y have kept me a prisoner ever since, and though they
offered to let me go if I would keep silent, I refused. I did not
think, to secure my own comfort, I should let such men go unpunished if
I could bring about their arrest."

"I should say not!" cried Tom.

"Did they treat you brutally, Mr. Nestor?" asked Mr. Damon.

"Not after they found out who I was, by looking through my wallet. Of
course they didn't behave very decently, but they weren't actually
cruel, except that they bound and gagged me. Oh, but I'm glad you came,
Tom! How did it happen?"

Then they told Mr. Nestor their story, and how the test of the new Air
Scout had led to his rescue.

"But where are the Secret Service men?" asked Mr. Terrill, when it
became evident that none them was on guard at the cabin.

Later it developed that, by following a false clew, the Secret Service
men had been drawn miles away from the cabin. And only that Tom and his
companions in the silent airship saw the men. Mr. Nestor might not
have been rescued for some further time.

His version of what had happened was correct. He had been mistaken for
Tom, and the spy with the gold tooth and his accomplice had waylaid
Mary's father, under the belief that it was Tom Swift with the plans of
the new silent motor. Mr. Nestor had been attacked while riding his
wheel in a lonely place, and had been carried off and kept in hiding, a
prisoner even after his identity became known.

"Well, this is a good night's work!" exclaimed Tom, when the two rogues
had been sent to jail and Mr. Nestor taken to the Bloise farmhouse, to
be refreshed before he went home. Word of his rescue was telephoned to
Mary and her mother, and it can be imagined how they regarded Tom Swift
for his part in the affair.

Little the worse for his experience, save that he was very nervous, Mr.
Nestor was taken home. He gave the details of his being waylaid, and
told how the men, for many days, were at their wits' ends to keep him
concealed when they found what a stir his disappearance had created.
The conspirators were well supplied with money, and in the automobile
they took their prisoner from one place to another. They had usurped
the use of the cabin and had lived there nearly a week in hiding,
leaving just before the first visit of Tom and Jackson. The rifled
wallet had been dropped by accident.

And it did not take much delving to disclose the fact that, Lydane,
"Gold Tooth," as he was called, and his cron