A TIGHT CORNER.
It was a characteristic of Motor Matt that he never became "rattled."
A clear head and steady nerves were absolutely essential in his chosen
career. To these he added a quick and sure judgment.
"Surprised, are you?" asked Grattan, with a choppy laugh.
"Well, yes, in a way," replied Matt coolly.
"I wonder if you know what you're up against?"
"You have a stolen ruby, called the Eye of Buddha, and Goldstein is
here to buy it."
"My cracious!" gasped the Jew, throwing up his hands.
There was no doubting his surprise, so Matt knew that he, at least, was
not in the plot.
"Close your face, Goldstein," scowled Grattan. "This business isn't
going to bother you. Take a seat, Motor Matt," he added. "We'll have a
little chin-chin before we get busy."
There was an empty bench along the end wall. Matt walked over to it and
seated himself, glad that there was to be a "chin-chin." This meant
delay, and would give time for McGlory to arrive with reënforcements.
"I don't understand what's der matter," gulped Goldstein, pressing back
against the wall and hugging his satchel in his arms. "I don't like der
looks of things, no."
"You can't help the looks of things," snapped Grattan, "and you'll
understand the situation a lot better before you get away from this
sugar camp. Sit down."
There was a three-legged stool close to the Jew, and he dropped down on
it in a state of semi-collapse. His eyes passed to Pryne, who had drawn
a revolver and was standing in front of the door. Undoubtedly Goldstein
had a lot of money in his satchel with which to pay for the ruby, so it
is small wonder he was worried upon finding himself a participator in
such a scene.
"I thought der young feller was Bunce!" he exclaimed, moistening his
dry lips with his tongue.
"Put a stopper on your jaw-tackle!" yelled the sailor. "That's the line
we've run out to you for now, and you'll lay to it."
The Jew swallowed hard on a lump in his throat and fell limply against
the wall behind him.
Goldstein had even more to lose as the outcome of that desperate
situation than had Matt, but the king of the motor boys saw at a glance
that he was absolutely useless so far as resistance was concerned.
Grattan dropped his suspended foot on the floor and turned to Pryne.
"Did any one come with Motor Matt, Pryne?" he inquired.
"Two fellers come with him," was the response. "They got to Purling in
a automobile."
"Who were those fellows, Motor Matt?" demanded Grattan, shooting a
sharp glance at the young motorist.
"The driver of the car, from Catskill Landing," said Matt, "and my
chum, Joe McGlory."
"Why did you leave them in Purling?"
"The driver had to stay to look after the car, and I didn't think it
was necessary to bring McGlory along for a bodyguard."
Grattan threw back his head and peered at Matt through half-closed eyes.
"You're a cool one," he remarked. "Why were you coming here to see me?"
"I wanted to get the ruby."
Bunce roared. Grattan commanded silence sharply, and the sailor's
merriment ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
"Did you think," went on Grattan, "that you could, single-handed, take
the ruby from me by force?"
Matt was silent.
"Or did you think you could talk me out of it?"
"I hadn't much of an idea what I could do," said Matt. "It was just
barely possible you'd be generous enough, when you learned the
circumstances, to give or sell the Eye of Buddha to Tsan Ti."
Grattan curbed the old sailor's fresh inclination to laugh with a quick
look.
"What are the circumstances?" he queried.
"Tsan Ti has received the yellow cord. If he does not recover the
idol's eye in two weeks, he must destroy himself."
"Young man," said Grattan, "I have been two years planning to get my
clutches on the Eye of Buddha. I have haunted Canton, feasted my eyes
upon that priceless splash of red in the forehead of the idol in the
Honam Joss House until the itch to possess it fairly drove me mad. But
the temple was too well guarded, the priests too many, and the walls
too high. It was only when I learned of the balls of Ptah and their
powers that the feat looked at all feasible. In order to see these
balls of Ptah for myself, I made the long journey from Hongkong to the
ruins of Karnak on the Nile."
Taking the buckthorn cane under his arm, Grattan stepped across the
room to a table near the bench where Bunce was sitting. On the table
rested a small box with a strap handle. Grattan opened the lid of the
box, and from a nest of cotton picked one of the shimmering glass
balls. He handled the ball gently, and a glow came into his eyes as he
held it up.
"A quantity of these balls," he proceeded, "were unearthed a year ago
from among the ruins of Karnak. They are of Egyptian glass, thousands
of years old, and each of the big beads has blown into its surface
the _praenomen_ of Hatasu, a queen who is conjectured to have lived
more than fourteen hundred years before our era. A party of workmen
discovered the balls, and chanced to break one of them." Grattan
paused, turning the shimmering sphere around and around in his hand.
"All the workmen," he went on, "were thrown into an unconscious
condition, and it was in this manner that the peculiar properties of
the balls were discovered. Why they are called the balls of Ptah I
don't know, and what they contain that has such a peculiar effect on
living beings, no one has ever been able to discover. But I heard of
them, stole a dozen, and tried one on the museum guards in making my
escape. It answered the purpose," he went on dryly. "If it had not, I
would have been caught."
Almost reverently he replaced the ball in the cotton-lined case and
closed the lid. Returning to his bench, he resumed his original
position, sweeping an amused glance around him at the awed faces of
Goldstein, Pryne, and Matt.
"Armed with one of the balls of Ptah," he proceeded, "I picked up the
ancient mariner"--he nodded toward Bunce--"and we manufactured a silk
ladder twenty feet long, and weighted it at one end. Then, one day,
we repaired to the Honam Joss House at five in the afternoon. That
ball of Egyptian glass, crushed to fragments on the floor, overcame
the priests. Bunce and I protected our own faces with masks, equipped
with oxygen tubes reaching into small tanks of compressed air in our
pockets. To throw the weighted end of the ladder over the head of Ptah
took us possibly a minute; for me to climb the ladder and dig the ruby
from the idol's forehead consumed possibly five minutes; and for Bunce
and me to get out of the temple took five minutes more. We were safely
out of Canton when the storm broke."
Matt had listened to all this in supreme wonder. The audacity of the
undertaking caused his pulses to stir, but he wondered why Grattan
should recount such an exploit to him, and in the hearing of Pryne and
Goldstein.
"You know now," continued Grattan, "what the Eye of Buddha has cost me,
and you say it is just barely possible I would be generous enough to
yield the gem to Tsan Ti in order to save his life!"
"Or you might sell it to him," suggested Matt.
"I might, if he could pay what it is worth."
"Grattan," spoke up Goldstein with sudden fervor, "you have promised me
der first shance!"
"Keep still!" growled Grattan. "You'll get all the chance you want
before you leave here."
"The mandarin is a rich man," said Matt, who, of course, was parleying
merely to gain time.
"He has a little money with him, but that is all. Every plantation he
owns in China, every string of cash in his strong boxes is guarded by
the regent. If he does not recover the Eye of Buddha, the property
will be confiscated. And he can't touch a cent of his fortune until he
returns the ruby to its place in the idol's head. So, you see, your
friend, the mandarin of the red button, is in a bally hard fix. He
can't buy the ruby, and certainly I won't give it to him."
This was intensely interesting to Matt. He was listening, now, in a
casual way, for the approach of McGlory and his party, and he was
planning what he could do with the balls of Ptah in order to keep
Grattan from using them.
"You're a clever lad, Motor Matt," went on Grattan, "and I admire
clever people. You performed a neat trick when you removed that folded
note from Bunce's cap. It was a foolish place to keep such a thing, but
Bunce is a good deal of a fool. For instance, I reached the Catskill
Mountains with six of the balls of Ptah--the only ones of the kind to
be had--and the crack-brained sailor man stole two of them and threw
them away on you and your chum, gaining little and losing something
which might prove of priceless value to us."
"Now, shipmate," began Bunce, in a wheedling voice, "you don't get the
right splice on that piece of rope; you----"
"That'll do," said Grattan, waving his hand.
Bunce subsided. The power of Grattan over the sailor was absolute. It
was easy to see whose had been the plotting mind and the guiding hand
in the exploits of the two.
"You are sharp enough to wonder, I suppose," said Grattan, again
addressing Matt, "why I am going into these private details for your
benefit. The answer is simple. Our plans are laid to leave here
to-day. You can't stop us, no one can stop us. The balls of Ptah will
disarm all opposition, and the four of them will see us out of the
country with Goldstein's money."
"But if Goldstein has the Eye of Buddha," said Matt, "I will know it
and can prove it. He can't hold stolen property."
"Certainly he can't. Goldstein gets the ruby and we get Goldstein's
money. You have Goldstein arrested and prove in a court of law that he
bought the idol's eye from the original thieves. Then----"
A howl came from Goldstein.
"I von't buy, I von't buy! That is a skin game. I von't buy der stone."
"Oh, yes, you will," and, for the first time, a laugh came from
Grattan's lips. "You've brought the money and you'll buy before you
leave."
Then, for the first time, Goldstein understood the true meaning of the
situation. He flashed a wild look at Pryne and the revolver, and sank
back against the wall and groaned.