CHAPTER I. THE CAR THAT WOULDN’T BEHAVE.

“Sufferin’ whirligigs, Pard Matt! Look at that bubble wagon! Is it trying to turn a handspring, or ‘skin the cat,’ or climb that telephone pole? I reckon the longhorn up front don’t know how to run the thing. Either that, or else he’s ‘bug’ with a big ‘B.’”

“I should say it’s the car that’s ‘bug,’ Joe. The driver seems to be trying to control the machine in the proper manner, but it won’t be controlled. What’s your notion of it, Billy?”

“Hoodoo car, Matt. Look at the number of her—thirteen thirteen. Double hoodoo. You couldn’t expect no chug wagon with such a tag to behave anything else than disgraceful. Lo and behold you, if she don’t turn turtle in the ditch before she goes many more miles then my name’s not Billy Wells. Watch ’er; keep your eye on ’er an’ I’ll bet you see something.”

The three boys were driving along the Jericho Pike well toward Krug’s Corner—Matt King, Joe McGlory, and Billy Wells. Billy belonged with a New York garage from which the boys had secured the touring car they were using that morning. He was a living road map, this Billy, and could go anywhere up-state, or over Long Island, or in Jersey on the darkest night that ever fell, and he knew every minute just where he was.

Matt was doing the driving, and Billy sat beside him as guide, counselor, and friend. In the back of the machine was McGlory.

That was Thursday. Matt and his chum were heeding a summons that carried them toward the Malvern Country Club, near Hempstead. After transacting their business at the Country Club—they did not know what it was, but believed it would not take them long—they were planning to return to Krug’s Corner for their noon meal, and then back to Manhattan by Jackson Avenue and the Williamsburg Bridge. But plans are easily made, sometimes, and not so easily carried out.

The day was bright, the roads were good, and the motor boys were enjoying themselves. Well along the Jericho Pike they had come up with a white runabout, two seats in front and a deck behind, and the actions of this car aroused their curiosity to such an extent that Matt slowed down the big machine in order that he and those with him could follow and watch the performance.

There was only one passenger in the white car, and he was having his hands full.

The runabout would angle from one side of the road to the other, in apparent defiance of the way the steering wheel was held, and sometimes it would go its eccentric course slowly and sometimes with a rush—so far as those in the other car could see—without any change in the speed gear.

The driver of the runabout worked frantically to keep the machine where it ought to be, but the task was too much for him.

Once a telephone pole gave him a close shave, and[2] once his unmanageable car gave a sidewise lurch that almost hurled it into a machine going the other way.

“What’s the matter?” Matt hailed.

The man in the runabout looked around with a facial expression that was far from angelic.

“If I knew what was the matter with this confounded car,” he cried in exasperation, “do you think I’d be side-stepping all over the road the way I am?” Then, muttering to himself, he humped over the steering wheel again.

“He’s happy—I don’t think,” chuckled McGlory. “The car’s getting on his nerves.”

“A car like that would get on anybody’s nerves,” commented Billy. “The number’s enough to set mine on edge. Thirteen’s unlucky, no matter where you find it. That’s right. And when you get two thirteens bunched together, you’ve sure got a combination that points a car for the scrap heap. I wouldn’t hold down the cushions in that roadster for all the money in New York. No, sir, that I wouldn’t,” and Billy shook his head forebodingly.

“Oh, splash!” scoffed Matt. “When a car fools around like that, Billy, there’s something wrong with its internal apparatus.”

“Matt,” went on Billy solemnly, “I’ve seen cars that hadn’t a thing wrong with ’em, but they was just naturally crazy and never’d run right. Steer ’em straight, an’ they’d go crooked; point ’em crooked, an’ they’d go straight; throw on the reverse, an’ they’d go for’ard; give ’em the third speed an’ they’d crawl; give ’em the first an’ they’d tear away like lightnin’—and all the while, mind you, the engine was running as sweet as any engine you ever see. The Old Boy himself takes charge of some cars the moment they’re sold and in a customer’s hands. I’ve worked in a garage for five years, and I know.”

Matt laughed. McGlory laughed, too, but not so mirthfully. The cowboy had a little superstition in his make-up and Billy’s remarks had left a fleeting impression.

“Gammon, Billy, gammon,” said Matt. “If a car is built right, and works right, it is going to run right. That stands to reason.”

“A lot of things happen,” insisted Billy, “that don’t stand to reason. Now, take that runabout. The engine’s working fine—from the sound of it. Eh?”

Matt admitted that, so far as the hum of the motor was concerned, the machinery seemed to be doing its part.

“Well, then,” cried the triumphant Billy, “why don’t the blooming car run like it ought to?”

“It’s the steering gear that’s wrong,” Matt answered, “not the engine, or——”

Bang!

Just then the runabout blew up a forward tire. The machine tried to turn a somersault, and its passenger went over on the hood and tried to knock off one of the gas lamps with his head. When Matt brought the touring car to the side of the runabout, and halted, the man was on his feet, shaking his fist at the silent white tormentor.

“If I had a stick of dynamite,” he declared wrathfully, “I’d blow this infernal machine to kingdom come! I’ve been fiddling around the Jericho Road for two mortal hours, and I could have made better time if I’d left the car and gone on afoot. But I’ll hang to it, and make it take me where I’m going. By George, I’ll not be beaten by a senseless contraption of tires, mud guards, and machinery.”

Matt had jumped out of the touring car and was sniffing at the damaged tire.

“What makes that smell of gasoline?” he asked.

“I put in a tube this morning, and washed out the chalk with gasoline,” said the man.

“Never use gasoline for cleaning the tubes,” counseled Matt. “Get all the chalk you can from the outer tube, and then soak it in wood naphtha or ordinary alcohol. No wonder your tire blew up. You left gasoline in the shoe, and when it got hot, it mixed with a little air in the tube and something had to happen. Have you got another shoe?”

“Yes.”

“And a jack?”

“Of course. When a man goes out with a car like this he ought to carry a small garage around with him.”

“Well, we’ll help you get on the shoe.”

Matt and Billy worked. McGlory stood near, watching and talking with the owner of the car.

After the tire had been repaired, Matt looked over the runabout critically. Much to his amazement, he could find nothing wrong.

“It’s the double hoodoo,” whispered Billy; “that’s all that’s the trouble.”

“Much obliged to you,” said the man, cranking up. “Now we’ll see how she acts.”

He got in, went through the operations for a fresh start, but the runabout began backing. While the man shouted, and said things, the runabout backed in a circle around the big touring car, then dropped rearward down a shallow embankment at the roadside—and its passenger had another spill, out over the rear deck this time. For a second, he stood on his head and shoulders, then turned clear over and made a quick move sideways in getting to his feet. He was afraid, evidently, that the runabout was coming on top of him. But the car, almost in defiance of the laws of gravitation, hung to the side of the steep bank, its position nearly perpendicular.

“Speak to me about that!” gasped McGlory.

Matt was scared. From the top of the bank he stood staring while the man got out of the way.

“Are you all right?” Matt asked.

“No thanks to that fiendish machine if I am,” sputtered the man, laboring frantically up the slope. “It has tried to kill me in a dozen different ways since I left home with it. I’m done. Life’s too short to bother with such an infernal car as that.”

Fairly boiling with rage, he started along the road on foot.

“Wait a minute!” shouted Matt. “Where you going?”

The man turned.

“Krug’s,” he answered. “I’ll get a decent, respectable car there to take me on.”

“You can telephone to a garage from Krug’s,” suggested Billy, “and they can send some one to get the runabout home.”

“I’m done with the runabout, I tell you. It can stay where it is until the tires rot, for all of me.”

“I’ll agree to get it back to the city for you,” said Matt. “My name’s King, Matt King, and I’m staying at——”

[3]

The man’s rage subsided a little.

“You’re Matt King?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“I understand, now, how you happen to know so much about tubes. They say you’re pretty well up in motors, too. Well, here’s where I give you the job of your life. Matt King, I make you a present of that runabout. Take it—but Heaven help you if you try to run it.”

Thereupon the man whirled around and strode off.

“Oh, I say,” yelled Matt, “you don’t mean it. Wait, and I’ll——”

But the man swung onward, paying no heed to what Matt was calling after him.

Matt King turned and peered in amazement at his cowboy chum.

“Sufferin’ tenterhooks!” exclaimed McGlory. “You’re loaded up with a bunch of trouble now, pard.”

“Come on,” urged Billy, moving toward the touring car with considerable haste. “Don’t lay a finger on that runabout—don’t have a thing to do with it.”

But Matt was face to face with a proposition that caught his fancy. A refractory automobile! Never yet had he encountered a machine that had got the best of him. And this runabout couldn’t do it—he was positive of that.

CHAPTER II. MATT KING’S RESOLVE.

“That man was so mad he was locoed,” observed the cowboy.

“Certainly he was, Joe,” agreed Matt. “If he hadn’t been, he’d never have given away that machine. It’s a powerful car and worth twenty-five hundred of any man’s money.”

“Don’t tamper with it, Matt,” implored Billy. “When that fellow gets over his mad spell he’ll want the runabout back. Let him have it—and let him find it right where he left it.”

“If he hadn’t been worked up like he was,” said Matt, “he wouldn’t have given the car to me. I won’t take it, of course, but Joe and I will use it to take us to the Malvern Country Club, and then back to Manhattan. By to-morrow that fellow will be looking for me and wanting his car back.”

“You wouldn’t think of such a thing as wanting to bother with that runabout!” gasped Billy, from his seat in the touring car.

“Yes, I would,” answered Matt. “Why not?”

“The number—thirteen thirteen!”

“Bosh!”

“It’s a hoodoo car.”

“Never mind about that, Billy. You go on to Krug’s Corner and get a stout rope. If you overtake the owner of the runabout you can give him a lift. See him, anyhow, and tell him we’ll take the runabout to New York and that he can have it whenever he wants it.”

“Don’t do it!” begged Billy. “I’ve seen enough of these hoodoo cars to know they’ll prove the death of somebody. Don’t let that runabout prove the death of you!”

“Go get the rope, Billy,” said Matt sharply, “and hustle back with it.”

There was that in the voice of Matt King which proved that he had made up his mind, and that there was no shaking his determination. With an ominous movement of the head, Billy started for Krug’s Corner.

“Pard,” remarked McGlory earnestly, “I reckon the runabout is heap bad medicine. Do you think you ought to mix up with it?”

“Are you going back on me, Joe?” asked Matt.

“Not so you can notice. I’d get on a streak of greased lightning with you, if you said the word, and help you ride it to the end of the One-way Trail, but I think this is too big an order for us. Sufferin’ thunderbolts! Why, pard, that car won’t mind the helm or do the thing it ought to do even when you pull the right thing. When it began to crawfish around the road, the reverse wasn’t on.”

“I don’t know about that. It’s on now,” and he looked down at the runabout. “I guess the man must have thrown on the reverse instinctively when the tire blew up. Think of rinsing the chalk from the outer tube with gasoline!” Matt laughed. “There was good cause for the tire going wrong, and there may be other good and sufficient causes for the machine’s sizzling around like it did. Anyhow, we’ll try it, and see how it will behave for us.”

“But how can we lay a course for the Malvern Country Club? Billy will have to show us.”

“Billy can tell us how to go, and we’ll get to the Country Club all right. Hello! What’s this?”

Matt began slipping and sliding down the slope at the side of the runabout. Just at the point where the driver of the car had taken his header, the young motorist picked up a long manila envelope, unsealed.

“I reckon that dropped out of the man’s clothes while he was upside down,” ventured McGlory.

“That’s a cinch,” said Matt. “There’s no address on the envelope, and no printed card in the corner, but it may be we can find the man’s name and address on the papers inside. If he won’t come for his car, we’ll take it to him.”

“I’m a Piute,” mumbled McGlory, “if I feel right about this runabout business.”

“Billy’s talk about hoodoo cars has got you on the run,” grinned Matt. “You’ll feel different when we’re slamming along the pike with the runabout under perfect control. It’s my opinion that man doesn’t know a whole lot about running a car.”

While Matt was moving here and there about the steep bank, making a few investigations of the “hoodoo” machine, Billy came racing back.

“There’s your rope, Matt,” said he, tossing a coiled cable into the road.

Matt crept warily up the bank to the front of the runabout.

“Did you see the man, Billy?” he asked.

“Sure I did. Let him ride with me for half a mile.”

“You told him what we were going to do?”

“I did. He says that if you get that car back to the city, and try to turn it over to him, he’ll have you arrested for assault with intent to do great bodily damage. He says the runabout is a powder mine, and liable to blow up at any minute. ‘Tell Matt King to keep it,’ he said, ‘providing he’s got the nerve.’ That’s the way he handed it to me. Take my advice,” Billy clamored desperately, “and leave it alone!”

“Joe and I are going to use it,” answered Matt.[4] “Hand me an end of that rope, pard,” he added to the cowboy.

McGlory passed him the rope, and Matt made it secure to the front of the runabout.

“Back up, Billy,” called Matt, “and tie the other end of the rope to the touring car. You’ve got to give us a lift into the road.”

“What if something should happen?” demurred Billy.

“Nonsense!” said Matt impatiently.

“You can’t give the car back to that fellow if he won’t take it.”

“We’ll make him take it. He’s a very foolish man, and he’s going to feel differently when his temper cools.”

Billy, not in a very comfortable frame of mind, backed the touring car close to the edge of the bank. The rope was made fast, and Matt and McGlory went to the foot of the bank to push while the big machine pulled.

The attempt was successful. The runabout sputtered—perhaps defiantly—as it yielded to the tugging and rolled up the slope. Matt looked the machine over and could not find that it had suffered any by the slide down the slope.

“It’ll hang together till it gets you, Motor Matt,” observed Billy grewsomely. “That’s the way with these hoodoo cars. They never go to pieces till they kill somebody.”

“You’re too good a driver, Billy, to talk such foolishness,” returned Matt. “Now, tell us how to get to the Malvern Country Club.”

“Ain’t I going with you?”

“Three of us couldn’t ride very comfortably in the runabout.”

“But hadn’t I better go along in the touring car so as to be handy in case of accidents?”

“Oh, Joe and I will get along. We’re not going to have any accidents if we can help it—and I feel pretty sure we can.”

Billy laid out the course the boys were to take with considerable detail. When he was through, Matt felt that he had the route clearly fixed in his mind.

“If the runabout’s too much for you,” Billy finished, “all you’ve got to do is to phone the garage, and I’ll come a-runnin’.”

“Where did you get the rope?” asked Matt.

Billy told him he had borrowed it at Krug’s.

“We’ll leave it there,” said Matt, “on our way past the Corner.”

“You may never get to Krug’s,” answered Billy, in extreme dejection.

“Pile in, Joe,” said Matt, “and we’ll throw in the clutch and scoot.”

McGlory, it must be admitted, climbed into the runabout in a way that proved his lack of confidence. Matt cranked up, listening with deep satisfaction to the smooth singing of the engine, and then got into the driver’s seat.

Billy, in the touring car, watched tremulously and waited. From his appearance, he was plainly expecting that the white car would turn a few cartwheels and perhaps land upside down in the middle of the road with Matt and McGlory underneath.

But nothing of the sort happened. Car No. 1313 moved off in the direction of Krug’s as nice as you please—moved on a hair line, with none of the distressing wabbling which characterized its previous performance with its owner at the wheel.

The cowboy gathered confidence. Looking behind, he waved his hat at Billy.

“Don’t whistle till you’re out of the woods!” yelled Billy.

He shouted something else, but his words faded out in the increasing distance.

“Speak to me concerning this!” laughed McGlory, straightening around in his seat. “This little old chug cart is a false alarm, after all. It seems to understand that there’s a fellow in charge who knows the ropes up and down and across. Fine!”

“We’ll see the owner of the machine at Krug’s,” said Matt, “and get his address.”

“But he can’t have the runabout till we’re done with it,” protested McGlory.

“I should say not! We’ve sent Billy home, and that leaves us only this car to take us back. Ah, there’s Krug’s! We’ll stop for a few minutes.”

Matt tried to stop, but he couldn’t. He went through all the motions for cutting off the flow of gasoline and switching off the spark. The clutch was out, but the engine still had the car, and the engine wouldn’t stop.

An automobile was just coming out of the sheds. The runabout came within an ace of a head-on collision. Fortunately the steering gear still worked, and Matt scraped mud guards with the other car and he and his cowboy chum bounded on along the road.

McGlory yelled frantically. “Jump!” he cried; “let the old contraption run its blooming head off!”

But Matt wouldn’t jump, and he wouldn’t let his chum go over the flying wheels. Dazed and bewildered, he bore down on the brake.

The speed slackened, but they were half a mile beyond Krug’s before the car made up its mind to stop. Then McGlory tumbled out, while Matt sat astounded, his arms folded over the steering wheel and such a look on his face as the cowboy had never seen there before.

CHAPTER III. A DEMON IN CONTROL.

“Get out of that, pard! Get out!” McGlory was wild with apprehension, and sprang up and down at the roadside and waved his arms. “The way that car acts would make the hair stand up on a buffalo robe! What are you staying there for?”

“I’m trying to guess how that happened,” said Matt.