Bang—crash!
The automobile made a wild effort to climb a tree, and the next thing Motor Matt realized was the fact that he was turning handsprings in the road.
Silence, sudden and grim, followed the frantic medley of sound. A bird twittered somewhere off in the woods, and the flutelike notes hit Matt's tortured ear-drums like a volley of musketry.
He got up, dazedly. His hat was gone, and one of his trouser legs was missing. The back of his head, still tender from a blow he had received in Grand Rapids, reminded him by a sharp twinge that it had been badly treated.
Matt limped to the tree that had caused the wreck, and leaned against it. Then, and not till then, was he able to make a comprehensive view of the scene.
The front of the automobile was badly smashed—so badly that it was a wonder Matt had ever escaped with his life. One of the forward wheels had come off.
McGlory, in his shirt sleeves—and with one sleeve missing—was on his hands and knees. He was facing the mandarin—staring at that remarkable person with a well-what-do-you-think-of-that expression.
The mandarin was sitting up in the road. The black cap with the red button was hanging to one side of his head, one of his embroidered sandals was gone, and the yellow silk blouse and trousers were torn. In some manner the steering wheel had become detached from the post, and Tsan Ti was hanging to it like grim death. He seemed still to be driving, for the steering wheel was in the correct position.
Certainly it was not a time to laugh, but Motor Matt could hardly help it.
NIP AND TUCK.
"That's right," whooped McGlory, twisting his head to get a look at Matt, "laugh—laugh, and enjoy yourself! Sufferin' smash-ups! It's a wonder the hospital corps didn't have to shovel us up in a bushel basket."
"Are you hurt, Joe?" inquired Matt.
"Hurt?" snapped McGlory, his gorge rising. "Oh, no, of course not! We weren't going more than a hundred and twenty miles an hour when we hit that tree, so how could I possibly have suffered any damage? This comes of trotting a heat with a half-baked rat-eater. Here's where I quit. That's right. Go on and hunt your idol's eye, if you want to. Say, if I could get hold of that yellow cord, I'd strangle the mandarin myself."
McGlory climbed to his feet lamely and looked himself over, up and down. His coat was about twenty feet away, in one place, and his hat lay at an equal distance in another. As he moved about collecting his property and muttering to himself, Matt stepped to the side of Tsan Ti.
The mandarin, still dazed and bewildered, continued to cling to the steering wheel. Matt bent down and took the wheel away from him.
"Illustrious friend," said the Chinaman, blinking his eyes, "the suddenness was most remarkable. Once more the thousand demons of misfortune have visited their wrath upon me!"
"Don't talk about misfortune," returned Matt. "We're the luckiest fellows that ever lived to get out of a wreck like that with whole skins. The car's a ruin, Tsan Ti, and you'll have to pay for it."
"Of what use is money, interesting youth, to a mandarin who has received the yellow cord? I have rice fields and tea plantations, and millions of taels to my credit. The bagatelle of a cost does not concern me."
Matt helped him upright and dusted him off. As soon as he had pushed a foot into the missing sandal, he gave vent to a wail, and sat down on the side of the machine.
"Such vastness of misfortune takes my courage," he groaned. "The Eye of Buddha can not be recovered with all the thousand demons fighting against me. The jade-stone amulet burns me fiercely——"
"Wish it had burned a hole clear through you before you'd ever written that letter to Matt," cried McGlory.
"I have involved two honorable assistants in my so-great ill luck," went on the mandarin.
"Never mind that," said Matt. "I thought you knew how to drive a car?"
"He's the craziest thing on wheels when it comes to drivin' a bubble," called out McGlory. "Here's where I quit. Scratch my entry in the race for the Eye of Buddha. I always know when I've got enough. We've had four hours of this, and it's a-plenty."
Motor Matt began looking for his cap. Where it had gone was a mystery. He finally discovered it hanging to a clump of bushes. As he turned around, he was startled to see Tsan Ti with the yellow cord coiled about his throat.
Could it be possible that the mandarin, cast down by his latest accident, was on the point of carrying out the mandate of the regent?
"I say!" shouted Matt, hurrying forward.
But the Chinaman was interrupted in his fell purpose by an explosion in the car directly behind him.
Bang!
He jumped about four feet, straight up in the air. Matt saw a tongue of flame shoot upward from the car.
The gasoline tank had been smashed. The inflammable contents, dripping upon the hot exhaust pipe leading from the muffler, must have caused the blaze.
Sizz-z-,bang, boom!
The gasoline was vaporizing. As the startled mandarin watched the blaze, paralyzed and speechless by the unexpected exhibition, the yellow cord swung limply downward from his throat. McGlory rushed up behind him, and jerked the cord away. Tsan Ti did not seem to notice the manœuvre—he was all wrapped up in the blaze and the explosions.
The fire shot skyward, and Matt grabbed the Chinaman and hauled him to a safe distance.
"Bring the wheel, Joe," Matt yelled, "the one that came off!"
McGlory had not the least notion what Matt wanted with the wheel, but he got it, and they were all well down the road when a final terrific boom scattered fragments of the wreck every which way and sent little jets of flame from the diffused gasoline spitting in all directions.
"Good-by, you old benzine buggy!" said McGlory, addressing the flame-wrapped car. "You wasn't worthmuch, anyways, but I bet the mandarin bleeds for twice your value, just the same. What you looking at that wheel for, Matt?" he finished, turning to his chum.
"It was punctured by a bullet," replied Matt, pointing to a clean-cut rent in the shoe.
"Bullet?" echoed McGlory. "Speak to me about that! I didn't hear any shooting."
"The car made so much noise that's not to be wondered at. I wasn't sure that what I'd heard was a shot, but——"
Matt had lifted his head to speak to McGlory. As he did so, his eyes glimpsed a figure skulking among the bushes at the roadside. The sunshine, and the glare from the fire, caused a ghastly radiance to hover about the bushes.
In the weird shadows of the bushes and trees, a face stood out prominently—a face topped with a sailor hat, fringed with mutton-chop whiskers, and with a patch over one eye.
The king of the motor boys gave a whoop and darted for the bushes. The face vanished as if by magic, but Matt kept furiously on, McGlory chasing after him.
"What's to pay, pard?" the cowboy was demanding.
"The sailor!" flung back Matt. "I saw him in the brush! He must have been the one who put that bullet into our front tire!"
"Whoop-ya!" yelled McGlory, all his hostility springing to the surface and causing him to forget his announced determination to "quit" and let the mandarin shift for himself. "Let's put the kibosh on him! He's the cause of all this. Hang the idol's eye! We've got an account of our own to settle. But look out for the glass balls."
Ahead of him Matt could hear the crash and crackle of undergrowth, and now and then he caught a glimpse of the racing sailor.
The timber grew more dense, and presently, just as Matt thought he had the fellow, he was brought up short with the quarry out of sight and hearing.
"He's dodged away," panted the cowboy. "Maybe he's doubled back."
"I'd have heard him if he'd done that," answered Matt. "He has either stopped, and is lying low, or else he has gone on ahead. I thought I had him, for a minute. Come on, Joe!"
Matt flung onward, and leaped suddenly from the edge of the timber into a cornfield on a little flat between two shoulders of the mountain. He stopped and listened. The leaves of the corn rustled in the faint breeze, and, in the centre of the field, an ungainly scarecrow half reared itself above the tasseled stalks.
"He's in the corn, that's where he is," puffed the cowboy. "Mind your eye, pard, and look out for the dope balls."
"You go one way across the field," suggested Matt, "and I'll go the other. Sharp's the word now, old chap. We're giving that fellow the run of his life, and he's having it nip and tuck to get away."
The field was not large, and Matt and McGlory crossed it rapidly, the king of the motor boys on one side of the scarecrow, and the cowboy on the other. They met on the opposite side of the field, without having seen the sailor.
"I reckon he's dodged us!" growled McGlory, in savage disappointment. "The ornery old webfoot has——"
He stopped aghast, his eyes on the scarecrow. The tattered figure was moving briskly through the corn, toward the side of the field from which the boys had just come.
"There he goes!" shouted Matt, darting away again. "He got into the scarecrow's clothes, and didn't have the nerve to wait until we had left the field."
"Speak—speak to me about—about this!" returned McGlory breathlessly, plunging after his chum through the rustling rows.
Once more in the woods, the boys found themselves even closer to the fleeting mariner than they had been before. He was in plain sight now, and shedding his ragged disguise as he raced for liberty.
Up the shoulder of the mountain he went, pawing and scrambling, then down on the other side, Matt and McGlory close after him. He was making strenuously for a cleared space at the foot of the little slope. In the centre of the clearing were the remains of a stone wall, and near the wall stood a little stone house. The house appeared to be deserted, and the half-opened door swung awry on one hinge.
"He's makin' for the 'dobe!" wheezed the cowboy.
The words had hardly left his lips before the sailor vanished within the stone walls. Matt ran recklessly after him.
"Look out for the double-X brand of dope!" warned McGlory. "You know what he did before, Matt."
But Matt was already inside the house. The interior apparently consisted of a hall and two rooms, although the boarded-up windows cast a funereal gloom over the place, and made it difficult to see anything distinctly. Matt sprang through one of the two doors that opened off the hall, and McGlory, still clamoring wildly for his chum to beware of the glass balls, followed.
Slam went the door of the room—probably the only door in the house that was in commission—and rattle-rattle went a key in the lock.
Then came a husky laugh, and the words:
"Belay a bit, you swabs! Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone. An' that's a warnin'."
Feet pattered along the hall and out of it.
"Nip and tuck," sang out McGlory, while Matt wrestled with the door, "and it wasn't the webfoot that got nipped, not so any one could notice. Catch your breath, pard, and calm down. Old One Eye has made his getaway, and we might just as well laugh as be sorry."
TSAN TI VANISHES AGAIN.
There was wisdom in the cowboy's words, and Matt gave over his attack on the door and turned to his chum with a disappointed laugh.
"We can get out of here easy enough," said he, "but the sailor gains so much time while we're doing it that he wins out in the race. Great spark plugs, but we're having a time! I'm almost tempted to think that those ten thousand demons, the mandarin talks about, are really pestering us."
"Ten thousand horned toads," scoffed McGlory. "This is what we naturally get for trying to turn an impossible trick for a heathen. What was the good of paying any attention to that letter, in the first place?"
"Well," answered Matt, "we've discussed that point a good many times already, Joe. I wanted to go to New York, anyway, and it was only a little out of our road to come down the river and drop off at Catskill Landing."
"Suppose we get our wheels, go back to Catskill, and then take the next boat down the river? What's the good of all this strain we've taken upon ourselves? If we don't let well enough alone, something is sure going to snap, and like as not it'll be mighty serious. It's a wonder we ever came through that smash-up with our scalps."
There was one window in the room. Matt had passed to it and was making an examination. The glass was broken out of the sash, and the boards nailed to the outside of the casing were loose. He pushed two of the boards off, leaving a gap through which he and his chum could easily crawl.
"If we'd done this in the first place, Joe," said he, "we might have picked up the mariner's trail before he had got too far away."
"Too late now. It was our luck to get into the only room in the 'dobe, I reckon, that had a good door and a usable lock."
"Well," returned Matt, "let's get out and hunt up the mandarin. I hope he won't make 'way with himself while we're moseying around in this part of the woods."
The boys climbed through the window and the gap in the boards, and Matt made a casual survey of the house's vicinity. Of course the sailor was gone, and had left no clue as to the direction of his flight.
Setting their faces in the direction of the road, the boys started off briskly on their return to the wrecked car.
"There's one thing you didn't do, pard," remarked McGlory, while they were on their way through the timber.
"What's that?"
"Why, you didn't lisp a word to the mandarin about that note you took from the Hottentot's cap. Maybe, if the Chinaman knew about that, he'd quit thinking of doing the polite and courteous thing for the regent."
"I had intended telling Tsan Ti about the note," returned Matt, struck by the illuminating suggestion, "but I hadn't time. I'll put it up to Tsan Ti, though, the first thing after we meet him again."
"I've got the yellow string. If he has to make the happy dispatch with that, then I've blocked his game for a while. I don't know much about the etiquette of this yellow-cordgame. Do you?"
"No."
"Well, leaving that out of the discussion for now, here's another point. Do you reckon old One Eye has found out, yet, how you juggled the notes on him?"
"I can't see as that makes much difference," answered Matt.
"He left us in a hurry, there at that stone house. If he'd known we had the note, why didn't he stop and palaver about it?"
"We were two against him, and he was in too much of a hurry."
"Why didn't he use the glass balls and take the note away from us while we were down and out?"
"Probably his supply of glass balls is running low."
"That note is to be shown to the man in Purling, and the man in Purling is then to show the bearer of the note where this Grattan is. Now——"
"That's a chance for us to find Grattan," cut in Matt.
"You're planning on that, are you? Sufferin' trouble! If it wouldn't be actin' more like a hired man than a pard, I'd go on a strike."
"We're onto this mandarin's business now, Joe," said Matt, "and we ought to see it through to a finish."
"It'll be our finish, I reckon."
At this moment they stepped out onto the road close to the car. The machine was a charred and twisted wreck, and fit only for the junk heap. Matt looked around for Tsan Ti, but he was nowhere in evidence.
"Vanished again!" exclaimed McGlory.
Matt threw back his head and shouted the mandarin's name at the top of his voice. No answer was returned, but the echoes of the call had hardly died away before they were taken up by the humming of another motor, and a little runabout came whirling down the road and brought up at the side of the wrecked car.
Two men were in the runabout, and one of the men was in a tremendously bad humor. The angry individual jumped from the runabout and peered at the number on the smoking board at the rear of the chassis.
"It was my car, all right!" he cried. "And look at it! Great Scott, just look at it! Total loss, and only a fat chink to look to for damages. Oh, I'm s, t, u, n, g to the queen's taste, all right. Who're you?" he demanded, whirling suddenly on the boys.
Matt told him.
"You're from up the mountain, are you?" inquired Matt.
"Where else?" replied the other crossly. "What's become of the chink that hired this car? Do you know?"
"Probably he's gone back to the hotel."
"Oh, probably," was the sarcastic retort; "yes, probably! I've got money that says he's sloped for good. Look here. They say there were two fellows in the car with the chink when it left the Mountain House. Are you the fellows?"
"Yes."
"Then, by jing, I'll holdyou. Twenty-five hundred is what I want, and I want it quick."
"Oh, rats!" grunted the man in the runabout. "I'll bet those fellows couldn't rake up twenty-five hundred cents. Quit foolin', Jackson, and let's go back."
Matt and McGlory, after their recent experiences in the collision and while chasing the sailor, were most assuredly not looking their best. But they could have drawn a draft on Chicago for twenty-five hundred dollars and had it honored—had they been so minded.
"Oh, say moo and chase yourself!" cried McGlory. "You rented the car to the Chinaman; you didn't rent it to us."
"I'm going to hold you, anyhow," declared the man called Jackson.
"You'll have a good time trying it," retorted the cowboy truculently.
Jackson stepped toward McGlory.
"Don't you get gay with me," he shouted. "I'm not going to lose a twenty-five hundred dollar car and not make somebody smart for it. I told the chink that was what the car was worth."
"I know something about cars," put in Matt mildly, "and this one is out of date—four years old, if it's a day. If it had been a modern car, with the gasoline tank inthe right place, it would never have caught fire, and you could have saved something out of the wreck. The proper feed is by gravity, and the right place for the tank is under the seat——"
"Oh, you!" sneered Jackson, "what do you know about cars?"
"He can forget more in a minute about these chug wagons," bristled McGlory, "than you know in a year. Put that in your brier and whiff it. This fellow's Motor Matt, motor expert, late of Burton's Big Consolidated Shows, where he's been exhibiting the Traquair aëroplane. Now bear down on your soft pedal, will you?"
"Thunder!" breathed the man in the runabout.
"Is—is that a fact?" queried Jackson, visibly impressed.
"It's a fact," said Matt, "but it needn't make any difference in this case. That car of yours, Jackson, would have been dear at a thousand dollars. You'll get every cent the car is worth, too. The Chinaman who hired it is a mandarin. He's in this country on private business. He has tea plantations, rice fields, and money in the bank till you can't rest. Now, stop worrying about the damages and give my chum and me a lift up the hill. We'll find Tsan Ti at the Kaaterskill. That's where he's been staying for a week or two."
Jackson was mollified.
"Of course," said he, "I don't want to be rough with anybody, but you understand how it is. This country is hard on cars, and I have to charge good prices and be sure the cars are hired by men who can put up for them if they go over a cliff or meet with any other kind of a wreck. I'm obliged to you for your information about Tsan Ti. He's been a good deal of a conundrum at the Kaaterskill since he's put up there. A man, riding up from below, passed a couple of Chinamen chin-chinning beside this wreck, and he brought word to me. That's how Jim and I happened to come down."
"You say the man from below passedtwoChinamen talking near the car?" queried Matt, with a surprised glance at McGlory.
"That's what he said."
"There was only the mandarin in the car when we had the smash," said Matt. "Where could that other one have come from?"
McGlory said nothing, but his face was full of things he might have said—doubts of the mandarin, of course, and vague suspicions of double dealing.
Jim backed the runabout around, and Matt and McGlory crowded into it. There was a hard climb up the hill, overloaded as the runabout was, but finally the Mountain House was passed and the other hotel reached.
The boys, in their tattered garments, aroused considerable curiosity among the hotel guests as they crossed the colonnaded porches and made their way into the office. They inquired for Tsan Ti, and bellboys were sent to the Chinaman's room and around the porches and grounds, calling his name.
But he wasn't to be found.
"Up a stump some more," growled McGlory, "and all because that jade-stone amulet got overheated and caused the mandarin to look for trouble. Oh, blazes!Whenwill we ever acquire a proper amount of horse sense for a couple of our size? You couldn't expect much more of me, Matt, but—well, pard, I'm surprised atyou."
TRICKED ONCE MORE.
Matt and McGlory were bruised and sore. They were also pretty tired. From the moment they had met Tsan Ti on the mountainside that morning, they had been knocked about from pillar to post.
"If trouble will please hold off for a couple of hours," said McGlory, "I'll give a good imitation of a fellow snatching his forty winks and getting ready for another round. What do you say, Matt? The mandarin isn't here. He may come, but I wouldn't bet on it, as I'm sort of losing faith in the yellow boy with the red button. He has a disagreeable habit of getting out from under whenever anything goes wrong, and we find ourselves stalled. I reckon, though, you'll want to stay here and give him a chance to blow in?"
"We can hold on here for two or three hours," answered Matt, "take a bath, and a rub down, and a bit of a rest, then fasten our clothes together with a supply of safety pins and motor back to Catskill and get another outfit of clothes from our grips. Then, after a good night's sleep, we'll go to Purling."
"No matter whether the mandarin shows up or not?"
"No matter what the mandarin does, Joe. I've worked up a big interest in that Eye of Buddha, and I'm going to find out whether it's a fair shake or a myth."
"I'll bet all my share of the aëroplane money against two bits that we never see the old hatchet boy again, and also that something hits us before we can get back to Catskill."
"You're guessing, Joe."
"Well, that's my chirp, in anything from doughnuts to double eagles. That Jackson party might as well hang that wrecked bubble in a tree as a memento—the man with the rice fields and the tea plantations, and so on, has started for the high timber just to dodge paying for that pile of scrap down the trail."
"You're wrong," said Matt confidently.
"Wait till the cards are all on the table, pard, and then we'll see."
They had a most refreshing bath and a long rest in a couple of lazy-back chairs on an upper veranda. Orders had been left with the clerk that word should be brought to them at once if Tsan Ti put in an appearance.
McGlory awoke from a drowse to unbosom himself of a subject which had not, as yet, claimed its proper share of attention.
"The fellow who came up the mountain and told Jackson there was a burning car piled by the roadside," said he, "said there were two Chinamen watching the conflagration. Think chink number two was Kien Lung with another yellow cord, Matt?"
"No."
"Then who was he?"
"I've been thinking that it was Sam Wing, the San Francisco Chinaman, who has been keeping track of the two thieves for the mandarin."
"That's you!" exclaimed McGlory. "Why, I never thought of that dark horse. Have you any notion he coaxed the mandarin away on important business?"
"That's likely."
"Anything's likely. For instance, it's quite likely the fat Chinaman is a washee-washee boy from 'Frisco with a fine, large imagination, and that he's stringing us."
"Why should he want to do that?"
"Nosabe, but there's a lot of things we can'tsabeconcerning this layout."
"Tsan Ti has money——"
"He showed us all of a hundred in double eagles. But did he let us get our hands on the coin? Not any. He allows, in his large and offhand way, that he has millions of taels—but that may be one of his tales," and McGlory grinned.
"Anyhow," said Matt doggedly, "we ride to Purling to-morrow and see the man at the general store."
Matt fell into a drowse again. No one from the office came to announce the arrival of Tsan Ti, and when the hour arrived for the evening meal the boys had their supper sent to their room. They were not arrayed properly for "dining out."
Following the meal they patched up their garments with safety pins, settled their bill, and walked over to the Mountain House garage. Dusk was falling as they trundled their machines into the road and lighted their lamps.
"We'll have an easier time of it going down the mountain," said Matt, "than we had coming up."
"Don't be so sure, pard," answered McGlory. "There are a number of things to trouble us besides the road."
"Don't cross any trouble bridges until you come to them, Joe," advised Matt.
The motor boys were feeling a little stiff and sore, but their engines were humming cheerfully, and there was a joy for them in the downward spin through the woods.
They remembered the tree root, and slowed down for it as it came under their headlights; and they also remembered the location of the wrecked automobile and gave it a wide berth.
At about the place where they had encountered the one-eyed sailor, with everything going smoothly and a fair prospect of reaching Catskill in record time, the crack of a firearm suddenly split the still air to the left of the road. Startled, they clamped on the brakes and came to a halt in time to hear a shrill cry of "Help! help!" ringing out weirdly from the dark woods.
"Sufferin' hold-ups!" murmured McGlory. "And here we are with nothing more than a couple of jack-knives to our names."
"What do you suppose it can be?" asked Matt, dropping the bracket from his rear wheel and letting the motor cycle stand in the road.
He moved off toward the left and listened.
"There's a row on in there," declared McGlory. "I can hear some one pounding around in the timber."
"So can I," said Matt. "We've got to do what we can, Joe. That may mean robbery—or worse. Come on!"
The generous instincts of the motor boys prompted them to go at once to the assistance of a possible victim, and they hurried into the timber. The sounds of scuffling which they had heard died out suddenly, and while they were moving around through the gloom, trying to locate the scene of the trouble, there reached their ears the chug-chugging of motors getting under way.
"Our motor cycles!" exclaimed Matt, darting back toward the road.
"Gad-hook it all!" cried McGlory; "it was a frame-up! A trick to run off our wheels!"
Although they were only a few moments regaining the road, the lamps of the two motor cycles were gleaming more than a hundred feet away.
"Stop!" yelled Matt, racing down the road.
His answer was a raucous laugh—such a laugh as they had heard before. And then came the words, bellowed hoarsely:
"Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone!"
After that silence, during which the gleaming lamps turned an angle in the road and were blotted from sight.
"Seems to me," said McGlory grimly, "I've heard that voice before."
Motor Matt did not reply at once. Perhaps his feelings were too deep for words.
"And I was expecting something, too!" said the cowboy, in a spasm of self-reproach. "Sufferin' easy marks! Matt, some of the stuff from those glass balls must still be playing hob with our brains. Otherwise, how is it these backsets keep happening in one, two, three order? There go a pair of motor bikes that'll stand us in four hundred good big cart wheels. That was right, what you said before we left those wheels and flocked into the timber. That shot and those sounds of a scuffledidmean robbery. That's a lesson for us never to help a person in distress. Likewise it's a hint that we'd better pull out and leave the mandarin to manage his own troubles."
"It's a hint that we'd better go to Purling to-morrow and look for Grattan," and there was an unwonted sharpness in Motor Matt's voice that caused McGlory to straighten up and take notice.
"When you tune up that way," said the cowboy, "it means mischief. There was another man with the Hottentot. Do you think thehombrewas this Grattan sharp?"
"No. Grattan is expecting the sailor at Purling to-morrow. This was some one else."
"The ruby thieves have quite an extensive gang. It's walk for us, from here to Catskill."
"From here to the first farmhouse," corrected Matt. "We'll get some one to take us to Catskill with a horse and buggy."
He bit off his words crisp and sharp, which, to McGlory, proved how deeply he resented the scurvy trick by which they had been lured away from the motor cycles.
"How easy it is to understand things when you look back at' em," philosophized the cowboy, swinging along at Matt's side, down the dark road. "The webfoot and his pal fired that shot and raised a yell for help, then they jumped up and down in the bushes, and the result had all the effect of a knock-down and drag-out. One-Eye must have had us spotted, and he and his pal were lingering in the trailside brush, watching for our headlights. Oh, yes, it was easy. The 'illustrious ones' tumbledover themselves to fall into the trap. If I had that——"
"There's a farmhouse," said Matt, and indicated a point of light close to the foot of the mountain. "Nearly every house in these parts is either a boarding house or a hotel. We can get a rig, all right, I'm pretty sure."
THE DIAMOND MERCHANT.
It was midnight before the motor boys were deposited on the walk in front of their hotel in Catskill. A team and two-seated wagon had brought them, and they had not left the vicinity of the road at the foot of the mountain until they had driven around for an hour, made inquiries concerning two men on motor cycles, given a description of the sailor, and passed word that the men were thieves and were to be arrested and held if found.
Matt, according to agreement, paid the driver who had brought them to Catskill five dollars for his services.
Before going to bed Matt gathered a little information concerning the village of Purling. He learned that it was six miles from Cairo, and that Cairo was on the railroad and could be reached by a morning train.
But the train would not serve. By proceeding to the village in that way, the boys would not be able to arrive before noon, and, according to the note in the sailor's cap, they were expected at the general store by ten o'clock.
"We'll hire an automobile," said Matt, "and a driver that knows the mountains. I guess we'd better speak for the machine to-night."
At the same place where they had secured the motor cycles they arranged for a touring car and a driver who knew the country, but the arrangement was not effected until they had deposited three hundred dollars as a guaranty that the motor cycles would be returned, or the owner indemnified for their loss.
"Three hundred plunks gone where the woodbine twineth," mourned McGlory, as they were going to bed, "and all because we're helping to turn a trick for Tsan Ti. Good business—I don't think."
"This Grattan," said Matt, "is probably lying low somewhere near Purling. If he isn't, he wouldn't be making it so hard for his pal to get at him. The sailor will be there, and he won't get to see Grattan without the letter. We'll catch the fellow, and we may catch Grattan—say nothing of the possibility of recovering the Eye of Buddha."
"We'll draw a blank in the matter of that idol's eye, pard, you take it from me. But there's a chance of our putting a fancy kibosh on Bunce and getting back the go-devil machines. Still, there's also a splendid chance for a fall down. Listen. TheHottentotman examines the note in his cap. He sees it's not the few lines he got from Grattan, but a lot of 'con' talk from the mandarin. That leaves One Eye in the air, but gives him a line onus. What'll happen? I wish I knew."
"The sailor may not look at the letter in his hat until he gets to Purling, so——"
"Don't think it, pard. That would be too much luck to come at a time when we're hocussed crisscross and both ways."
By seven the boys were up, had overhauled their grips, and got into fresh clothes, and were sitting down to breakfast at the first call. By seven-thirty the touring car was at the door for them, freshly groomed and shining like a new dollar.
It was a sixty horse-power machine, and a family carryall for the personal use of the proprietor of the garage. Not having been used for hackabout purposes, the car was more dependable than one that had been hammered about over the rough roads by anybody who could tell the spark plug from the magneto and had five dollars an hour to pay for a junket.
The proprietor, who was a good fellow at heart and wanted to do everything possible to help the boys recover the stolen motor cycles, made this concession. So, with Matt in the driver's seat, the native who knew the way beside him, and McGlory with the tonneau all to himself, the touring car flashed out of Catskill Landing and took to the hills.
Of the drive Motor Matt made that morning, the driver on his left entertained the most enthusiastic recollections. Never had he seen a car handled so cleverly; and when the car balked—which the best of cars will do now and then—the way the king of the motor boys located the difficulty and adjusted it was something to think about.
At nine-thirty the touring car landed its passengers in front of the general store. Two men were sunning themselves on the bench in front, and a sleeping dog looked up lazily, snapped at a fly, and then went to sleep again.
"Where's Mr. Pryne?" asked Matt, stepping up to the two men on the bench.
"I'm Pryne," answered one of the two, measuring Matt with an expectant light in his faded blue eyes.
"Look at this," said Matt, and presented the letter from Grattan.
The man, who was roughly dressed and certainly had nothing to do with the store, studied the writing carefully.
"This is all right," he remarked; "allright, but"—and his eyes traveled doubtfully over McGlory—"only one was expected."
"Don't worry about that, Mr. Pryne," answered Matt genially; "this chap," and he lowered his voice to a whisper, "is a pal."
"There's another one to go," murmured Pryne.
Matt was startled; then, thinking the other one was the sailor, he braced himself for short, sharp work. "Where is the other one, Pryne?"
"Here," and Pryne indicated the other man who had been sitting with him on the bench.
Matt gave more careful attention to this other individual. He was a Hebrew—one glance was sufficient to decide that. Also, he was ornately clad, wearing many large diamonds and making a fulsome display of heavy gold watch chain. The Jew pushed forward with a wink and an ingratiating smile.
"Goldstein is der name," said he, thrusting out a hand. "I'm der man from New York, yes, der"—and he whispered the rest in Matt's ear—"diamond merchant. You know for vat I come."
A thrill ran through the king of the motor boys. No, he did not know "for vat" the diamond merchant had come, but he guessed that it was to purchase the Eye of Buddha. The mandarin's story was being borne out by every fresh development.
"We're a little ahead of time," observed Pryne, "but I guess it won't make no difference."
"Not the least," replied Matt. "I don't believe it will be necessary for me to take my pal along, so I'll just give him a few instructions about the motor car and we'll be going. This way, Joe," and Matt took McGlory to one side for a brief talk.
"What you going to do when you reach where you're going, with all that gang against you?" whispered the cowboy. "The outfit would be more than a handful for the two of us—and here you're cutting me out of the game right at the start."
"No," whispered Matt, "I'm not cutting you out of the game. You've got the most important part to play. Listen. Find a constable, if you can do it in a hurry, and pick up two or three more men and follow us. Do it carefully, so that Pryne won't suspect. Also tell the driver of the car to look out for the one-eyed sailor. If he comes here at ten o'clock, tell the driver to have him captured and held—and the other man, too, if they both come. That's your programme, Joe, and everything depends on you."
The cowboy's eyes began to glitter and snap as the gist and vital importance of his pard's instructions drifted through his mind.
"You know you can bank on me, Matt," he answered. "But don't move too fast—make a delay. I've got a lot to do, and you're liable to get so far ahead I'll lose track of you."
"I'll delay matters as much as I can."
Matt returned to Goldstein.
"Where's Pryne?" he queried, observing, with a qualm, that the guide had vanished.
"He is gone for der team," replied Goldstein. "I am sorry," he added, jumping to another subject, "that der price of precious stones is come down. Fancy prices don't rule no more for such luxuries."
"You'll have to pay something for this treasure from the temple of Honam if you get it," answered Matt.
"I will do all that is in reason, yes, but der chances vas great, and I take them."
"Haven't Grattan and I taken chances, Goldstein?" returned Matt sharply.
"You have, yes. Well, we shall see, we shall see."
Goldstein was carrying a small satchel which he kept in hand continually, whether he was sitting down or standing up.
"I come prepared to talk business," he said, with a sly grin, directing his glance at the satchel. "My orders was to wait here until Bunce iss arrived with der letter. I had a letter myself," he laughed.
At this juncture Pryne drove around the corner of the building and drew up at the platform in front of the store.
"Jump in, gents," said he. "It won't be long till I snake you out to my place."
Matt and Goldstein climbed into the back seat. Under the seat was a bag of ground feed. As Pryne was driving out of town, Matt drew his knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and dropped a hand over the back of the seat.
A jab or two with the knife made a hole in the bag. The wagon was an old one, and the boards in the bottom of the box had wide cracks between them. Looking back casually, Matt saw that a fine trail of "middlings" was leaking into the road.
"That will do the trick," he thought exultantly. "My cowboy pard can be depended on to attend to the rest."
THE OLD SUGAR CAMP.
Pryne's team was by no means a swift one. The horses jogged slowly out into the hills, Pryne constantly plying a gad.
"Seems to me like," remarked Pryne, looking around suddenly, "that Grattan allowed Bunce had only one eye."
"That's another pal of his," said Matt coolly. "You've got us mixed, Pryne."
"Waal, mebby. Git ap, there," he added to the horses; "you critters are slower'n merlasses in January."
For a few minutes they rode in silence, the dust eddying around them and only the creak of the wagon, the thump of the horses' hoofs, and the swish of the gad breaking the stillness.
Goldstein, his satchel on his knees, kept flicking a gaudy and heavily perfumed handkerchief in front of hisface to clear away the dust. Matt was busy with his thoughts, and was wondering what was to happen at the end of the journey.
Abruptly, Pryne turned again in his seat.
"Seems, too," he ventured, "as how Grattan said this Bunce was a sailor an' wore sailor clothes."
"That's the other fellow again, Pryne," Matt smiled. "You haven't got much of a memory, I guess."
"Waal, it ain't long, but it's mighty keen."
"My cracious," murmured Goldstein, "but der dust is bad. How much farther is it yet?"
"We turn at the next crossroads and pull up a hill," answered Pryne; "then we leave the hill road for a ways, an' we're there. It's my ole sugar camp. Trees is mostly played out, though, an' we don't make sugar there no more. It kinder 'pears to me like," he added, another thought striking him, "Grattan said Bunce had whiskers around his jaws."
"That's the other pal," said Matt.
"Git ap, there, Prince!" called Pryne, slapping the off horse with the gad.
"How long have you known Grattan, Pryne?" inquired Matt.
"Always, since I got married. My wife's his sister. Annaballe—that's the old woman—she's English, she is. Come over visitin' in Cairo, ten year back, an' I up and asked her to marry me. Grattan was to the weddin', an' that was the first an' only time we'd met till a few days ago. Great traveler, Grat is. He's been to Ejup, an' Rooshia, an' Chiny an' all them countries. Great traveler. Takes pictur's for these here movin'-picture machines."
Matt heard this with interest. It reminded him of another time when he had encountered a moving-picture man and had had a particularly thrilling experience. And this experience with Grattan promised to be even more thrilling.
"Is the sugar camp a safe place?" asked Matt.
"Nobody ever goes to the old camp now no more," replied Pryne.
"My cracious, vat a dust!" said Goldstein. "How big is der Eye?" he whispered to Matt.
"Wait till you see it," Matt answered.
"Pigeon's blood, yes?"
Matt supposed he meant to ask if the Eye of Buddha was a pigeon's blood ruby. Taking a chance, Matt nodded.
"She is a true Oriental, eh?" went on Goldstein, a greedy glint coming into his eyes.
"It must be if it comes from China."
"So! If she weigh five carat, she is vorth ten times so much as a diamond. But diamonds ain't vorth so much now."
Matt looked behind him. The sack of middlings was half emptied.
"Are we halfway to the old sugar camp, Pryne?" Matt called.
"Better'n that," was the reply. "Here's where we turn for up the hill."
The hill was long and high, and the road turned into a little-used trail and ascended through timber. The horses pulled and panted and the gad fell mercilessly.
"Somethin' of a climb," said Pryne casually. "One of them tires back there is loose—the one on the right-hand side. Kinder keep an eye on it, will you?"
Matt looked at the tire, which was on his side of the wagon. As yet, it was all right. Matt hoped it would remain so, for if Pryne got out to drive it on he might discover the loss of his middlings—and other things which would have a tendency to excite his suspicions.
"Der dust ain't so much here," observed Goldstein, in a tone of relief.
"Ain't so many wagons to churn it up," said Pryne.
Then fell silence again, Matt busy with his thoughts.
Where was Tsan Ti? While Matt was running down the Eye of Buddha for him, what was the Chinaman, to whom the recovery of the ruby meant so much, doing?
These speculations were bootless, and Matt fell to thinking of the glass balls. If Grattan had a supply of them, all the men McGlory could bring would not be able to prevent him from getting away.
Success in the king of the motor boys' venture hung by an exceedingly slender thread.
"It will be hard business to cut it up," came the voice of Goldstein, breaking roughly into Matt's somber reflections.
"Hard to cut what up?" Matt asked.
"Der Eye. When it ain't best to sell precious stones in one piece, then we cut them up."
Matt understood what the Jew was driving at. Large diamonds are hard to market, especially if the diamonds have been stolen. In order to dispose of them they are often cut up into smaller stones.
"You see," proceeded Goldstein, "dis ruby is valuable because of its size, yes. Der size makes all der difference. If it is cut under fife carat, dere vasn't much sale. Anyhow, diamonds is sheaper as they was. I lose a lot of money by der fall in der price of diamonds."
"Here's where we turn from the hill road an' strike out for the sugar camp," remarked Pryne.
He swerved from the steep road as he spoke and drove into a bumpy swath cut through the timber. For half a mile or more they jolted and banged along, then Pryne pulled to a halt.
"I'll hitch here," said he, getting out, "an' I'll leave the rig. The rest of the way we'll go on foot. It ain't fur," he added hastily, noticing the solicitous glance which Goldstein threw at his patent-leather shoes.
"First time I efer come to a place like this to buy preciousstones," remarked the Jew, clambering slowly down.
Matt had a bad two minutes waiting for Pryne to hitch the horses and fearing he would come to the rear of the wagon and discover the slashed bag of feed. But Pryne was apparently unsuspicious.
Turning away from the tree to which he had hitched the horses, he called to Matt and Goldstein to follow him.
Their path took them through the old sugar "bush," among maples that were dead and dying and whose trunks were deeply scarred by the sap hunters. Presently an old log building came into view.
"There's the place," said Pryne.
Part of the building was nothing more than a tumble-down shed. One end of the structure, however, was walled in, and seemed to have been made habitable by the use of rough boards.
A length of stovepipe stuck up through the roof—about the only visible sign that the place was used as a dwelling.
With Pryne in the lead, the odd little group moved around the side of the log wall to a door.
To say that Matt's heart did not beat more quickly, or that visions of violence did not float before his mental gaze, would be to say that he was not human.
He had a keen realization of the dangers into which he was about to throw himself. The moment he passed the door deception would be a thing of the past. Grattan would recognize him as a stranger—a prying stranger who had come to the sugar camp with the intention of securing the Eye of Buddha.
Matt's problem was to engage Grattan's attention, and keep him from going to extremes, until McGlory should arrive with reënforcements.
Just how Matt was to do this he did not know. He was trusting to luck—and luck had not been favoring him to any great extent lately.
The door of the log hut was closed. Pryne rapped on it.
"Who's there?" demanded a voice from within.
"It's Pryne, Grat," was the answer.
"Goldstein and Bunce with you?"
"Sure. I've fetched 'em."
"Then bring them in. I'm ready and waiting."
Pryne bore down on the wooden latch and threw open the door.
"Go right in, gents," said he, stepping back.
Goldstein, with a laugh, passed through the door first. Matt followed. Pryne brought up the rear and closed the door.
What light there was in the one room in which Matt found himself came through the broken roof. There were no windows in the log walls.
"He was there, all right, Grat," cried Pryne, with a loud guffaw, "an' he didn't make no bones about comin' with me. He was mighty anxious to come, seemed like, but I don't calculate he guessed he'd find so many folks here."
Matt's eyes, by that time, had become accustomed to the gloom, and he was able to look around and distinguish various objects.
First, he saw a heavy-set man on a bench. This man had a dark face and a sinister eye, and was leaning back against the wall. Both his hands clung to a buckthorn cane with a large wooden handle. The cane was crossed against one of his knees and held it slightly elevated.
"Throw yer binnacle lights this way, my hearty, as soon's ye're done sizin' up my shipmate," came a voice from the opposite side of the room.
Matt whirled, a startled exclamation escaping his lips.
It was the one-eyed sailor who had spoken. The fellow was sitting on another bench, a wide grin on his weather-beaten face.
The trap had been sprung—and it was the most complete trap Matt had ever been in.
"I told ye more'n once to leave the Eye o' Buddha alone," chuckled Bunce, "but ye wouldn't take a warnin'.Now, see where ye are!"
A TIGHT CORNER.
It was a characteristic of Motor Matt that he never became "rattled." A clear head and steady nerves were absolutely essential in his chosen career. To these he added a quick and sure judgment.
"Surprised, are you?" asked Grattan, with a choppy laugh.
"Well, yes, in a way," replied Matt coolly.
"I wonder if you know what you're up against?"
"You have a stolen ruby, called the Eye of Buddha, and Goldstein is here to buy it."
"My cracious!" gasped the Jew, throwing up his hands.
There was no doubting his surprise, so Matt knew that he, at least, was not in the plot.
"Close your face, Goldstein," scowled Grattan. "This business isn't going to bother you. Take a seat, Motor Matt," he added. "We'll have a little chin-chin before we get busy."
There was an empty bench along the end wall. Matt walked over to it and seated himself, glad that there was to be a "chin-chin." This meant delay, and would give time for McGlory to arrive with reënforcements.
"I don't understand what's der matter," gulped Goldstein, pressing back against the wall and hugging his satchel in his arms. "I don't like der looks of things, no."
"You can't help the looks of things," snapped Grattan, "and you'll understand the situation a lot better before you get away from this sugar camp. Sit down."
There was a three-legged stool close to the Jew, and he dropped down on it in a state of semi-collapse. His eyes passed to Pryne, who had drawn a revolver and was standing in front of the door. Undoubtedly Goldstein had a lot of money in his satchel with which to pay for the ruby, so it is small wonder he was worried upon finding himself a participator in such a scene.
"I thought der young feller was Bunce!" he exclaimed, moistening his dry lips with his tongue.
"Put a stopper on your jaw-tackle!" yelled the sailor. "That's the line we've run out to you for now, and you'll lay to it."
The Jew swallowed hard on a lump in his throat and fell limply against the wall behind him.
Goldstein had even more to lose as the outcome of that desperate situation than had Matt, but the king of the motor boys saw at a glance that he was absolutely useless so far as resistance was concerned.
Grattan dropped his suspended foot on the floor and turned to Pryne.
"Did any one come with Motor Matt, Pryne?" he inquired.
"Two fellers come with him," was the response. "They got to Purling in a automobile."
"Who were those fellows, Motor Matt?" demanded Grattan, shooting a sharp glance at the young motorist.
"The driver of the car, from Catskill Landing," said Matt, "and my chum, Joe McGlory."
"Why did you leave them in Purling?"
"The driver had to stay to look after the car, and I didn't think it was necessary to bring McGlory along for a bodyguard."
Grattan threw back his head and peered at Matt through half-closed eyes.
"You're a cool one," he remarked. "Why were you coming here to see me?"
"I wanted to get the ruby."
Bunce roared. Grattan commanded silence sharply, and the sailor's merriment ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
"Did you think," went on Grattan, "that you could, single-handed, take the ruby from me by force?"
Matt was silent.
"Or did you think you could talk me out of it?"
"I hadn't much of an idea what I could do," said Matt. "It was just barely possible you'd be generous enough, when you learned the circumstances, to give or sell the Eye of Buddha to Tsan Ti."
Grattan curbed the old sailor's fresh inclination to laugh with a quick look.
"What are the circumstances?" he queried.
"Tsan Ti has received the yellow cord. If he does not recover the idol's eye in two weeks, he must destroy himself."
"Young man," said Grattan, "I have been two years planning to get my clutches on the Eye of Buddha. I have haunted Canton, feasted my eyes upon that priceless splash of red in the forehead of the idol in the Honam Joss House until the itch to possess it fairly drove me mad. But the temple was too well guarded, the priests too many, and the walls too high. It was only when I learned of the balls of Ptah and their powers that the feat looked at all feasible. In order to see these balls of Ptah for myself, I made the long journey from Hongkong to the ruins of Karnak on the Nile."
Taking the buckthorn cane under his arm, Grattan stepped across the room to a table near the bench where Bunce was sitting. On the table rested a small box with a strap handle. Grattan opened the lid of the box, and from a nest of cotton picked one of the shimmering glass balls. He handled the ball gently, and a glow came into his eyes as he held it up.
"A quantity of these balls," he proceeded, "were unearthed a year ago from among the ruins of Karnak. They are of Egyptian glass, thousands of years old, and each of the big beads has blown into its surface thepraenomenof Hatasu, a queen who is conjectured to have lived more than fourteen hundred years before our era. A party of workmen discovered the balls, and chanced to break one of them." Grattan paused, turning the shimmering sphere around and around in his hand. "All the workmen," he went on, "were thrown into an unconscious condition, and it was in this manner that the peculiar properties of the balls were discovered. Why they are called the balls of Ptah I don't know, and what they contain that has such a peculiar effect on living beings, no one has ever been able to discover. But I heard of them, stole a dozen, and tried one on the museum guards in making my escape. It answered the purpose," he went on dryly. "If it had not, I would have been caught."
Almost reverently he replaced the ball in the cotton-lined case and closed the lid. Returning to his bench, he resumed his original position, sweeping an amused glance around him at the awed faces of Goldstein, Pryne, and Matt.
"Armed with one of the balls of Ptah," he proceeded, "I picked up the ancient mariner"—he nodded toward Bunce—"and we manufactured a silk ladder twenty feet long, and weighted it at one end. Then, one day, we repaired to the Honam Joss House at five in the afternoon. That ball of Egyptian glass, crushed to fragments on the floor, overcame the priests. Bunce and I protected our own faces with masks, equipped with oxygen tubes reaching into small tanks of compressed air in our pockets. To throw the weighted end of the ladder over the head of Ptah took us possibly a minute; for meto climb the ladder and dig the ruby from the idol's forehead consumed possibly five minutes; and for Bunce and me to get out of the temple took five minutes more. We were safely out of Canton when the storm broke."
Matt had listened to all this in supreme wonder. The audacity of the undertaking caused his pulses to stir, but he wondered why Grattan should recount such an exploit to him, and in the hearing of Pryne and Goldstein.
"You know now," continued Grattan, "what the Eye of Buddha has cost me, and you say it is just barely possible I would be generous enough to yield the gem to Tsan Ti in order to save his life!"
"Or you might sell it to him," suggested Matt.
"I might, if he could pay what it is worth."
"Grattan," spoke up Goldstein with sudden fervor, "you have promised me der first shance!"
"Keep still!" growled Grattan. "You'll get all the chance you want before you leave here."
"The mandarin is a rich man," said Matt, who, of course, was parleying merely to gain time.
"He has a little money with him, but that is all. Every plantation he owns in China, every string of cash in his strong boxes is guarded by the regent. If he does not recover the Eye of Buddha, the property will be confiscated. And he can't touch a cent of his fortune until he returns the ruby to its place in the idol's head. So, you see, your friend, the mandarin of the red button, is in a bally hard fix. He can't buy the ruby, and certainly I won't give it to him."
This was intensely interesting to Matt. He was listening, now, in a casual way, for the approach of McGlory and his party, and he was planning what he could do with the balls of Ptah in order to keep Grattan from using them.
"You're a clever lad, Motor Matt," went on Grattan, "and I admire clever people. You performed a neat trick when you removed that folded note from Bunce's cap. It was a foolish place to keep such a thing, but Bunce is a good deal of a fool. For instance, I reached the Catskill Mountains with six of the balls of Ptah—the only ones of the kind to be had—and the crack-brained sailor man stole two of them and threw them away on you and your chum, gaining little and losing something which might prove of priceless value to us."
"Now, shipmate," began Bunce, in a wheedling voice, "you don't get the right splice on that piece of rope; you——"
"That'll do," said Grattan, waving his hand.
Bunce subsided. The power of Grattan over the sailor was absolute. It was easy to see whose had been the plotting mind and the guiding hand in the exploits of the two.
"You are sharp enough to wonder, I suppose," said Grattan, again addressing Matt, "why I am going into these private details for your benefit. The answer is simple. Our plans are laid to leave here to-day. You can't stop us, no one can stop us. The balls of Ptah will disarm all opposition, and the four of them will see us out of the country with Goldstein's money."
"But if Goldstein has the Eye of Buddha," said Matt, "I will know it and can prove it. He can't hold stolen property."
"Certainly he can't. Goldstein gets the ruby and we get Goldstein's money. You have Goldstein arrested and prove in a court of law that he bought the idol's eye from the original thieves. Then——"
A howl came from Goldstein.
"I von't buy, I von't buy! That is a skin game. I von't buy der stone."
"Oh, yes, you will," and, for the first time, a laugh came from Grattan's lips. "You've brought the money and you'll buy before you leave."
Then, for the first time, Goldstein understood the true meaning of the situation. He flashed a wild look at Pryne and the revolver, and sank back against the wall and groaned.