MOTOR STORIES

Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1909, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y.

MOTOR MATT'S QUEER FIND;

OR,

THE SECRET OF THE IRON CHEST.

By the author of "MOTOR MATT."

CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY.

Motor Matt, a lad who is at home with every variety of motor, and whose never-failing nerve serves to carry him through difficulties that would daunt any ordinary young fellow. Because of his daring as a racer with bicycle, motor-cycle and automobile he is known as "Mile-a-minute Matt." Motor-boats, air ships and submarines come naturally in his line, and consequently he lives in an atmosphere of adventure in following up his "hobby." Carl Pretzel, a cheerful and rollicking German boy, stout of frame as well as of heart, who is led by a fortunate accident to link his fortunes with those of Motor Matt. Dick Ferral, a young sea dog from Canada, with all a sailor's superstitions, but in spite of all that a royal chum, ready to stand by the friend of his choice through thick and thin. Townsend, a wealthy though eccentric gentleman, who owns a remarkable submarine boat on which our friends have seen various adventures in the past. Whistler, Jurgens, Bangs, } a trio of rogues bent upon gaining possession of a prize. Yamousa, the hideous voodoo woman of the Louisiana swamps.

CHAPTER I.

THE HUT BY THE BAYOU.

"Lisden, vonce, you fellers! I t'ink I hear someding."

Carl Pretzel turned back from the forward rail of the Hawk, gave his chums, Motor Matt and Dick Ferral, a warning look, and then leaned out over the side of the air ship, his eyes on the earth below.

The Hawk was sweeping over the tongue of land between Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, bound for New Orleans by way of the Lower Mississippi.

Night was coming on, and the boys in the air ship had been looking anxiously for a place in which to effect a landing. Interminable stretches of cypress and live oak covered the low ground beneath them, and there did not seem to be a gap anywhere in the dense growth.

"You must have bells in your ears, mate," said Dick, in response to Carl's announcement that he had heard "something." "Dowse me if I heard any noise."

"Listen, pards, both of you," called Matt from his seat among the levers. "If you can hear a voice, down there, it will be a pretty sure sign that we're close to a clearing. We've done enough flying for to-day, and these Louisiana air currents are so changeable I don't want to do any night traveling. If you——"

"Dere it vas some more!" cried Carl excitedly. "You hear him dot time, Tick?"

"Aye, matey," answered Dick, "I heard a voice, fair enough. It was a sort of screech, as though a woman might have piped up—or a panther."

"Where away was it?" asked Matt.

"Two points off the starboard bow, Matt."

Matt shifted the rudder, thus altering the course of the Hawk; he also depressed the horizontal plane and threw the air ship closer to the tree tops.

"It's getting so blooming dark, down there among the trees," observed Dick, "that it's hard to see anything, but I believe I can make out a bit of a river, and an arm of it like a bayou."

"Yah, so helup me," put in Carl, "I can see dot meinseluf, I bed you. Und dere iss a light like a fire, vich geds prighter und prighter as ve go aheadt. Vat you t'ink is dot anyvay, Tick?"

[Pg 2]

Before Dick could answer, the cry that had already claimed their attention was wafted up from below, this time so clear and distinct that there was no mistaking it.

"A moi! a moi!"

It was a screech, as Dick had said, and resembled greatly the yell of some wild animal; nevertheless, the call was plainly human, for it was broken into words.

"French lingo, or I'm a Fiji!" averred Dick. "It's the same as some one calling for help. And a woman, too. No man could make a sound like that."

As if to prove Dick's words, the cry was repeated, but the words were English, now, and not French.

"Help! Help!"

"Py chiminy grickets!" gasped Carl. "Dere iss someding going on vat means drouple for der laty."

"We've got to land," declared Matt, "and see what's the matter. Can you find a place?"

Both Dick and Carl were leaning over the forward rail and staring ahead and downward.

Suddenly the tree tops broke away and a heap of blazing wood could be seen. The fire had been kindled on a cleared stretch of bayou bank, and not far from it was a log hovel. But there was no one in sight, either near the fire or around the hut.

The two boys on the lookout announced their discoveries to Motor Matt.

"We'll come down on the bayou bank," said Matt. "Give me directions, Dick."

The young Canadian, watching sharply below, called their bearings to Matt, and the Hawk was safely manœuvred to the surface of the ground. The calls for aid had ceased, an ominous silence reigning in the vicinity of the fire and the hut while the boys got out their mooring ropes and secured the Hawk to nearby trees.

"Where's the woman in distress?" queried Dick, coming around the front end of the car and joining Matt and Carl. "She was making plenty of noise, a while ago, but she's quiet enough now."

"She may be in the hut," said Matt. "You stay here and watch the air ship, Dick, while Carl and I take a look through the shanty."

Matt pulled a blazing pine knot from the fire, and, with this to light the way, started toward the hut. Carl dropped in at his side and they proceeded onward together. Suddenly Carl drew to a halt and laid a hand on Matt's arm.

"I tell you someding, Matt," said the Dutch boy, "und dot iss, I don'd like dis pitzness. Br-r-r! I haf some greepy feelings all droo me."

Carl could be as brave as a lion when brought company front with any danger he could understand, but he was so full of superstition that if a black cat crossed the road in front of him he was at once thrown into a panic.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Matt. "We're here to help some one who is in trouble, and we don't want to get scared at our own shadows."

"Der blace itseluf iss enough to make my shkin ged oop und valk all ofer me mit coldt feet; and den, for vy don'd we hear dat foice some more?"

There was a sort of weirdness about the place, and no mistake. The great live oaks, uncannily festooned with Spanish moss, completely inclosed the little clearing, bending about it in a half circle and coming down to the very edge of the bayou. The fact that there was a fire, of course, proved that human beings had been in the clearing, even if they were not there now. But there was something ghostly about the fire, and while it threw flickering shadows across the clearing it seemed only to make the darkness deeper in the depths of the wood.

"It may be, Carl," said Matt, "that the woman who was calling for help has become unconscious. That makes it all the more necessary for us to find her as quick as we can. Come on!"

Waving his torch, Matt hurried along toward the hut. The door was open, and the torch glare struck whitely against some object suspended over it.

"Vatt iss dot ofer der door, eh?" asked Carl excitedly. "Py shinks, it iss some pones! It iss a skeleton oof someding! Whoosh! Dis iss gedding on my nerfs like anyding."

The young motorist whirled on his Dutch chum.

"You go back to the air ship, Carl," said he, "and send Dick here. Your nerves are troubling you so much that you're not of much help."

Carl was only too ready to go back to the Hawk. With a mumbled apology for himself, he turned and hurried away. When Dick came up, a moment later, Matt was looking at the object over the door of the hovel.

"What is it, matey?" queried Dick.

"It looks like the skull of a cat, or a dog," answered Matt.

"Then I suppose it was put up there to bring luck. People around here must be a jolly lot."

"We'll see what's inside," and Matt, holding his torch high, passed through the door.

The hut contained but one room. There was a fireplace in one end, and over a bed of coals a kettle was hanging. A "shake-down" on the floor, in one corner, was covered with ragged blankets. But the strangest feature of the place was this: The whole under part of the thatched roof, and every crevice of the walls, was hung with rags, feathers, bones of cats, alligator teeth, and a thousand other objects, equally curious.

"Well, strike me lucky!" mumbled Dick. "This is a rummy old place we've got into. Between you and me and the mainmast, old ship, I'd just about as soon give it a good offing. But where's the woman that wanted help?"

The question was hardly out of Dick's mouth before it was answered by another screeching, "A moi! a moi!"

The call did not come from anywhere about the hut, but from outside and somewhere in the timber.

"This way, Dick!" shouted Matt, and rushed out of the hut.

"A moi! a moi!"

The call was again repeated, and the two boys, guiding themselves by the call, flung up the slight slope and darted in among the trees.

"Careful, matey!" panted Dick, from close behind his comrade. "There's no telling what sort of a jolly mess we're running into. Better dowse that light—it'll be safer; besides, I can see the gleam of a lantern ahead, there, through the trees."

"I just caught a sight of that myself, Dick," answered Matt, in a low voice. "Your suggestion about the torch is good," and Matt dropped the blazing fagot and crushed out the fire with his foot. "Now, then," he finished, "we'll go on, and go quietly."

[Pg 3]

A dozen yards, perhaps, brought the boys to a spot from which they could behold a scene that caused their pulses to leap.

An old crone was bound to a cypress stump, and beside her stood a man with a lithe switch.

The hag was swarthy, and her kinky hair was white. Evidently she was a mulatto. The man at her side was white. The moment Matt's eyes rested on him, the young motorist gripped Dick's arm with tense fingers.

"That man!" whispered Matt excitedly; "do you recognize him, Dick?"

"Whistler, or I'm a Hottentot!" gasped Dick.

For a moment, blank amazement held the two boys spellbound. Then, as Whistler lifted the switch and brought it viciously down on the old woman's shoulders, the spell was broken and the two boys started forward.

"Will you tell?" demanded Whistler, pausing after the blow.

"A moi! a moi!" screeched the woman.

"You can call till you're blue in the face," went on Whistler savagely, "and you'll not bring anybody. I'll find out from you what I want to know, Yamousa, or I'll flay you alive. Will you tell?"

At that moment, Matt and Dick broke into the lantern light. The lantern was suspended from the broken limb of a tree, and the glow was so faint that the boys had not been seen until they were close upon the man and the woman.

Whistler, with an oath of consternation, jumped backward. The next moment, he had whirled his gad and brought it down on the lantern. A crash followed, and Stygian blackness shrouded the spot. A sound of running feet, fading away in the timber, came to the boys' ears.

"Never mind Whistler, Dick," said Matt; "let's look after the woman."

CHAPTER II.

YAMOUSA.

No sound had come from the woman since the two boys had reached the scene. Groping their way to her, they found that she had become unconscious and was drooping heavily in the cords that held her bound to the stump.

"Of all the things that ever happened to us, mate," remarked Dick, "this captures the prize. We get cast away on a little turtle back in the Bahamas, and Lat Jurgens and this old hunks, Whistler, come to the island in Nemo, Jr.'s submarine. We capture the pair and leave 'em roped in our tent; then we capture the submarine. Later we send ashore for Jurgens and Whistler and the landing party reports that they have vanished. Now, dropping down here in answer to a cry of distress, we find Whistler giving an old woman a taste of the cat. Whistler, of all men! I'm fair dazed with it all."[A]

[A] For an account of the adventures of Motor Matt and his friends in helping Archibald Townsend, otherwise Captain Nemo, Jr., recover his stolen submarine from Jurgens and his rascally followers, see No. 12 of the Motor Stories, "Motor Matt's Peril; or, Cast Away in the Bahamas."

"So am I," said Matt, "but we'll not let that bother us now. This old woman has been brutally treated, and has fainted away. We must get her to the hut and see what we can do to revive her."

"Right-o," agreed Dick. "I've my sheath knife handy and I'll cut her loose from that stump in a brace of shakes."

Matt held the limp form upright while Dick severed the cords; then, picking the woman up, they carried her through the woods, back to the clearing, and laid her on the ragged blankets in the hut.

"I think I saw a candle on the shelf over the fireplace, Dick," said Matt. "Better light it."

Dick found the candle. It was a tallow dip stuck in an old tin candlestick. With the light in his hand, he walked to the old woman's side and bent downward.

The face of the woman was scarred and hideous. There were big gold earrings pulling down the lobes of her ears, and another large ring pierced her nose and fell down over her upper lip. Her cheeks were hollow, and the yellow skin resembled parchment. Her clothing was a motley garb of patched rags. Two claw-like hands, with finger nails an inch long, lay on the blankets beside her.

Matt lifted his eyes to Dick's with a shudder.

"She's not what you'd call Cinderella, exactly," grinned Dick, "and I don't think her beauty will ever prove fatal."

"Anyhow," said Matt, "she's a woman and needs help. That's enough for us to know."

A tin water pail stood on a bench, and there was a gourd dipper hanging over it. Matt filled the gourd and returned and dashed the water in the old woman's face.

The effect was magical. With a screech that caused the boys to start backward in consternation, the old woman sat up suddenly and glared about her, with eyes like coals. Abruptly her attention fixed itself on the boys and she began to croon in a harsh, mumbling voice:

She exploded the last word like the crack of a revolver, lifting and aiming her fingers as she might have done with a weapon.

"Avast, there, old lady!" cried Dick. "We're friends of yours. Can't you understand that?"

"American?" shrilled the woman, rising slowly to her feet.

"Yes," said Matt.

"Where is ze man zat take me from my home and beat me wiz ze stick?" she demanded, crouching like a cat, while her talon-like hands clawed the air angrily.

"He ran away," answered Matt. "We cut you loose from the stump and brought you here. Do you know that man?"

The old woman staggered to the fireplace and stirred up the coals under the kettle; then she turned back, took the candle out of Dick's hand and studied his face. From Dick she turned to Matt, giving him a similar scrutiny.

Her eyes were bright and fiery—age had not seemed to dim them. As she turned from Matt, the hag gave a croaking laugh.

"I guess we'd better send the 'blue peter' to the masthead, old ship," said Dick, "trip anchor and slant away. This don't look like a comfortable berth, to me."

[Pg 4]

"You not go 'way yet," cried the woman, whirling about. "You are ze good boys, you help Yamousa, ze Obeah woman, and by gar, Yamousa help you! Sit on ze bench."

She waved one hand toward the bench on which the water pail was standing. Dick, heeding a significant look from Matt, followed to the bench and sat down.

"Do you know that man who was beating you?" asked Matt, again, determined if possible to get a little information about Whistler.

"Oui, I know heem!" answered the woman, with a spitting snarl. "One time he work on ze sugar plantation near ze bayou, and he come many time to see Yamousa and have her tell him ze t'ings he do not know. He come now from ze Bahamas and ask about ze iron chest, and where zis Townsend take heem. But Yamousa, she no tell. For why Yamousa no tell, eh? Well, she see zat Whistler haf ze bad heart. Whistler try to beat her, make her tell; zen ze American boys come and drive heem away. How you get here, eh?"

"We came in an air ship," Matt answered.

"Sacre tonnere! I know zat you come—I seen him in ze smoke."

Yamousa had said things which had aroused the intense curiosity of the two boys. Whistler had tried to force her into telling him the whereabouts of an "iron chest." That iron chest had been found in a sea cavern of an uninhabited island among the Bahamas, had been taken aboard Townsend's submarine, and had been in the submarine when Matt and his chums turned the boat over to her owner on the Florida coast. Townsend had taken the chest to New Orleans, and Jurgens and Whistler were eager to recover it.

What the chest contained, no one knew. A man who called himself simply the "Man from Cape Town" had given Townsend a chart and secured his promise to find the chest, carry it to New Orleans, and open it in the presence of a woman whom the Cape Town man claimed was his daughter. These two were then to divide the contents between them.

The fact that Whistler, and presumably Jurgens, as well, still had designs on the chest, was surprising information for Matt and Dick. The three boys were proceeding to New Orleans in the Hawk, in response to a request from Townsend; and it might easily chance that the business which had led Townsend to call Motor Matt and his friends to New Orleans was to cross the evil designs of Jurgens and Whistler.

"Do you know anything about that iron chest, Yamousa?" inquired Matt.

"Not now, but I find heem out," replied the old woman. "By gar, I find out anyt'ing zat ees wanted to be known."

"You say you knew that we were coming?"

"Oui."

"I can't understand how you discovered that. We didn't know ourselves we were coming until we got a telegram at Palm Beach, Florida, yesterday."

"I tell by ze smoke," repeated the woman; "I read heem in ze smoke."

"What sort of a place is this, anyhow?" muttered Dick to Matt uncomfortably. "Is the old lady a fortune teller? I never took much stock in that sort of thing, you know."

"Yamousa ees ze Obeah woman," chirped the hag, her ears having evidently been sharp enough to overhear what Dick had said: "I am ze voodoo queen. I know t'ings ozzers don't know, an' ze people come from ever'where to see Yamousa—from New Orleans, oui, and from Algiers, Plaquemine, St. Bernard—all up and down ze river an' ze coast—zey all come to haf Yamousa tell zem t'ings zat zey don't know. I tell you ze same. You are my franes—mes amis—an', I do planty mooch for you. Where is ze ozzer of you? In ze smoke I see t'ree, all in ze flying boat zat come to Bayou Yamousa."

"She means Carl," muttered Dick, "and how the old Harry she knew anything about him is a fair dazer."

"In ze smoke I see heem," replied the hag, again catching Dick's words.

"I think I'm beginning to see through this a little, Dick," said Matt. "In some way, Jurgens and Whistler got off that island in the Bahamas and——"

"Zey hide in a cave till you go 'way," broke in Yamousa, "an' zen zey come out an' bymby ze boat come from ze Great Bahama an' pick zem off. Oui, hé, zey ees bot' ver' bad an' haf ze bad heart."

"How did you find that out, Yamousa?" asked Matt.

"Not in ze smoke, not zat, non. Whistler tell me."

Yamousa's knowledge, which, for the most part, seemed to be derived from unusual sources, filled Matt and Dick with growing bewilderment.

"Sink me," muttered Dick, "but my nerves are beginning to bother me. Go on, though, matey. What about Whistler?"

"Why, he's still after the iron chest, he and Jurgens. They got away from that turtle back in the Bahamas, landed in this vicinity, and Whistler came here to get this voodoo priestess to tell him where he could locate the chest."

"All my eye and Betty Martin, that! Just as though Yamousa could tell him!"

"Anyhow, Whistler must have thought so or he wouldn't be here. We saw and heard enough to convince us that what Yamousa said about his designs was true. We got here in time to drive him off and——"

Just there occurred a startling interruption. A frantic yell came from the clearing—a yell that was plainly given by Carl.