Chapter II: The Green Patch

Distracted by their mental speculations, the motor boys presently found themselves back on the porch of their hotel, occupying the same chairs they had left a little while before. Once more Matt was looking down on the river lights, coming and going across the broad stream like so many fireflies.

"Am I locoed, I wonder?" inquired McGlory, as though speaking to himself. "Did I see that moving picture, with Grattan and Bunce in it and stealing the 'Eye of Buddha,' or didn't I?"

"You saw the picture, Joe," returned Matt, "and so did I."

"I reckon I did; and jumpin' tarantulas, how it got on my nerves! But how does it happen that the picture is being shown like it is? Grattan told you, Matt, just how the ruby was stolen from the Honam joss house by himself and Bunce; he told you how he went to Egypt after the glass balls that were more than two thousand years old, and had been dug up at Karnak. He didn't get the balls from Karnak just exactly in the way the picture shows it, but he did steal the ruby in exactly the same fashion those films brought the tinhorn trick under our eyes. Not only that, but Grattan hid the ruby in the head of his cane. Right up to that point the whole game is a dead ringer for the yarn Grattan batted up to you. The rest of the pictures are pure fake. It was you who helped recover 'Buddha's Eye,' and it happened right here in the Catskill Mountains, near the village of Purling, and not in China. But it was the smashing of the head of the cane that revealed the ruby."[A]

[A] The thrilling adventures of the motor boys in recovering the Eye of Buddha were set forth in No. 30, Motor Stories.

"We know," said Matt, his mind recovering from the shock occasioned by the strange series of pictures so suddenly sprung upon him and McGlory, "we know, pard, that Grattan was in the motion-picture business at the time he conceived the idea of stealing the ruby. He was traveling all over the world with his camera apparatus. Probably his line of work has something to do with his putting the robbery into the form we have just seen it."

"But why should Grattan want to publish his criminal work all over the country in moving pictures? And he put himself into the pictures, too--and that old sea dog, Bunce."

"That part of it is too many for me, Joe," answered Matt. "However, I can't see as the moving pictures of the robbery cut much figure now. The mandarin, Tsan Ti, has recovered the ruby, and is on his way to San Francisco to take ship for China. Grattan and Bunce made their escape, and are probably getting out of the country, or into parts unknown, as rapidly as they can. So far as we are concerned, the incident is closed. But it was certainly a startler to come face to face with a set of pictures like those--and so unexpectedly."

"First nickelodeon we struck, and the first picture shoved through the lantern," muttered the cowboy.

"Are you positive, Joe," went on Matt, "that the two thieves who figured in the picture were really Grattan and Bunce?"

"It's a cinch!" declared McGlory. "There can't be any mistake. I never saw a clearer set of pictures, and I'd know Grattan and Bunce anywhere--could pick 'em out of a thousand."

"That's the way it looked to me, and yet there's one point I can't understand. It's a point that doesn't agree with your assertion that Bunce was really in the picture."

"What point is that?"

"Why, it has to do with the green patch Bunce wears over his eye."

"The patch was in the picture, all right."

"Sure it was! But which of Bunce's eyes did it cover?"

"The right eye!"

"Exactly! The green patch was over Bunce's right eye, in the picture of the robbery, which we just saw; but when we had our several encounters with Bunce, a few days ago, the patch was over the mariner's left eye."

McGlory straightened up in his chair and stared at his chum through the electric light that shone over them from the porch ceiling.

"Glory to glory and all hands round!" he exclaimed. "You're right, pard. When we were trotting that heat with Bunce, here in the Catskills, it was his left eye that was gone. Now, in the picture, it's his right eye. How do you explain that?"

"The explanation seems easy enough," answered Matt. "Bunce must have two good eyes, and he simply covers up one for the purpose of disguise. Either that, or else some one represented him when the moving pictures were taken, and got the patch over the wrong eye."

"What good is a green patch as a disguise, anyway?" demanded McGlory.

"Give it up. The difference in the position of the patch merely led me to infer that Bunce might not have really been in that moving picture. And if Bunce wasn't in it, then it's possible that Grattan wasn't in it, either. Two men might have been made up to represent the two thieves. I can't think it possible that Grattan and Bunce, as you said a moment ago, should want to publish their crime throughout the country by means of these moving pictures. The films are rented everywhere, and travel from place to place."

McGlory heaved a long breath.

"Well, anyhow, I don't want to bother myself any more with the Eye of Buddha," said he. "It's a hoodoo, and I never went through such a lot of close shaves, or such a series of rapid-fire events, as when we were helping Tsan Ti, the mandarin, recover the ruby. Let's forget about it. We can't understand how those pictures came to be shown, and we're completely at sea regarding the green patch. But it's nothing to us, any more. We're for New York by the night boat, and then it'll be 'Up the river or down the bay, over to Coney or Rockaway' for the motor boys. Sufferin' cat naps! A spell of pleasure in the metro-polus is all that brought me East with you, anyhow. It's us for the big town, and with you along to see that no one sells me a gold brick, I reckon I'll be able to pan out a good time."

The prospect of a week or two in New York, with a little rest and a little motoring, was also appealing powerfully to Matt. He had not been in the big town for some time, and he longed to renew his acquaintance with its many "sights" and experiences.

"We'll be there in the morning, Joe," Matt answered. "As you say, we need not bother our heads any longer about the Eye of Buddha, or Grattan, or Bunce, or Tsan Ti. We'll take our toll of enjoyment out of Manhattan Isle, and we'll forget there ever was such a thing as the big ruby."

"You don't intend to think of business at all while you're there, eh?"

"No. We'll just knock around for a couple of weeks and enjoy ourselves. Of course we'll be more or less among the motors--I couldn't be happy myself if we weren't--and then, when we've had enough of that, I want to take a run up to my old home in the Berkshire Hills."

Great Barrington had been very much in Motor Matt's mind for several weeks. He felt a desire to go back to the old place, and revisit the scenes of his earlier life. There was a mystery concerning his parents which had never been solved. He did not have any idea that a return to Great Barrington would settle that problem, but, nevertheless, it had something to do with luring him in the direction of the Berkshires.

"Speak to me about that!" murmured McGlory. "You've always been a good deal of a riddle to me, pard. You've never let out much about your early life, and I come from a country where it's a signal for fireworks if you press a man too closely about his past, so I've just taken you as I picked you up in 'Frisco, and let it go at that. But there are a few things I'd like to know, just the same."

"I'll tell you about them sometime, Joe," Matt answered. "Just now, though, I'm not in the mood. When we're ready to start for the Berkshires----"

He paused. The night clerk of the hotel had come out on the porch and was standing at his elbow, a small package in his hand.

"Motor Matt," said he, in a voice of concern, "here's something that came for you by express, about five-thirty in the afternoon. It's been lying in the safe ever since. The day clerk couldn't find you, when the package came, so he receipted for it. He didn't tell me anything about it, when I went on duty, and he just happened to remember and to telephone down from his room. I'm sorry about the delay."

"We're taking the ten-o'clock boat for New York," spoke up McGlory. "It would have been a nice layout if we'd got away and left that package behind."

"I'm mighty sorry, but it's not my fault."

"Well," answered Matt, taking the package, "no great harm has been done. It's an hour and a half, yet, before the New York boat gets here, and I have the package."

The clerk went back into the hotel and Matt examined the package under the light.

"What do you reckon it is, pard?" queried McGlory curiously.

"You can give as good a guess as I can, Joe," Matt answered. "I'm not expecting anybody to send me anything. It's addressed plainly enough to Motor Matt, Catskill, New York, in care of this hotel."

"And covered with red sealing wax," added McGlory. "Rip off the cover and let's see what's on the inside. Sufferin' tenterhooks! Haven't you got any curiosity?"

Matt cut the cord that bound the package and took off the wrapper. A small wooden box was disclosed, bound with another cord.

The box was opened, and seemed to be filled with cotton wadding. Resting the box on his knees, Matt proceeded to remove the wadding. Then he fell back in his chair with an astounded exclamation.

A round object, glimmering in the rays of the electric light like a splash of blood against the cotton, lay under the amazed eyes of the motor boys.

"Buddha's Eye!" whispered McGlory.

Around the end of the veranda, in the wavering shadows, a face had pushed itself above the veranda railing--a face topped with a sailor cap and fringed with "mutton-chop" whiskers--a face with a green patch over one eye.