For a moment the young man was too surprised to quite take in the significance of the matter. As he slowly realized that strict orders had been posted to the effect that none of the men from the shop was to enter the private offices unbidden, Tom called: “What were you doing in here?” Sharp suspicion entered his mind. Who was this foreigner and what was his game? CHAPTER VIII A SECRET LISTENER TOM SWIFT, in a crisis, was not one to think first and act afterward. Usually he did his acting first, and this was one of those instances. Like a flash of fire it ran through his mind that now was the best time to ascertain what object the foreigner could have in breaking the regulations and entering Tom’s private office. With the end in view of settling the matter then and there, Tom dashed across the room and out of the rear door by which Barsky had left. The young inventor had a glimpse of the Russian hastening along just ahead of him. He was making good time, too. But Tom Swift, too, was a sprinter. In spite of all the machines for locomotion that Tom had invented, he could still run. He caught up to Ivan Barsky and seized that individual by the arm. “Hey! Wait a minute!” cried Tom, not very dramatically, perhaps, but effectively. “Eh? What eet iss?” The man seemed to hiss the words in his peculiar way. There was a frightened look on his face and, also, one of innocence, real or assumed. “You weesh to see me, Mr. Swift?” asked Barsky. “It might be the other way around,” announced Tom grimly as he faced the man. “It rather looks as if you wanted to see me—going into my office when I wasn’t there. Don’t you know that’s against the rules?” “Pardon—I did not know eet.” “Well, it is! I’m telling you now! No one from the works allowed in the private office without permission. Now, why did you go there—especially when I was out fighting the fire, which was in your department?” “Fire? Yes, I hear the wheestle, but I see that so soon the fire he is out so I cannot think that it to a great deal amounts. I hope none of my new patterns were burned.” He seemed genuinely anxious on this score. “Luckily the fire was only in some rubbish,” explained Tom. “But that has nothing to do with the fact that you were in my office in my absence. What did you go there for?” and the voice of the young inventor was stern. “Oh—I my presence must explanation? Yes, of courseness. I go there to get heem!” He held up to Tom a complicated slide rule, often used in making intricate computations that, otherwise, would entail much work at figures. “I need these for that train stop pattern I am making for you, Mr. Swift,” the man explained. “Yes, I thought you would need that rule, and I intended sending it out to you,” Tom said. “But you should not have gone to my office to take it while I was absent.”