Part 7 (1/2)

”But how did they ever get your address?”

”That's easy, though you wouldn't think so. It seems, so the letter explains, that as soon as Mr. Petrofsky got acquainted with us he wrote to friends in St. Petersburg, giving my address, and telling them, in case anything ever happened to him, to notify us. You see he suspected that something might, after he found he was being shadowed that way.

”And it all worked out. As soon as his friends heard that he was caught, and learned where he was being held, they wrote to me. Hurrah, Ned! A clew at last! Now to wire the detective--no, hold on, we'll go there and rescue him ourselves! We'll go in the airs.h.i.+p, and pick up Detective Trivett in New York.”

”That's the stuff! I'm with you!”

”Bless my suspender b.u.t.tons! So am I, whatever it is!” cried Mr. Damon, entering the room at that moment.

CHAPTER VI

RESCUING MR. PETROFSKY

”We ought to be somewhere near the place now, Tom.”

”I think we are, Ned. But you know I'm not going too close in this airs.h.i.+p.”

”Bless my silk hat!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. ”I hope we don't have to walk very far in such a deserted country as this, Tom Swift.”

”We'll have to walk a little way, Mr. Damon,” replied the young inventor. ”If I go too close to the hut they'll see the airs.h.i.+p, and as those spies probably know that Mr. Petrofsky has been dealing with me, They'd smell a rat at once, and run away, taking him with them, and we'd have all our work to do over again.”

”That's right,” agreed Detective Trivett, who was one of the four in the airs.h.i.+p that was now hovering over the Atlantic coast, about ten miles below the summer resorts of which Asbury Park was one.

It was only a few hours after Tom had received the letter from Russia informing him of the whereabouts of the kidnapped Russian, and he had acted at once.

His father sanctioned the plan of going to the rescue in one of Tom's several airs.h.i.+ps and, Mr. Damon, having been on hand, at once agreed to go. Of course Ned went along, and they had picked up the private detective in New York, where he was vainly seeking a clew to the whereabouts of Mr. Petrofsky.

Now the young inventor and his friends were hovering over the sandy stretch of coast that extends from Sandy Hook down the Atlantic seaboard. They were looking for a small fis.h.i.+ng hamlet on the outskirts of which, so the Russian letter stated, was situated the lonely hut in which Mr. Petrofsky was held a prisoner.

”Do you think you can pick it out from a distance, Tom?” asked Mr.

Damon, as the airs.h.i.+p floated slowly along. It was not the big one they intended taking on their trip to Siberia, but it was sufficiently large to accommodate the four and leave room for Mr. Petrofsky, should they succeed in rescuing him.

”I think so,” answered the young inventor.

In the letter from Russia a comparatively accurate description of the prisoner's hut had been given, and also some details about his guards.

For there is little goes on in political circles in the realm of the Czar that is not known either to the spies of the government or those of the opposition, and the latter had furnished Tom with reliable information.

”That looks like the place,” said Tom at length, when, after peering steadily through a powerful telescope, during which time Ned steered the s.h.i.+p, the young inventor ”picked up” a fis.h.i.+ng settlement. ”There is the big fish house, spoken of in the letter,” he went on, ”and the Russians know a lot about fish. That house makes a good landmark. We'll go down now, before they have a chance to see us.”

The others thought this a good idea, and a little later the airs.h.i.+p sank to the ground amid a lonely stretch of sand dunes, about two miles from the hamlet on the outskirts of which the prison hut was said to be located.

”Now,” said Tom, ”we've got to decide on a plan of campaign. It won't do for all of us to go to the hut and make the rescue. Some one has got to stay with the airs.h.i.+p, to be ready to start it off as soon as we come back with Mr. Petrofsky--if we do come.

”Then there's no use in me staying here,” spoke Detective Trivett. ”I don't know enough even to turn on the gasolene.”

”No, it's got to be Ned or me,” said the young inventor.