arm, then the other.  Having satisfied himself that neither of these members were mutilated he reached down to his legs.

“Why, they’re all right, too,” he murmured.  “I wonder what they did to me?  That’s certainly, chloroform I smell, and my head feels as if some one had sat on it.  I wonder—­”