Page:Tom Swift and His Air Glider.djvu/115

Rh place where he had left the Falcon, and he found a curious crowd of rustics grouped about it.

"Has anything happened?" he asked of his friends.

"No, everything is quiet, I'm glad to say," replied Mr. Petrofsky. "I don't think our presence will create stir enough so that the news of it will reach the spies in Paris. Still I will feel easier when we're in the air again."

"It will take a day to make the repairs," said Tom, "and put in the new pieces of platinum. But I'll work as fast as I can."

He and Ned labored far into the night, and were at it again the next morning. Mr. Damon and the Russian were of no service for they, did not understand the machinery well enough. It was while Tom was outside the craft, filing a piece of platinum in an improvised vise, that a poorly-clothed man sauntered up and watched him curiously. Tom glanced at him, and was at once struck by a difference between the man's attire and his person.

For, though he was tattered and torn, the man's face showed a certain refinement, and his hands were not those of a farmer or laborer in which character he obviously posed.

"Monsieur has a fine airship there," he remarked to Tom.