Chapter X: Rescue!

Motor Matt understood full well the gravity of his situation. Never until that moment had he known the cause of the murderous Dhondaram's hostility to him, but now it appeared that he was merely seeking to cancel a debt which he owed Ben Ali.

Bill Wily's regard for his own welfare was all that stood between Motor Matt and the knife of the misguided Hindoo.

"Give me that knife, Dhondaram," ordered Wily.

"I will keep the knife, sahib," replied the other.

"Keep it, then, and be hanged to you," answered Wily angrily, "but you'll settle with me if you try any knife tricks on the prisoner. I guess you rise to that, all right enough. Take off the gag. I want to talk with Motor Matt."

Dhondaram bent down and removed the cloth.

"I'm a 'barker,'" went on Wily, still addressing the Hindoo and making brief display of a revolver, "but here's somethin' that bites as well as barks. Put away that knife."

Silently the Hindoo returned the knife to his jacket and sank back on his heels.

"What was you chasin' me for, Motor Matt?" asked Wily.

"Why were you running away from me?" Matt countered.

"That's my business. You answer my question. I guess you'd better treat me white, 'cause it's me that keeps the Hindoo from doin' a little knife work on you."

"Burton wanted you to tell him something about that letter," Matt answered, making up his mind that a little of the truth would not be out of place.

"Oh, ho!" muttered Wily. "Does he think I can read Hindoostanee?"

"No. What he wanted to know was where you got the letter. The Hindoos who have been connected with the show haven't turned out very well--they are all fugitives from the law, even Dhondaram."

Not a ripple crossed the placid brown face of the Hindoo; only his glittering eyes revealed the feeling that slumbered in the depths of his soul.

"I guessed there'd be a stir about that letter," went on Wily, "an' that's the reason I made up my mind to pull out. I'd had to explain, an' no matter what I'd said I'd have been fired, anyway. I used to live in Grand Rapids, and the home town was a good place for me to cut loose from the show, see?"

"Why are you treating me like this?" asked Matt quietly.

"Couldn't help it. Them kid pards o' yours was the cause o' the hull bloomin' twist-up!" Wily Bill swore savagely under his breath. "I'd like to take the kinks out o' that Dutchman. He's too much on the buttinsky order. You chased after me, hung on, an' wouldn't let go. What else could I do but make myself safe?"

"You didn't have to have Dhondaram knock me down."

"It wasn't him did that. He tried, but I had to finish the job. But I was treatin' you well, at that. I could have dropped down back of a clump o' bushes, there in the timber, and picked you off with this." Wily touched his hip pocket. "But I didn't. That ain't my style. I'd rather have you like this an' come to a little agreement with you. As for Dhondaram, I hadn't an idea he was in the house. I'd given him a key, an' I knew he might be here, but I wasn't expectin' him so soon. Mebby it was lucky for me that he was around."

"So that's it, eh?" commented Matt sarcastically. "You've been meeting Dhondaram, and helping him, when you knew he had been a prisoner of Burton's and had escaped from the show train between Jackson and Kalamazoo. If a person helps a fugitive of the law to escape, he is guilty of a crime and can be punished for it."

"There you hit it! But I was ducking out--and you wouldn't let me duck. I'm going to leave, in spite of you and Burton. That's the worst I've done--talkin' with Dhondaram and carryin' Hindoostanee letters. But I'll not be jugged for that, or----"

A hiss of warning came from Dhondaram. At the same moment he leaned down and replaced the cloth over Matt's lips.

Distant voices were heard, then the sound of a key rattling in a lock.

"The fellow that was here before has brought some others," whispered Wily. "Hang the luck! I wish we had got out o' here while we had the chance. Now, then, we're in for it an' no mistake."

"Listen, sahib!" frowned the Hindoo.

The voices that had been heard outside the house were now talking in the hall. It was impossible to distinguish words, but Matt's heart leaped as he recognized McGlory's voice and Burton's.

They were looking for him!

"They cannot find us down here, sahib," murmured the Hindoo, his voice soft and purring as that of a tiger cat. "They will go as the first one went, then we can leave."

This was Wily's hope. Breathlessly he listened to the sounds above. The footsteps and the voices faded away into the upper regions of the building.

"Now," muttered Wily, "we might be able to dodge through the front door. They're all upstairs."

Dhondaram shook his head.

"The door in the floor, sahib, cannot be found," he whispered reassuringly. "The _feringhis_ will not discover us. Be patient."

Presently Matt heard his friends returning to the lower floor, heard them enter the kitchen, heard the sound of lifted windows and opening blinds, marked the slow and steady advance from the kitchen into the hall, and along the hall to a point under the stairs.

By then, even Dhondaram had begun to take alarm.

"They're at the trap!" gasped Wily Bill.

"Is there no way out of this hole, sahib?" demanded Dhondaram through his teeth.

"Only by the way we came in. I lived in this house and I know all about it."

Dhondaram smashed the flat of his hand down over the light of the candle. The Stygian blackness that reigned showed plainly the rim of daylight under the lifting door.

"The revolver!" hissed Dhondaram. "Shoot, sahib!"

"No, I tell you!" answered Wily. "I'll have none o' that, or----"

With a savage snarl, Dhondaram hurled himself on Wily Bill in a furious effort to secure the revolver and fight off the approaching rescuers.

The trapdoor had been thrown entirely back, and daylight was flooding the pit. The sounds of the struggle between the Hindoo and Wily Bill reached the ears of those above.

"Here they are!" cried the voice of McGlory, and instantly he leaped downward.

With a blow of his fist the Hindoo staggered the cowboy, leaped upward, and gained the floor.

"Dhondaram!" yelled Burton, who was just preparing to follow McGlory down under the floor.

The word was hardly out of his lips before the showman was compelled to drop back to avoid a sweeping blow of the knife in the Hindoo's hand.

McGlory was looking for Matt, and paid little attention to the Hindoo. He found his pard with his groping hands, for his eyes were blinded by the sudden change from day to the darkness of the pit.

"Bully for you, pard!" exclaimed McGlory. "Lashed hand and foot, or I'm a Piegan! Speak to me about this, will you? And gagged, too. Sufferin' blazes, but you've had a time! There, how's that?"

The cowboy pulled away the cloth.

"Wily's here," were Matt's first words. "He and the Hindoo had a fight, and----"

"Bother Wily! It's you I'm after," and, with his open knife, McGlory slashed at the cords. "Now we can look after Wily."

Leaving that part of the work to his chum, Matt leaped upward and climbed over the edge of the floor. Burton was running toward one of the front rooms.

"Where's the Hindoo?" cried Matt.

"The Englishman tagged him in here, after heading him off at the door," panted Burton. "I always knew that thug was a killer, and if I hadn't been quick he'd have knifed me."

A smash of glass came from the front room and two of the blinds were smashed open. The light afforded by this gave Matt and Burton a view of a desperate struggle in which the attaché of the British Legation was proving himself a whole man, in every sense of the word.

Unarmed, and with every disregard for his personal danger, Twomley had set upon the Hindoo. Dhondaram's knife had ripped Twomley's coat and brought a stain of red, but the Englishman had both hands around the Hindoo's throat, and they were flinging here and there around the room.

The smash of glass and the crash of the blinds had been caused by Dhondaram falling heavily against one of the windows. Then suddenly, before either Matt or Burton could go to his aid, Twomley hurled his antagonist from him with terrific force. The Hindoo fell sprawling against the wall, and dropped stunned to the floor. His knife slipped from his hand, and Burton kicked it aside while he and Matt threw themselves upon the supine figure.

"Take his turban," said Matt, "and bind his hands with it."

The turban was merely a long strip of twisted cloth, and there were two or three yards of it--enough for both his wrists and ankles.

Barely was the tying finished when McGlory drove Wily into the room with his own six-shooter.

"Talk about this, friends," laughed McGlory. "Wily Bill fights with the Hindoo, and has the tuck about all taken out of him. I snatch his revolver, and then we come out from under the floor, Wily in the lead and acting real peaceable. You've caught Dhondaram, too. Everything's lovely, eh?"

"All serene," answered the Englishman.

He had removed his coat and was binding his handkerchief about his arm.

"Twomley captured Dhondaram, Joe," said Matt, "and did it alone."

"Getting stabbed for his pains," added Burton.

"A scratch," was Twomley's cool response. "How could you expect me to do a thing like that without getting a nick or two? A pretty show altogether. And it might have been a good deal worse."