Chapter IV: Bunce Has a Plan

"Avast, there!" gurgled Bunce, half choked, trying to pull the cowboy's hands from his throat.

The green patch was over his left eye, and the right eye gleamed glassily in the electric light.

Matt was as much surprised at Bunce's appearance as was McGlory, but he held his temper better in hand. The cowboy, profoundly disgusted with the trend of recent events, showed a disposition to take it out of the sailor.

Had Bunce been even the half of an able seaman he would have given McGlory a hard scramble, but he seemed a wizened, infirm old salt, although he had proved active enough during the experiences the motor boys had already had with him.

"Don't strangle him, Joe!" called Matt. "Take your hands from his throat and grab his arm. He came here openly, and he must have known we were here. Judging from that, I should say that his intentions are peaceable."

"Ask him," gritted McGlory, "why he doesn't change eyes with the patch. Let's get to the bottom of this moving-picture business, too. We can have a little heart-to-heart talk, I reckon, and find out a few things before we turn the old webfoot over to the police."

"Right you are, my blood," gasped the half-suffocated Bunce, as the cowboy dropped his hands to his arm and dragged him down into a chair, "a heart-to-heart talk's the thing. Didn't I bear away for this place for nothin' else than to fall afoul o' ye? Ay, ay, that was the way of it, but split me through if I ever expected such treatment as this what I'm a-gettin'. Motor Matt's the lad, says I to myself, to fill the bill for Bunce, so I trips anchor an' slants away, only to be laid holt of like I was a reg'lar skull-and-crossbones, walk-the-plank pirate, with the Jolly Roger at the peak."

"Oh, put a crimp on that sort of talk," growled McGlory. "Sufferin' freebooters! If you're anything better than a pirate, I'd like to have you tell me."

"So, ho!" and Bunce's eye glittered wrathfully, "if I had a cutlass, my fine buck, I'd slit ye like a herrin' for that. I'm a fair-weather sort of man, an' I hates a squall, but stir up nasty weather an' then give me somethin' to fight with, an' I'm a bit of a handful. Nigh Pangool, on the south coast o' Java, I laid out a hull boat's crew with my fists alone, once, not so many years back. That was when I was mate o' the brig _Hottentot_, as fine a two-sticker as ever shoved nose into the South Seas--reg'lar bucko mate, I was, an' a main hard man when roused."

At the time the Eye of Buddha was recovered, Bunce had made his escape with Grattan; and he had been equally guilty, with Grattan, in the theft of the ruby from the Honam joss house. That the sailor should have shown himself at all, in those parts, was a wonder; and that he should have shown himself to Matt and McGlory, who knew of his evil deeds, was a puzzle past working out.

"You say you came here to see me?" inquired Matt.

"Ay, ay, my hearty," answered Bunce. "Motor Matt, says I to myself, is the lad to fill the bill for me, an' I luffed into the wind an' bore down for Catskill. Here I am, an' here's you, an' if I blow the gaff a bit that's my business, ain't it? But take me to the cabin; what I has to say is between us an' the mainmast with no other ears to get a sizing of it."

McGlory glared at Bunce as though he would have liked to bore into him with his eyes and see what he had at the back of his head.

"If you're trying to play double with us, you gangle-legged old hide rack," he threatened, "you'll live to wish you'd thought twice before you did it."

"Now, burn me," snorted Bunce, "d'ye take me for a dog fish? By the seven holy spritsails, I'm as good a man as you, an' ye'll l'arn----"

"Enough of that, Bunce," broke in Matt sharply, getting up from his chair. "You want to say something to us in private, and I'm going to give you the chance. Come after me; you trail along behind him, Joe," and, with that, Matt went into the hotel and up the stairs to the room jointly occupied by himself and McGlory.

At the door, Matt pushed a button that turned on the lights. As soon as McGlory and Bunce were in the room, the door was locked and Matt took charge of the key.

"That's the stuff, pard," approved McGlory, with great satisfaction. "If the old tinhorn don't spout to please us, we can phone the office for a policeman."

"Ye're not sending me to the brig this trip, mates," spoke up Bunce. "'Cos why? 'Cos in fillin' the bill for me, ye're givin' the mandarin a leg up out of a purty bad hole."

"What have you got to tell us?" inquired Matt curtly. "Out with it, Bunce."

"When ye last seen me, my lad," said Bunce, "I was sailin' in convoy with Philo Grattan. But he's doin' things I don't approve of, not any ways. It was all right to put our helm up an' bear down on a chink joss house to lift the Eye o' Buddha, an' it was all right, too, when ye helped the big high boy get the ruby back. That was all in the game, an' we'd ought to've made the most of it. But not Philo Grattan. D'ye know what he's layin' to do? Nothin' more, on my soul, than to strangle Tsan Ti with a yellow cord an' take the ruby away from him. My eye, mates, but Grattan's a clever hand at overhauling his locker for a game like that. The boss of the Chinee Empire sends these yellow cords to the chinks he don't like an' don't want around. When the cords come to hand, then the chinks receivin' thereof uses them to choke out their lives. Tsan Ti is found, dead as a mackerel, with the yellow cord twisted into his fat neck. Eye o' Buddha is missin' from his clothes. What's the answer? Why, that Tsan Ti lost the ruby, an' used the cord sent him from the home country. That'll seem plain as a burgee flyin' from the gaff o' one o' these fresh-water yachts. Won't it, now?"

Matt knew that Tsan Ti had received the yellow cord from China, and that he had been allowed two weeks in which either to find the stolen ruby or to use the cord. Of course, the ruby had been recovered, and there was no necessity for using the hideous cord; but, if he was found strangled, it would have seemed as though he himself had committed the deed in compliance with orders from the Chinese regent.

Bunce may have been romancing, but there was a little plausibility back of his words.

"Where is Grattan?" demanded Matt.

"In these here hills, shipmate," replied Bunce.

"Tsan Ti isn't in the Catskills!"

"No more he ain't, which I grant ye offhand an' freely, but supposin' he's in Noo York, held a pris'ner in a beach comber's joint in Front Street? An' supposin', furthermore, this same beach comber is a mate o' Grattan's, an' waitin' only for Grattan to come afore he makes Tsan Ti peg out? Put that in your pipe an' smoke it careful."

"You mean to say that Tsan Ti is a prisoner in New York--a prisoner of a confederate of Grattan's?"

"That's gospel truth! It happened recent--no longer ago than early mornin'. I bore the word to the beach comber in a letter of hand from Philo, an' the beach comber met me in a snug harbor on the front where sailormen are regularly hocused an' shipped for all parts. I don't know where the beach comber's place is, not me, but I did get him topping the boom an' he reported the whole matter entire. However Tsan Ti fell into the net is a notch above my understandin', but there he is, hard an' fast, an' when I'd done with the beach comber I took the train for Catskill to find Grattan an' tell him what's been pulled off."

Bunce was a trifle hard to follow.

"Let's see if I've got this right," said Matt, "When you and Grattan escaped from the officers, at the time the ruby was recovered, you hid yourselves away among the Catskills?"

"Ay, so we did!"

"And then Grattan gave you a letter to some man in New York and you carried it personally?"

"Personally, that's the word. I carried it personally."

"And this man in New York entrapped the mandarin and is holding him a prisoner until he can hear what Grattan wants done?"

"Ye've got the proper bearin's, an' no mistake."

"And you came back on the train to tell Grattan?"

Bunce nodded, and pulled at his fringe of whiskers.

"Then, why didn't you go and tell Grattan," asked Matt, "instead of coming and telling me?"

"I'm no blessed cut-an'-slash pirate," protested Bunce. "So long as the ruby was to be come by without any stranglin', I was willin' to bear a bob an' do my share; an' while mebby there ain't anythin' morilly wrong in chokin' the breath out of a heathen Chinee, yet they'll bowse a man up to the yardarm for doin' the same. Mates, on the ride back to the Catskills I overhauled the hull matter, an' I makes up my mind I'd sailed in company with Grattan as long as 'twas safe. If I can save the mandarin, I thinks to myself, mebby Motor Matt'll play square with me an' let me off for what I done in helpin' lift the ruby. If so be he thinks that way, says I to myself further, then he's the one to fill the bill for Bunce. So, instid o' slantin' for the cove where the motor car is hid away, I 'bouts ship an' lays a course for this hotel."

"What's your plan, Bunce?" queried Matt.

"Easy, does it; simple as a granny's knot. You kiss the Book that I'm free as soon's I do my part, then I takes you to where Grattan is, an' you lays him by the heels--just us three in it an' not a man Jack else. The beach comber don't do a thing to Tsan Ti till he hears from Grattan; an' how'll he ever hear from Grattan if he's safe in irons in some jail in these hills? That's my plan, an' you take it or leave it. If ye don't follow the course I've laid, then Grattan gets the ruby back, an' the mandarin's life along with it. If ye think I'm talkin' crooked, an' put the lashings on me an' hand me over to the police, then not a soul'll ever know where Grattan's hid, an' he'll clear out an' get to Noo York whether I see him or not--but Tsan Ti'll be for Davy Jones' locker, no matter what ye try to do to prevent it. I've said my say an' eased my mind; now it's you for it."

With that, Bunce calmly drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket and nibbled at one corner reflectively.