“I’m afraid so!” exclaimed Tom. “I wonder if that was at my plant? Oh, I do hope Ned and my father took all precautions!” As the echoes of the explosion died away the little car carrying Tom and the farmer lurched forward. CHAPTER XII A DANGEROUS SEARCH Immediately after receiving the mysterious message from Tom, a message that seemed to come out of the air, Ned Newton made a frantic effort to get the operator at central to trace the call. But if one has ever tried to do this he knows how difficult it is. Unless one can give the telephone number of the party to whom he has been talking, and who made the call, if one is cut off there is little chance of the communication being re-established. Ned found this out to his sorrow. “What is his number?” asked the telephone girl in a matter-of-fact way. “His number? Great Scott, didn’t I tell you——” “I’ll give you the manager,” went on the bored operator. But the manager could give no more satisfaction than his helper. He promised to trace the call and let Ned know what success he had. “But I know what the answer is already,” Ned remarked in disgusted tones as he gave up vainly rattling the hook. “We won’t hear another word from Tom until he calls us himself. But we are sure of one thing—he’s alive.” “Did he give you any particulars?” asked Mr. Swift. “Bless my telephone book, who’s been treating him this way?” demanded Mr. Damon. Ned repeated the message as it came to him: “Just escaped! Watch the plant! Get Father to safety! Look out for bombs! I’ll try——” Then the voice had died away. “It’s as we suspected,” commented Ned. “He has been captured by some of his enemies and held a captive up to a little while ago. Then he got away. Good old Tom! You can depend on him for that!” “But it seems to me we should do something,” declared Mary, very much in earnest. “Bless my eyeglasses, that’s what I say!” cried Mr. Damon. “Come on—we’ll get in my airship—it must be repaired by this time—and we’ll rescue Tom! Don’t lose any more time!” “But we don’t know where he is,” said Ned. “It would be worse than useless to go scouring around the country looking for Tom in an airship. He might be only five miles from here or he might be five hundred.” “Yes,” agreed Mary Nestor. “The thing for us to do is to follow Tom’s advice—watch the plant, get Mr. Swift to a place of safety, and look out for bombs.” “Are you actually going to hunt through the plant for hidden bombs?” demanded Mr. Damon. “Certainly,” Ned answered. “It’s the only thing to do after Tom’s warning message. While I don’t know what the game is, I think it likely that his enemies kidnapped Tom to get him out of the way so they could have a free run of the plant to search for and take away his models and papers of the newest invention—the airline express. Well, they got Tom, but he managed to escape, and their first attempt to sneak into the plant was a failure.