Chapter VIII: Tsan Ti Vanishes Again

There was wisdom in the cowboy's words, and Matt gave over his attack on the door and turned to his chum with a disappointed laugh.

"We can get out of here easy enough," said he, "but the sailor gains so much time while we're doing it that he wins out in the race. Great spark plugs, but we're having a time! I'm almost tempted to think that those ten thousand demons, the mandarin talks about, are really pestering us."

"Ten thousand horned toads," scoffed McGlory. "This is what we naturally get for trying to turn an impossible trick for a heathen. What was the good of paying any attention to that letter, in the first place?"

"Well," answered Matt, "we've discussed that point a good many times already, Joe. I wanted to go to New York, anyway, and it was only a little out of our road to come down the river and drop off at Catskill Landing."

"Suppose we get our wheels, go back to Catskill, and then take the next boat down the river? What's the good of all this strain we've taken upon ourselves? If we don't let well enough alone, something is sure going to snap, and like as not it'll be mighty serious. It's a wonder we ever came through that smash-up with our scalps."

There was one window in the room. Matt had passed to it and was making an examination. The glass was broken out of the sash, and the boards nailed to the outside of the casing were loose. He pushed two of the boards off, leaving a gap through which he and his chum could easily crawl.

"If we'd done this in the first place, Joe," said he, "we might have picked up the mariner's trail before he had got too far away."

"Too late now. It was our luck to get into the only room in the 'dobe, I reckon, that had a good door and a usable lock."

"Well," returned Matt, "let's get out and hunt up the mandarin. I hope he won't make 'way with himself while we're moseying around in this part of the woods."

The boys climbed through the window and the gap in the boards, and Matt made a casual survey of the house's vicinity. Of course the sailor was gone, and had left no clue as to the direction of his flight.

Setting their faces in the direction of the road, the boys started off briskly on their return to the wrecked car.

"There's one thing you didn't do, pard," remarked McGlory, while they were on their way through the timber.

"What's that?"

"Why, you didn't lisp a word to the mandarin about that note you took from the Hottentot's cap. Maybe, if the Chinaman knew about that, he'd quit thinking of doing the polite and courteous thing for the regent."

"I had intended telling Tsan Ti about the note," returned Matt, struck by the illuminating suggestion, "but I hadn't time. I'll put it up to Tsan Ti, though, the first thing after we meet him again."

"I've got the yellow string. If he has to make the happy dispatch with that, then I've blocked his game for a while. I don't know much about the etiquette of this yellow-cord _game_. Do you?"

"No."

"Well, leaving that out of the discussion for now, here's another point. Do you reckon old One Eye has found out, yet, how you juggled the notes on him?"

"I can't see as that makes much difference," answered Matt.

"He left us in a hurry, there at that stone house. If he'd known we had the note, why didn't he stop and palaver about it?"

"We were two against him, and he was in too much of a hurry."

"Why didn't he use the glass balls and take the note away from us while we were down and out?"

"Probably his supply of glass balls is running low."

"That note is to be shown to the man in Purling, and the man in Purling is then to show the bearer of the note where this Grattan is. Now----"

"That's a chance for us to find Grattan," cut in Matt.

"You're planning on that, are you? Sufferin' trouble! If it wouldn't be actin' more like a hired man than a pard, I'd go on a strike."

"We're onto this mandarin's business now, Joe," said Matt, "and we ought to see it through to a finish."

"It'll be our finish, I reckon."

At this moment they stepped out onto the road close to the car. The machine was a charred and twisted wreck, and fit only for the junk heap. Matt looked around for Tsan Ti, but he was nowhere in evidence.

"Vanished again!" exclaimed McGlory.

Matt threw back his head and shouted the mandarin's name at the top of his voice. No answer was returned, but the echoes of the call had hardly died away before they were taken up by the humming of another motor, and a little runabout came whirling down the road and brought up at the side of the wrecked car.

Two men were in the runabout, and one of the men was in a tremendously bad humor. The angry individual jumped from the runabout and peered at the number on the smoking board at the rear of the chassis.

"It was my car, all right!" he cried. "And look at it! Great Scott, just look at it! Total loss, and only a fat chink to look to for damages. Oh, I'm s, t, u, n, g to the queen's taste, all right. Who're you?" he demanded, whirling suddenly on the boys.

Matt told him.

"You're from up the mountain, are you?" inquired Matt.

"Where else?" replied the other crossly. "What's become of the chink that hired this car? Do you know?"

"Probably he's gone back to the hotel."

"Oh, probably," was the sarcastic retort; "yes, probably! I've got money that says he's sloped for good. Look here. They say there were two fellows in the car with the chink when it left the Mountain House. Are you the fellows?"

"Yes."

"Then, by jing, I'll hold _you_. Twenty-five hundred is what I want, and I want it quick."

"Oh, rats!" grunted the man in the runabout. "I'll bet those fellows couldn't rake up twenty-five hundred cents. Quit foolin', Jackson, and let's go back."

Matt and McGlory, after their recent experiences in the collision and while chasing the sailor, were most assuredly not looking their best. But they could have drawn a draft on Chicago for twenty-five hundred dollars and had it honored--had they been so minded.

"Oh, say moo and chase yourself!" cried McGlory. "You rented the car to the Chinaman; you didn't rent it to us."

"I'm going to hold you, anyhow," declared the man called Jackson.

"You'll have a good time trying it," retorted the cowboy truculently.

Jackson stepped toward McGlory.

"Don't you get gay with me," he shouted. "I'm not going to lose a twenty-five hundred dollar car and not make somebody smart for it. I told the chink that was what the car was worth."

"I know something about cars," put in Matt mildly, "and this one is out of date--four years old, if it's a day. If it had been a modern car, with the gasoline tank in the right place, it would never have caught fire, and you could have saved something out of the wreck. The proper feed is by gravity, and the right place for the tank is under the seat----"

"Oh, you!" sneered Jackson, "what do you know about cars?"

"He can forget more in a minute about these chug wagons," bristled McGlory, "than you know in a year. Put that in your brier and whiff it. This fellow's Motor Matt, motor expert, late of Burton's Big Consolidated Shows, where he's been exhibiting the Traquair aëroplane. Now bear down on your soft pedal, will you?"

"Thunder!" breathed the man in the runabout.

"Is--is that a fact?" queried Jackson, visibly impressed.

"It's a fact," said Matt, "but it needn't make any difference in this case. That car of yours, Jackson, would have been dear at a thousand dollars. You'll get every cent the car is worth, too. The Chinaman who hired it is a mandarin. He's in this country on private business. He has tea plantations, rice fields, and money in the bank till you can't rest. Now, stop worrying about the damages and give my chum and me a lift up the hill. We'll find Tsan Ti at the Kaaterskill. That's where he's been staying for a week or two."

Jackson was mollified.

"Of course," said he, "I don't want to be rough with anybody, but you understand how it is. This country is hard on cars, and I have to charge good prices and be sure the cars are hired by men who can put up for them if they go over a cliff or meet with any other kind of a wreck. I'm obliged to you for your information about Tsan Ti. He's been a good deal of a conundrum at the Kaaterskill since he's put up there. A man, riding up from below, passed a couple of Chinamen chin-chinning beside this wreck, and he brought word to me. That's how Jim and I happened to come down."

"You say the man from below passed _two_ Chinamen talking near the car?" queried Matt, with a surprised glance at McGlory.

"That's what he said."

"There was only the mandarin in the car when we had the smash," said Matt. "Where could that other one have come from?"

McGlory said nothing, but his face was full of things he might have said--doubts of the mandarin, of course, and vague suspicions of double dealing.

Jim backed the runabout around, and Matt and McGlory crowded into it. There was a hard climb up the hill, overloaded as the runabout was, but finally the Mountain House was passed and the other hotel reached.

The boys, in their tattered garments, aroused considerable curiosity among the hotel guests as they crossed the colonnaded porches and made their way into the office. They inquired for Tsan Ti, and bellboys were sent to the Chinaman's room and around the porches and grounds, calling his name.

But he wasn't to be found.

"Up a stump some more," growled McGlory, "and all because that jade-stone amulet got overheated and caused the mandarin to look for trouble. Oh, blazes! _When_ will we ever acquire a proper amount of horse sense for a couple of our size? You couldn't expect much more of me, Matt, but--well, pard, I'm surprised at _you_."