Page:Tom Swift and His Air Glider.djvu/29

Rh "But where did you get such pure metal?" asked Tom. "I have never seen it's equal."

"There is none like it in all the world," went on the Russian, "and perhaps there never can be any more. I have only a small supply. But in Siberia—in the lost mine—there is a large quantity of it, as pure as this, needing only a little refining.

"Can't we get some from there?" asked the young inventor eagerly. "I should think the Russian government would mine it, and export it."

"They would—if they could find it," said Ivan Petrofsky dryly, "but they can't—no one can find it—and I have tried very hard—so hard, in fact, that it is the reason for my coming to this country—that and the desire to find and aid my brother, who is a Siberian exile."

"This is getting interesting," remarked Ned to Tom in a low voice, and the young inventor nodded.

"My brother Peter, who is younger than I by a few years, and I, are the last of our family," began Mr. Petrofsky, motioning Tom and Ned to take chairs. "We lived in St. Petersburg, and early in life, though we were of the nobility, we took up the cause of the common people."

"Nihilists?" asked Ned eagerly, for he had read something of these desperate men.

"No, and not anarchists," said Mr. Petrofsky