Chapter III: Motor Matt--Trustee

Matt and McGlory had seen the Eye of Buddha, and they were not slow in recognizing it. But the bewildering events of the evening were crowned by this arrival of the ruby, by express, consigned to Motor Matt. By all the laws of reasoning and logic, the gem, worth a king's ransom, should at that moment have been in the possession of Tsan Ti, en route to the Flowery Kingdom.

"Oh, tell--me--about this!" stuttered McGlory.

Matt picked the ruby up in his fingers and held it in the palm of his hand. Apparently he was loath to credit the evidence of his senses. From every angle he surveyed the glittering gem.

"Wouldn't this rattle you?" he murmured, peering at his chum.

"Rattle me!" exploded McGlory. "Why, pard, it leaves me high and dry--stranded--gasping like a fish. Tsan Ti must be locoed! At last accounts, he was in a flutter to get that ruby back to the Honam joss house and replace it in the idol's head, where it belongs. What came over the mandarin to box it up and ship it to you? I'm fair dazed, and no mistake. This cuts the ground right out from under me."

Matt, with a hasty look around, dropped the ruby into his pocket; then he pulled out some more of the wadding and discovered, in the bottom of the box, a folded sheet of white paper.

"Here's a letter," said he. "This will explain why the ruby was sent to me, I guess."

"What good's an explanation?" grunted the cowboy. "I wouldn't be tangled up with that thing for a mint of money. Sufferin' centipedes! It's a regular hoodoo, and hands a fellow a hard-luck knock every time he turns around. What's in the letter, anyway? If it's from Tsan Ti, I'll bet his paper talk is heavy with big words and all kinds of Class A 'con' lingo. Read it, do. I can't tell how nervous you make me hanging fire."

"It's from Tsan Ti, all right," said Matt, "and is dated New York."

"New York! Why, he was hitting nothing but high places in the direction of 'Frisco, when he left here. How, in the name of all his ten thousand demons of misfortune, does he happen to be in New York?"

"Listen," answered Matt, and began to read.

"'Esteemed and illustrious youth, whose never-to-be-forgotten
services to me shine like letters of gold on a tablet of silver:
Behold----'"

"Oh, the gush!" growled McGlory.

"'Behold,'" continued Matt, "'I send you the Eye of Buddha, the
priceless jewel which belongs in the temple of Hai-chwang-sze, in my
beloved Canton. You ask, of your perplexity, why is the jewel sent
to you? and I reply, for the security's sake. Upon my trail comes
Grattan, of the evil heart, weaving his plans for recovering the
costly gem. I fear to keep it about me, and so I send to you asking
that you remain with it in the Catskill Mountains until such time as
I may come to you and receive it from your hands. This will be when
the scoundrel Grattan is safely beheaded, or in prison, and clear of
my way for all time. I turn to you of my perfect trust, and I adjure
you, by the five hundred gods, not to let the ruby get for one moment
out of your possession. Leave it nowhere, keep it by you always,
either sleeping or walking, and deliver it to no one except to me,
who, at the right time, will come and request it of you in my own
person. Will it be an insult to offer you one thousand silver dollars
and expense money for consummating this task? I commend you to the
good graces of the supernal ones whose years are ten thousand times
ten thousand!

"'TSAN TI, of the Red Button.'"

The reading finished, McGlory eased himself of a sputtering groan.

"Loaded up!" he exclaimed. "You and I, pard, just at the time we thought we were rid of Tsan Ti and Buddha's Eye for good, find the thing shouldered onto us again, and trouble staring us in the face! Why didn't the mandarin deposit the ruby in some bank, or safe-deposit vault? Better still, if Grattan was on his trail, why didn't he have the express company take it to San Francisco for him instead of sending it to you, at Catskill? He knows less, that Tsan Ti, than any other heathen on top of earth. In order to keep himself out of trouble he hands us the Eye of Buddha, and switches the responsibility to us. Wouldn't that rattle your spurs?"

McGlory was profoundly disgusted.

"I reckon," he went on, "that this sidetracks us, eh? The big town is cut out of our reckoning until the mandarin shows up and claims the ruby. He may do that to-morrow, or next week, or next month--and, meanwhile, here we are, kicking our heels in this humdrum, back-number, two-by-twice town on the Hudson! Say, pard, I'd like to fight--and I'd just as soon take a fall out of that pesky mandarin as any one else."

"He offers us a thousand dollars and expenses," said Matt. "Tsan Ti wants to do the right thing, Joe."

"A million dollars and expenses won't pay us for hanging onto that ruby. It's a hoodoo, and you know that as well as I do, pard. We can expect things to happen right from this minute. Say, put it somewhere where it'll be safe! Put it in the hotel safe, or in a bank, or any place. Pass the risk along."

"Tsan Ti expressly stipulates that I am to keep the ruby about me," demurred Matt.

"What of that?" snorted McGlory. "Are you working for Tsan Ti? Are you bound to do what he tells you to? What business is it of his if we choose to show a little sense and get some one else to take charge of the ruby? The mandarin's an old mutton-head! If he wasn't he'd know better than to send the Eye of Buddha to us. And in a common express package, at that. What value did he put on it?"

McGlory picked up the wrapper that had covered the box and looked over the address side.

"No value at all!" he exclaimed. "Either he didn't think of that, or else he didn't want to pay for the extra valuation. If there had been a railroad wreck, and the ruby had been lost, our excellent mandarin would have collected just fifty plunks from the express company--and I reckon the Eye of Buddha is worth fifty thousand if it's worth a cent."

"Sometimes," said Matt reflectively, "it's safer to trust to luck than to put such a terrific value on a package that's to be carried by express."

"Well," grunted McGlory, "I don't like his blooming Oriental way of doing business, and that shot goes as it lays. I'll tell you what we can do," he added, brightening.

"What?"

"We can jump aboard that New York boat and tote the ruby back to New York; then we can hunt up Tsan Ti and return the thing to him and tell him not any--that we have done as much for him as we're going to. Where's his letter sent from? What's the name of the hotel?"

In his eagerness, McGlory snatched the letter from Matt's knee and began looking it over.

"There's no address," said Matt.

"Tsan Ti may be in Chinatown," went on McGlory. "Such a big high boy couldn't get lost in the shuffle around Pell and Doyer Streets. Let's go on by that boat and take our chances locating him!"

"No," and Matt shook his head decidedly, "that's a move we can't make, Joe. I'm no more in love with this piece of work than you are, but we're in for it, and there's no way to dodge. Tsan Ti has unloaded the ruby upon us and we've got to stand for it."

"But we're responsible----"

"Of course, up to a certain point. If the stone should be taken away from us, though, Tsan Ti couldn't hold us responsible. We didn't ask for the job of looking after it, and we don't want the job, but we're doing what we can, you see, because there's no other way out of it."

"You could stow it away in a safer place than your pocket," grumbled McGlory.

"In that event," returned Matt, "we might be responsible. The thing for us to do is to follow out our instructions to the letter. If anything happens to the Eye of Buddha then it's the mandarin himself who's responsible."

"And we're to hang out in the Catskill Mountains until Tsan Ti comes for the ruby!" mused McGlory, in an angry undertone; "and he's not going to come until Grattan is 'beheaded' or clapped into jail. We're liable to have a long wait. Of all the tinhorns I ever saw, or heard of, that Grattan is the sharpest of the lot. Fine job this red-button heathen has put onto us!"

Matt disliked the work of taking care of the valuable gem, and he would have shirked the responsibility if he could have done so, but there was no way in which this could be brought about. He and Joe would have to stay in the Catskills, for a while anyway, and wait for Tsan Ti to present himself. Meanwhile, the trip to New York would have to be postponed.

More to soothe his friend than as an expression of his own feelings, the king of the motor boys began taking a pleasanter view of the situation.

"We know, pard," said he, "that Tsan Ti is a man of his word. When he says he'll do anything, he does it. He'll come for the ruby, and I think he's clever enough to fool Grattan, and we know he'll pay us a thousand dollars. That money will come in handy while we're in New York."

"If we ever get there," growled the cowboy. "We may get into so much trouble on account of that Eye of Buddha that we'll be laid up in the hospital when Tsan Ti presents himself in these parts."

Matt laughed.

"You're so anxious to see the sights in the big town, Joe," he observed, "that it's the delay, more than anything else, that's bothering you."

"When I get started for anywhere," answered McGlory, "a bee line and the keen jump is my motto. But, so long as we have anything to do with Tsan Ti, we never know what's going to happen. I wish the squinch-eyed heathen would leave us alone."

Just then a form rounded the front of the hotel, gained the steps leading up to the porch, and climbed to a place in front of the motor boys.

McGlory lifted his eyes. The moment they rested on the form, and realization of who it was had flashed through his brain, he jumped for the man and grabbed him with both hands.

"Bunce!" he whooped. "I told you things would begin to happen, pard, and right here is where they start!"

Then, with considerable violence, McGlory pushed the old sailor against one of the porch posts, and held him there, squirming.