Chapter XXII. Trapped

While Tom Swift was loading the Lucifer for her trip and the fire extinguishing test to occur the next morning, quite a different scene was taking place in the home of Jasper Blake, the uncle of Mary Nestor, where she had gone to spend a few weeks.

"Well, are you all ready, Mary?" asked her aunt, and it was about the same time that Ned Newton asked that same question of Tom Swift. Only Tom was in Shopton, and Mary was in Newmarket, and Tom was setting off on an air voyage, while Mary was only preparing to take a car downtown to do some shopping.

"Yes, Aunt, I'm all ready," Mary answered. "But I may be a bit late getting home."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Blake.

"I promised Uncle Barton I'd stop and call on him at his office," Mary replied. "He has something he wants me to take home to mother when I go tomorrow."

"I shall be sorry to see you go back," said Mrs. Blake. "But I imagine there will be those in Shopton who will be glad to see you return, Mary."

"Yes, mother wrote that she and dad were getting a bit lonesome," the girl casually replied, as she adjusted her veil.

"Yes, and some one else. Ah, Mary, you are a very lucky girl!" laughed her aunt, while Mary turned aside so she would not see her own blushes in the mirror.

"I thought Tom was going to call and take you home in his airship, Mary," went on her relative.

"So he is, I believe, on his way back from a city where he is going to be tomorrow making a big fire test. I am to wait for him until tomorrow afternoon. But now I really must go shopping, or all the bargains will be taken. Is there any word you want to send to Uncle Barton?"

"No," answered Mrs. Blake. "Though you might tell him to stop poking fun at your Uncle Jasper for having invested money in the Landmark Building. It's getting on your Uncle Jasper's nerves," she added.

"Uncle Barton never can give up a joke, once he thinks he has one," said Mary. "But I'll tell him to stop pestering Uncle Jasper."

"Please do," urged Mary's aunt, and then the girl left.

Mary's uncle, Barton Keith, with whom Tom Swift had been associated during the undersea search, had offices in the Landmark Building, but his home was in an adjoining suburb.

The girl was pleased with the results of her shopping, and at the close of the afternoon she stopped at the Landmark Building and was soon being shot up in the elevator to the floor where Barton Keith had his offices.

Though Mr. Keith had refrained from investing in the Landmark Building and though he laughed at Mary's Uncle Jasper for having done so, this did not prevent him from having a suite of offices in the big structure which, as we already know, was owned in large part by Field