CHAPTER VII.
NIP AND TUCK.
"That's right," whooped McGlory, twisting his head to get a look atMatt, "laugh--laugh, and enjoy yourself! Sufferin' smash-ups! It'sa wonder the hospital corps didn't have to shovel us up in a bushelbasket."
"Are you hurt, Joe?" inquired Matt.
"Hurt?" snapped McGlory, his gorge rising. "Oh, no, of course not! Weweren't going more than a hundred and twenty miles an hour when we hitthat tree, so how could I possibly have suffered any damage? This comesof 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 Icould get hold of that yellow cord, I'd strangle the mandarin myself."
McGlory climbed to his feet lamely and looked himself over, up anddown. His coat was about twenty feet away, in one place, and his hatlay at an equal distance in another. As he moved about collecting hisproperty and muttering to himself, Matt stepped to the side of Tsan Ti.
The mandarin, still dazed and bewildered, continued to cling to thesteering wheel. Matt bent down and took the wheel away from him.
"Illustrious friend," said the Chinaman, blinking his eyes, "thesuddenness was most remarkable. Once more the thousand demons ofmisfortune have visited their wrath upon me!"
"Don't talk about misfortune," returned Matt. "We're the luckiestfellows that ever lived to get out of a wreck like that with wholeskins. 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 hasreceived the yellow cord? I have rice fields and tea plantations,and millions of taels to my credit. The bagatelle of a cost does notconcern me."
Matt helped him upright and dusted him off. As soon as he had pushed afoot into the missing sandal, he gave vent to a wail, and sat down onthe side of the machine.
"Such vastness of misfortune takes my courage," he groaned. "The Eyeof Buddha can not be recovered with all the thousand demons fightingagainst me. The jade-stone amulet burns me fiercely----"
"Wish it had burned a hole clear through you before you'd ever writtenthat 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 racefor the Eye of Buddha. I always know when I've got enough. We've hadfour 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 turnedaround, he was startled to see Tsan Ti with the yellow cord coiledabout his throat.
Could it be possible that the mandarin, cast down by his latestaccident, 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 inthe car directly behind him.
Bang!
He jumped about four feet, straight up in the air. Matt saw a tongue offlame shoot upward from the car.
The gasoline tank had been smashed. The inflammable contents, drippingupon the hot exhaust pipe leading from the muffler, must have causedthe blaze.
Sizz-z-, _bang_, boom!
The gasoline was vaporizing. As the startled mandarin watched theblaze, paralyzed and speechless by the unexpected exhibition, theyellow cord swung limply downward from his throat. McGlory rushed upbehind him, and jerked the cord away. Tsan Ti did not seem to noticethe manoeuvre--he was all wrapped up in the blaze and the explosions.
The fire shot skyward, and Matt grabbed the Chinaman and hauled him toa 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, buthe got it, and they were all well down the road when a final terrificboom scattered fragments of the wreck every which way and sent littlejets of flame from the diffused gasoline spitting in all directions.
"Good-by, you old benzine buggy!" said McGlory, addressing theflame-wrapped car. "You wasn't worth much, anyways, but I bet themandarin bleeds for twice your value, just the same. What you lookingat that wheel for, Matt?" he finished, turning to his chum.
"It was punctured by a bullet," replied Matt, pointing to a clean-cutrent in the shoe.
"Bullet?" echoed McGlory. "Speak to me about that! I didn't hear anyshooting."
"The car made so much noise that's not to be wondered at. I wasn't surethat what I'd heard was a shot, but----"
Matt had lifted his head to speak to McGlory. As he did so, his eyesglimpsed a figure skulking among the bushes at the roadside. Thesunshine, and the glare from the fire, caused a ghastly radiance tohover about the bushes.
In the weird shadows of the bushes and trees, a face stood outprominently--a face topped with a sailor hat, fringed with mutton-chopwhiskers, 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, McGlorychasing after him.
"What's to pay, pard?" the cowboy was demanding.
"The sailor!" flung back Matt. "I saw him in the brush! He must havebeen the one who put that bullet into our front tire!"
"Whoop-ya!" yelled McGlory, all his hostility springing to the surfaceand causing him to forget his announced determination to "quit" and letthe mandarin shift for himself. "Let's put the kibosh on him! He's thecause of all this. Hang the idol's eye! We've got an account of our ownto settle. But look out for the glass balls."
Ahead of him Matt could hear the crash and crackle of undergrowth, andnow and then he caught a glimpse of the racing sailor.
The timber grew more dense, and presently, just as Matt thought he hadthe fellow, he was brought up short with the quarry out of sight andhearing.
"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 eitherstopped, and is lying low, or else he has gone on ahead. I thought Ihad him, for a minute. Come on, Joe!"
Matt flung onward, and leaped suddenly from the edge of the timber intoa cornfield on a little flat between two shoulders of the mountain.He stopped and listened. The leaves of the corn rustled in the faintbreeze, and, in the centre of the field, an ungainly scarecrow halfreared itself above the tasseled stalks.
"He's in the corn, that's where he is," puffed the cowboy. "Mind youreye, pard, and look out for the dope balls."
"You go one way across the field," suggested Matt, "and I'll go theother. Sharp's the word now, old chap. We're giving that fellow the runof 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, theking of the motor boys on one side of the scarecrow, and the cowboy onthe other. They met on the opposite side of the field, without havingseen 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 wasmoving briskly through the corn, toward the side of the field fromwhich the boys had just come.
"There he goes!" shouted Matt, darting away again. "He got into thescarecrow's clothes, and didn't have the nerve to wait until we hadleft 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 thefleeting 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, thendown on the other side, Matt and McGlory close after him. He was makingstrenuously for a cleared space at the foot of the little slope. In thecentre of the clearing were th
e remains of a stone wall, and near thewall stood a little stone house. The house appeared to be deserted, andthe 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 withinthe stone walls. Matt ran recklessly after him.
"Look out for the double-X brand of dope!" warned McGlory. "You knowwhat he did before, Matt."
But Matt was already inside the house. The interior apparentlyconsisted of a hall and two rooms, although the boarded-up windows casta funereal gloom over the place, and made it difficult to see anythingdistinctly. Matt sprang through one of the two doors that opened offthe hall, and McGlory, still clamoring wildly for his chum to beware ofthe glass balls, followed.
Slam went the door of the room--probably the only door in the housethat 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 awarnin'."
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 couldnotice. Catch your breath, pard, and calm down. Old One Eye has madehis getaway, and we might just as well laugh as be sorry."