Page:Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight.djvu/222

212 "Though they gagged me, they didn't stop up my ears, and when they hid me in a little room on the airship, I could hear them talking together. It seems that the smugglers put up the money to buy the airships, and just happened to stumble on Andy to run the machinery for them. His father helped, too. They shared in the proceeds, and they must have made considerable, for the smuggling has been going on for some time."

"Well, they'll lose all they made," declared the agent. Later he, Tom and Ned made another inspection of the Foger premises. Down in the cellar of the gardener's house they found, behind a cunningly concealed door, a tunnel leading into the old mansion. Later it was learned that the smugglers had been in the habit of bringing goods across the border in airships, landing them in a lonely stretch of woods outside of Shopton, and later bringing them by wagon to the mansion.

Inside there, in some secret rooms that had been constructed off of the main apartments, the goods would be unpacked, put in different boxes, carried through the tunnel to the gardener's house, and thence shipped as "old furniture" to various unscrupulous agents who disposed of them.

The hiring of Mr. Dillon had been only a blind. Later the smugglers, in the guise of carpenters, made the desired changes. So cunningly had the