Chapter XI: A Double Capture

Matt was bewildered by the strange turn events were taking. Encountering Sam Wing at the spring was odd enough, in all truth, and the weird happenings during his pursuit had been as novel as they were thrilling; but here, in a most inexplicable way, came the mandarin and the mariner on motor cycles, wabbling down the road, Tsan Ti in a panic and Bunce aggressive and determined.

Matt shouted, but the two on the motor cycles were so deeply immersed in their own efforts that they paid no attention to the call.

To stop the motor cycles was the first step, and the young motorist went about it in his usual resourceful way. Swiftly he secured one end of the rope to a telegraph pole at the side of the road; then, bounding back, he took a turn with the free end of the rope around a convenient tree. Hanging to the cable that was to form a blockade for the charging wheels, Matt once more gave his attention to Bunce and Tsan Ti.

The pursuit of the mandarin had reached a crisis. The sailor had come close enough to reach out and grab the Chinaman's flying queue, and he was hauling rearward, pulling the mandarin back until his hands had left the handle bars.

"Stop!" shouted Motor Matt, laying back on the end of the rope.

The command was useless, for pursuer and pursued were obliged to halt in spite of it.

The mandarin's swaying motor cycle was first to hit the rope. Before the machine could topple over, Bunce crashed into it. There followed a rasping volley of gasoline explosions, a roar from the sailor, and a chattering yell from the mandarin. The two were on the ground, tangled up with each other and with the motor cycles.

Dropping the rope, Matt rushed at the struggling pair, seized Bunce by the shoulders, and hauled him out of the mix-up.

A revolver had fallen from the sailor's pocket. Matt sprang to secure it, and then faced Bunce, who was on his knees and staring about him dazedly.

"Noble friend!" cried the mandarin, carefully extricating his head from the frame of one of the motor cycles, "you have again preserved the wretched Tsan Ti! The evil personage yonder would presently have caught me!"

Bunce, having finally decided that the situation was one that boded him no good, started to get up and remove himself from the scene.

"I don't believe you'd better leave us just yet, Bunce," called Matt, waving the revolver. "Stay right where you are. This is a complication which you can help the mandarin explain."

"By the seven holy spritsails!" muttered Bunce, falling back in his original position and looking at Matt and then at the farmer. "How, in the name o' Davy Jones," he cried, his gaze returning to Matt, "do you happen to be cruisin' in these waters?"

"Never mind that, for the present. What I want to know is, where have you and the mandarin come from? And why were you chasing him?"

"I have escaped, highly appreciated friend whose kindness is much reciprocated," babbled the mandarin, coming blithely to Matt's side and carefully knocking the dust out of his little black cap. "I have made a never-to-be-forgotten escape from the hands of evil-minded enemies. It was your friend from the cattle districts who helped me."

So far, all that Matt had heard and seen had merely bogged him the more deeply in a mire of misunderstanding. At the mandarin's mention of McGlory, his speculations went off at a wild tangent.

"Did Grattan and Bunce capture the other car?" he demanded. "Where did you find Joe and Martin? Where are they now? What's happened to them?"

"Peace, distinguished youth," said the mandarin, putting on his cap and fluttering his hand reassuringly. "I know nothing about any car except the blue one by the pocket."

"Blue car? Did you see a blue car?"

"Even so, my amazed friend. And beside the blue car leaned those go-devil bicycles. McGlory--faithful assistant in my time of need--helped me beguile Grattan, Pardo, and Bunce into the pocket, whereupon I secured one of the go-devil machines and fled swiftly. The one-eyed sailor followed. Which way we came I do not know. Wherever I saw another road I turned into it. How long we raced is too much for my disturbed faculties to understand. We went, and went, and at last we were here, and I found you! Oh, loyal defender of the most wretched of mandarins, to you I owe my peace, my happiness, and my life! May the six thousand peri of the land of enchantment afford you joy in the life to come!"

"Well, by gum!" muttered the wide-eyed farmer, shifting his rake to the other hand and rubbing a palm against his forehead. "I never seen a heathen that could talk like that before. Some remarkable now, ain't it?"

Matt was too deeply concerned with what Tsan Ti had said to pay much attention to the farmer. He kept his watchful eyes on Bunce, however, while seeking to get deeper into the perplexing situation that so suddenly confronted him.

"Let's begin at the beginning, Tsan Ti," said he, "and try and smooth out the knots of this amazing tangle with some sort of system. McGlory and I received your telegram. What happened to you after Sam Wing stole the ruby?"

"I awoke from my dreams in great fright, inquiring friend," responded the mandarin, "and found the ruby gone, and Sam Wing gone. There was but one thing for me to think, and I thought it. The train was at a station, and I jumped from the steps. I looked for Sam Wing, but he had vanished; then I sent my telegram and waited until you might arrive. In the gray dawn that came into the east, I saw Sam Wing suddenly flash by the open door of the railroad station. I shouted and ran after him, but he evaded me. Ah, the dreary heart-sickness in my breast as I pursued the traitor!" The mandarin clutched at his frayed yellow blouse and wrung a fold of it in his fat fingers. "Who can tell of that? I followed the wagon road through the mountains, looking and listening. Then I heard some one, afar off, shouting the name of Motor Matt. Hope leaped high within me, for that name, notable sir, has a magic of its own. I turned from the road, climbed many rocks, and crushed through thick growths of prickly bushes, striving to reach the one who had shouted. Also, I shouted myself, and presently, to my great but mistaken delight, other shoutings were returned to me. I went on, in my deceived state, and came to a place where I was captured--made a prisoner by Grattan and that contemptible mariner of the single eye! Your friend of the cattle districts was likewise a prisoner."

"McGlory--captured by Grattan!" gasped Matt. "How did that happen? Why, I thought he was with Martin."

"Not so, deceived friend. He had tried to follow you in the pursuit of Sam Wing, and he had lost knowledge of his location, and was shouting to hear some speak and tell him where he was. That is what I heard. Before I could reach your friend, Grattan and Bunce had also heard him, and made him a prisoner. Then they heard me, and made _me_ a captive. Verily, the ten thousand demons have had me under the ban."

"I'm beginning to get at this," said Matt grimly. "Where did you and Grattan come from, Bunce, that you were placed so handily for entrapping McGlory and the mandarin?"

"We'd made port in the hills," replied Bunce, "an' was out lookin' for Tsan Ti an' the ruby."

"They, miserable creatures," resumed the mandarin, with a glance of contempt at Bunce, "had the blue car and the go-devil bicycles in a gashed-out spot among the mountains. A cavern, named by them a pocket, was in the wall of the rough valley. There were McGlory and I taken and bound. While Grattan, Bunce, and Pardo, birds of evil feather, were plotting in the blue car, I gnawed the cord that secured your unfortunate friend's hands, and he freed himself and me. After that McGlory raised a great clamor. Grattan, Bunce, and Pardo came hastily to observe what might be the trouble, and I went out of the pocket as they came in. Then I took the motor cycle, as I have said, and moved away, followed by the mariner. Is the matter clear, esteemed friend?"

"I'm beginning to understand it," answered Matt. "It's the queerest mix-up I ever heard of. Strange that you and Joe should fall into the hands of Grattan and Bunce, as you did, and that you should happen to lead Bunce this way when you fled on the motor cycle."

"Matter-of-fact youth," remarked the mandarin earnestly, "do you not realize how strange events happen swiftly in the wake of the Eye of Buddha? The ten thousand demons are doing their worst continually, and their powers for evil are vast beyond imagining!"

"We'll pass over that phase of the matter," said Matt dryly, "and try to get at something that will benefit McGlory. Can you take me to this 'pocket,' as you call it?"

"Not so," replied the mandarin. "I have no recollection how I came from it, or what roads I took. The roads were many, and the way was long, and my mind was too greatly disturbed to pay attention."

"Where's the pocket, Bunce?" asked Matt, addressing the sailor.

"I know, messmate," scowled Bunce, "but I'm not showin' ye the course."

Matt was in a quandary. He could not understand why Grattan had captured McGlory, but he was not intending to let his chum remain any longer in the hands of the thieves than was absolutely necessary. A way would be found to make Bunce lead him to the pocket.

"Generous and agreeable friend," spoke up Tsan Ti, "did you succeed in capturing Sam Wing?"

"I did," replied Matt.

"Then may I request of you the Eye of Buddha?"

"I'll take you to Sam Wing and you can request it of him," said Matt. "Get up, Bunce," he ordered, "and start yourself for the barn. Will you," and Matt shot a glance at the farmer, "kindly remove that rope from the road and set the motor cycles upright in a place where they will be safe?"

"Glad to do anythin' fer yew that I can," answered the farmer, dropping his rake and getting busy with the rope.

Matt, face to face with the ordeal of acquainting Tsan Ti with the fact that the ruby was irretrievably lost, was wondering, as he drove Bunce toward the barn, what the result of the catastrophe was to be.