."

"Well, you'd better think of it. You know on the ocean sailors have to
locate a certain imaginary position by calculation, using the sun and
stars as guides. Of course, they have navigation down pretty fine, and
a good pilot can get to a place on the surface of the ocean and meet
another craft there almost as well as you and I can make an appointment
to meet at Main and Broad streets at a certain hour.

"But lots of times there are errors in calculations or a storm comes up
hiding the sun and stars, and, instead of a captain getting to where he
wants to, he's anywhere from one to a hundred miles out. Now the
location of Broad and Main Streets doesn't change even in a storm.

"And I'm not saying that a location on an ocean changes. I'm only
saying that the least disturbance or error in calculation makes it
almost impossible to find the exact spot. And if it's that hard on the
surface, where you can see what you're doing, how much harder is it in
regard to something on the bottom of the sea? So don't take any stock
in these ocean treasure recovering companies. They may not be fakes,
but they're mighty uncertain."

"Oh, I don't know that I was really going to buy any stock in this
Japanese concern, Tom. I only thought it would be interesting to think
about. And perhaps you might sell them a submarine or some of your
diving apparatus."

"Nothing doing, Ned. We've got other plans, my father and I. There's
that new tractor for use in the big wheat-growing belt, to say nothing
of--"

Tom's remarks were interrupted by voices outside his office door. One
voice, in particular, rose above the others. It said:

"No can go in! The Master he am busily! No can go in!"

"Nonsense, Koku!" exclaimed a man, and at the sound of his voice Tom
and Ned smiled. "Nonsense! Of course I can go in! Why, bless my watch
fob, I must go in! I've got the greatest proposition to lay before Tom
Swift that he ever heard of! There's at least a million in it! Let me
pass, Koku!"

"Mr. Damon!" murmured Tom Swift. "I wonder what he has on his mind now?"

As he spoke the door opened rather violently and a short, stout man,
evidently much excited, fairly burst into the room, followed, more
sedately, by a stranger.

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE OFFER

"Hello, Tom Swift! Hello, Ned! Glad to see you both! Busy, as usual,
I'll wager. Bless my check book! I never saw you when you weren't busy
at some scheme or other, Tom, my boy. But I won't