MOTOR STORIES

Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Copyright, 1909, by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y.

MOTOR MATT'S MARINER;

OR,

Filling the Bill for Bunce.

By the author of "MOOR MATT."

CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY.

Matt King, otherwise Motor Matt. Joe McGlory, a young cowboy who proves himself a lad of worth and character, and whose eccentricities are all on the humorous side. A good chum to tie to—a point Motor Matt is quick to perceive. Tsan Ti, Mandarin of the Red Button, who proves adept in the ways of Oriental craft, and shows how easy it is for a person to shift his dangers and responsibilities to other shoulders—if only he goes about it in the right way. Philo Grattan, a talented person who devotes himself to "tricks that are dark and ways that are vain," and whose superb assurance leads him to flaunt his most memorable crime in the face of the authorities through the medium of moving pictures. A man fitted by nature for a worthier part than he plays, and whose keen mind is not able to save him from deception. Bunce, the mariner, and a pal of Grattan. Pardo, who charters a power-boat and uses it in forwarding a plot of Grattan's. Bronson, a railroad superintendent, who appears briefly but creditably.

CHAPTER I.

"BUDDHA'S EYE."

"It's three long and weary hours, pard, before the boat for New York ties up at the landing. You don't want to cool your heels in the hotel, do you, while we're waiting? How about doing something to fill in the time?"

It was about seven o'clock in the evening, and Motor Matt and his cowboy chum, Joe McGlory, were sitting on the porch of their hotel in Catskill-on-the-Hudson. The hotel was on an elevation, and the boys could look out over the river and see the lights of steamers, tugs, motor boats, and other craft gliding up and down in a glittering maze.

Matt had been looking down at the river lights, and dreaming. He aroused himself with a start at the sound of his chum's voice.

"What would you suggest, Joe?" he asked.

"Let's take in the moving-picture shows. Say, they're the greatest thing for a nickel that I ever saw. Some yap gets into trouble, and then ladies and gents, and workmen, and clerks, and nurses with baby cabs take after the poor duffer, and there's a high old time for all hands. I'm plumb hungry for excitement, Matt. This town has become mighty tame since we parted company with Tsan Ti."

"If you think the moving-picture shows will furnish what you need in the excitement line, Joe, we'll go out and take them in."

Matt got up with a laugh, and he and McGlory left the hotel, and laid a course for the main street of the town. At the first nickel theatre they came to, they gave up a dime, and moved into the darkened room. An illustrated song was in the lantern, and a young man with a husky voice was singing something about a "stingy moon."

The motor boys stumbled around in the dark, and McGlory tried to slip into a seat that was already occupied. A stifled scream made him aware of his mistake, and he tumbled all over himself to get somewhere else.

"Speak to me about that!" he whispered to Matt, with a choppy chuckle. "That's the trouble with these moving-picture honkatonks when you come in after the lights are out. Oh, bother that stingy moon! I wish the[Pg 2] chap with the raw voice would cut it out, and let the rest of the show get to climbing over the screen."

"Don't be so impatient, old chap," returned Matt. "You've got to have something happening to you about once every fifteen minutes, or you get so nervous you can't sit still. In that respect, you're a lot like Dick Ferral, a sailor chum I cruised with a while ago. Now——"

"Sh-h-h!" interrupted the cowboy. "The piano has had enough of the moon, and now here comes the first moving picture."

White letters quivered on the screen. "Buddha's Eye" was the title of the series of pictures about to be shown. McGlory gulped excitedly, and Matt stared. The motor boys had just finished a wild entanglement with a great ruby called the "Eye of Buddha," and this, the first picture in the first theatre that claimed them, reminded them, with something like a shock, of recent experiences.

"Sufferin' sparks!" muttered McGlory. "What's the difference between 'Buddha's Eye' and the 'Eye of Buddha,' Matt?"

"No difference, Joe," answered Matt. "This is just a coincidence, that's all."

The interior of a Buddhist temple was thrown on the screen. The views were colored, and priests in gray and yellow robes could be seen moving back and forth and prostrating themselves before a huge gilt idol. The idol was of a "sitting Buddha" and must have measured full twenty feet from the temple floor to the top of the head.

With a flash, the interior of the temple gave way to an enlarged view of the idol's head. The head had but one eye, placed in the centre of the forehead—a huge ruby, which glowed like a splash of warm blood.

"The Honam joss house, in the suburbs of Canton!" whispered McGlory excitedly. "If it ain't, I'm a Piute!"

Motor Matt kept silence, wondering.

The boys were next afforded a view of two men, plotting aboard a sampan near the island of Honam. One was tall and had a dark face and sinister eyes. He wore a solar hat with a pugree. The other had on sailor clothes, had a fringe of mutton-chop whiskers about his jaws and a green patch over his right eye. McGlory grabbed Matt's arm in a convulsive grip.

"What do you think of that?" demanded the cowboy, in a husky whisper. "The tinhorn in the sun hat is Grattan, and the webfoot is Bunce. Am I in a trance, or what?"

"Watch!" returned Matt, fully as mystified as was his chum.

The next picture was labeled, "The Egyptian Balls—view of excavations at Karnak, on the Upper Nile."

Ponderous ruins were brought into view, showing Egyptian fellahs digging in a subterranean chamber. An urn was lifted up and uncovered. From this urn the wondering workmen removed a number of crystalline spheres. One of the spheres dropped from an awkward hand, crashed to fragments on the floor of the chamber, and instantly all the workmen staggered, flung their hands to their faces, and fell sprawling, lying on the stones prone and silent.

Two men stole in upon them, covered with flowing Arab robes, and their faces masked in white. Swiftly they gathered up some of the balls, and the camera followed them as they left the chamber and stood under the broken columns of the ancient temple of Karnak. The robes were flung away, and the masks removed. Grattan and Bunce, the sampan plotters, stood revealed.

"I've got the blind staggers, I reckon!" mumbled McGlory, rubbing his eyes. "It was in Egypt Grattan got his dope balls—the glass spheres filled with the knock-out fumes. This—this—sufferin' brain twisters! It's more'n I can savvy."

After Grattan and Bunce had gone through a pantomime expressive of their wild delight on securing the balls, the films entered into another series, entitled, "The Theft of the Great Ruby from the Honam Joss House, near Canton, China."

The walls outside the temple were shown, and an avenue bordered with banyan trees, with rooks flapping among the branches. Grattan and Bunce were seen making their way along the avenue, entering the temple court, and coming into the chamber which had been flashed on the screen at the beginning.

Here was the huge idol again, and the yellow-robed priests moving about. For a space, Grattan and Bunce stood and gazed; then, suddenly, Grattan pulled a hand from his coat, held one of the glass balls over his head for a space, then sent it crashing among the priests. The priests started up in amazement, recovered their wits, and rushed toward the foreign devils. But the priests were suddenly stricken before Grattan and Bunce could be roughly dealt with.

White masks had been pushed over the faces of the two plotters, and the pair watched while the priests, overcome by the paralyzing, sense-destroying fumes from the broken balls, reeled to the temple floor, and lay there in inert heaps. The masks protected Grattan and Bunce from the baneful influence of the balls.

As soon as the priests were stretched silent upon the floor, Grattan unwound a ladder of silk from about his waist. One end of the ladder was weighted with a bit of lead, and this end was thrown over the idol's head. Thereupon, Grattan mounted the ladder, and dug out the ruby with a knife. Upon descending, he and Bunce went through another pantomime, suggesting their joy over the success of their shameless work, and then passed quickly from the court, stuffing their white masks into their pockets as they went.

The next scene was in the room of a house in the foreign quarter, on the sea wall, called Shameen. Grattan was secreting the ruby in the head of a buckthorn cane. Barely was the secreting done, when a fat mandarin burst in on them with a number of armed coolies at his heels.

The mandarin seemed to be accusing Grattan. Grattan could be seen to shake his head protestingly. Then Grattan and Bunce were searched thoroughly, and the room ransacked. In the utmost chagrin, the mandarin and his coolies left, without having been able to discover anything. A few minutes later, the thieves took their triumphant departure, Grattan exultantly waving the buckthorn stick.

Scarcely breathing, and with staring eyes, the motor boys continued to watch the pictures as they raced over the white screen. What wonder work was this? From Grattan's own lips Matt had heard of the robbery at the Honam joss house, in which Grattan had played such an important part. So far, the pictures had shown it substantially as the details had come from Grattan; there were a few minor differences, but they were insignificant.

[Pg 3]

From this point, however, Grattan's story and the story as told by the pictures were at variance.

The thieves got into a couple of sedan chairs, each chair carried by four coolies. Apparently, Grattan and Bunce were on their way to the river to embark for other shores. When near the landing, one of the poles supporting the chair in which Grattan was riding broke. The chair fell, the bamboo door burst open, and Grattan tumbled out. One of the coolies picked up the buckthorn cane, and another the sun hat with the pugree. Grattan, in anger, knocked down the coolie who had picked up his hat. The other, coming to his countryman's aid, struck at Grattan with the head of the cane. Grattan dropped to his knees. The cane passed over his head, and the force the coolie had put into the blow carried the stick out of his hand, and sent it smashing against the side of a "go-down."

The head of the cane was broken, and the great ruby rolled over the earth out of the débris, and lay gleaming in the sun under the eyes of the astounded coolies. Then, with the inexplicable timeliness so prevalent in motion pictures, the fat mandarin and his coolies came upon the scene, the mandarin gathering in "Buddha's Eye" with extravagant expressions of joy, and Grattan and Bunce writhing desperately in the hands of the chair men and the mandarin's guard.

That was all. The scenes to follow were of a humorous order, and probably had to do with some unfortunate getting into trouble and leading a varied assortment of people a gay chase, but McGlory had lost interest in the show. So had Matt.

As by a common impulse, the boys got up and groped their bewildered way out of the room and into the street. They were dazed, thunderstruck, and hardly knew what to think.

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 [Pg 4]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."