Chapter XII: 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 the _praenomen_ of 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 me to 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.