“Bless my porous plaster, Tom, I don’t know whether I’m hurt or not!” answered Mr. Damon. “I came down so suddenly! I was aiming to land in your regular flying field, but something went wrong with the controls—it’s a new plane, I haven’t had it long—and I find myself here.” “Mighty lucky you are to find yourself, I’ll say,” murmured Ned, as a crowd of Tom’s men gathered about the plane on the roof. “This smash,” remarked Tom, as he and Ned were helping the odd man from his aeroplane, “reminds me of the first time I ever saw you, Mr. Damon. You were riding a motorcycle.” “And it tried to climb a tree with me! Bless my rubber boots, well do I remember that!” It was owing to Mr. Damon’s disgust over the accident to his motorcycle that Tom had been able to secure it for a small sum. As related in the first volume of this series, “Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle,” the young inventor was started on his sensational career by the possession of this battered machine, which he repaired and got in running order. On it he had some exciting rides. Tom was in his early manhood. He, and his aged and somewhat invalid father, an inventor of note, lived in the Swift homestead in the town of Shopton on Lake Carlopa. Tom’s mother was dead, but he and his father were well looked after by Mrs. Baggert, an efficient housekeeper. Of late years Barton Swift had not taken much active part in the rapidly growing business, though Tom always consulted his father on matters of importance. It was at the suggestion of Mary Nestor, for whom Tom had a very great admiration, that the young inventor engaged his friend and boyhood chum, Ned Newton, to look after the business matters of the Swift Construction Company. Tom never had reason to regret that decision. For with Ned to look after money matters, see to contracts, and the like, Tom and his father were left free to exercise their inventive ability. The Swift Company had gone into many lines of activity, from building airships and aeroplanes to constructing submarines and giant cannon for the government. These brought Tom and his associates money and fame, and also hard work. Just prior to the opening of this story Tom had developed a new drill and a system of sinking shafts for oil wells, and when, as related in “Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher,” he successfully demonstrated how quickly he could get down to the oil-containing sand, he made another big amount of money, not only for the Swift Company, but for the Goby family as well. It was after this that he began to think of getting together in one central place all his drawings, patent rights, secret formulae and the like. To this end he had had constructed the strong chest, and he and Ned had barely finished putting into it most of the valuable documents when the crash on the roof came.