“No—­don’t.  It would only—­only alarm dad,” faltered Tom.  “I’m getting all right now.  But he—­he nearly had me, Ned!”

“He had you?  What do you mean, Tom?  Who had you?”

“I don’t know who it was, but when I was talking to you over the wire, all of a sudden I felt a hand behind me.  It slipped over my mouth and nose, and I smelled chloroform.  I knew right away something was wrong, and I called to you.  That’s all I remember.  I guess I must have gone off.”

“You did,” spoke Ned.  “You were unconscious when I got to you.  I couldn’t imagine what had happened.  First I thought it was an electrical shock.  Then I smelled that chloroform.  But who could it have been, Tom?”

“Give it up, Ned!  I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Could they have been going to rob you?”

“I haven’t a thing but a nickel watch on me,” went on Tom.  “I left all my cash in the house.  If it was robbery, it wasn’t me, personally, they were after.”

“What then?  Some of your inventions?”

“That’s my idea now, Ned.  You remember some years ago Jake Burke and his gang held me up and took one of dad’s patents away from me?”

“Yes, I’ve heard you mention that.  It was when you first got your motor cycle; wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.  Well, what I was going to say was that they used chloroform on me then, and—­”

“You think this is the same crowd?  Why, I thought they were captured.”

“No, they got away, but I haven’t heard anything of them in years.  Now it may be they have come back for revenge, for you know we got back the stolen property.”

“That’s right.  Say, Tom, it might be so.  What are you going to do about it?”

“I hardly know.  If it was Jake Burke, alias Happy Harry, and his crowd, including Appleson, Morse and Featherton, they’re a bad lot.  I wouldn’t want father to know they were around, for he’d be sure to worry himself sick.  He never really got over the time they attacked me, and got the patent away.  Dad sure thought he was ruined then.”

“Now if I tell him I was chloroformed again to-night, and that I think it was Burke and his crowd, he’d be sure to get ill over it.  So I’m just going to keep mum.”

“Well, perhaps it’s the best plan.  But you ought to do something.”

“Oh, I will, Ned, don’t worry about that.  I feel much better now.”

“How did it happen?” asked Ned, his curiosity not yet satisfied.

“I don’t know, exactly.  I was in the booth, talking to you, and not paying much attention to anything else.  I was adjusting and readjusting the current, trying to get that image to appear on the plate.  All at once, I felt someone back of me, and, before I could turn, that hand, with the chloroform sponge, was over my mouth and nose.  I struggled, and called out, but it wasn’t much use.”

“But they didn’t do anything else—­they didn’t take anything; did they, Tom?”