Chapter VII: 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 manoeuvre--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 worth much, 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."