Originally published: June 19, 1909
Genres: Adventure, Children's
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199572981-motor-matt-s-close-call-or-the-snare-of-don-carlos
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49695
Chapters: 16
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
CARL'S SERENADE
Carl Pretzel was singing. If anyone with an ear for music had heard him they might have guessed that he was selling fish, or buying old clothes, or having an auction with himself, but not, by the wildest flight of fancy, could they have imagined that he had burst into song.
It was a rare evening in old Belize. The moon was like a big yellow topaz pinned to a cushion of blue-black velvet, and around it lay the stars like scattered diamonds. Carl could not see the moon or stars very distinctly, for it was so beastly hot that the perspiration trickled into his eyes and half-blinded him.
The zephyrs, laden with spicy fragrance from orange groves and pineapple fields, breathed softly through the tops of the palms; but Carl couldn't enjoy the zephyrs, for a cloud of mosquitoes was pestering him and he had to use both hands on his guitar.
The house before which Carl was playing and singing was a whitewashed bungalow. Between the bungalow and the street ran a high brick wall. The iron gate leading into the yard was locked, and Carl had climbed the wall, skinning his shins and tearing his clothes. But he didn't mind that. He had read somewhere that when a gay young Spanish blade admires a young Spanish lady, he grabs a guitar and goes and sings to her. Carl wasn't going to let any Spaniard back him off the boards, so he grabbed a guitar and stole like a thief into that Belize yard to serenade Ysabel Sixty.
Carl was not very well acquainted with the lay of the land in Belize. By an error of judgment, he had got into the wrong yard, and by another conspiracy of circumstances, he began pouring out his enraptured soul under the window of a room in which Captain Reginald Charles Arthur Pierce-Plympton, of the local constabulary, was trying to sleep. Miss Sixty was staying with relatives a block farther on, around the corner of the next street.
Utterly unaware of his mistake, Carl fought the discomforts of his situation and heroically kept to his labor of love. Ysabel Sixty was a fine girl, and Carl had a warm spot in his heart for her.
"Der rose iss ret,
Der fiolet's plue,
Oof I lofe me
As you lofe you,
No knife can cut us togedder!"
This touching bit of sentiment was merely the overture. Carl knew how to play the guitar, for he had once been a member of a knockabout musical team, and he could get music out of anything from a set of sleigh bells to a steam calliope. If he had been able to use his voice as well as he used the guitar, Captain Reginald Charles Arthur Pierce-Plympton would probably have slept on or even have been lulled into deeper slumber; but there were dull spots in Carl's voice where there should have been sharps, and high places where there should have been flats, and whoops, grunts and falling inflections where there should have been trills, grace notes and a soft petal generally.
Captain Reginald Charles Arthur Pierce-Plympton stirred uneasily, sat up suddenly in his bed, and knocked his high forehead against the iron bar that supported a canopy of mosquito netting. As he rubbed his temples and said things to himself, he listened with growing anger.
"Du hast diamanten und perlen—
(Chimineddy, vat a hotness!)
Hast alles was menschen begehren—
(Whoosh! Der muskedoodles vas vorse as der heat!)
Du hast ja die schönsten augen,
Mein liebchen was willst du noch mehr?"
Captain Reginald Charles Arthur Pierce-Plympton blinked his eyes and began forming a plan of campaign. There was a pitcher of water on a table in his room, a bulldog in the yard, and a valiant assistant in the form of Hadji Sing, his Hindoo servant. Getting softly out of bed, the captain prepared for his attack on the enemy.
When Carl climbed over the wall he had dropped into the yard at the foot of a lemon tree. He had jarred the tree and a half-ripe lemon had dropped on him. This omen should have sent him away and postponed the serenade, but it did not.
After slapping at the mosquitoes and drawing his sleeve across his eyes, Carl went on picking the guitar.
"Now for der nexdt spasm," he murmured. "I vill put der German vorts indo English for der leedle gal, yah, so.
"You haf plendy oof tiamonts und bearls,
Haf all vat a laty couldt vant,
You haf likevise der peautiful eye-es,
My tarling vat more—"
Just then the water descended. It was well aimed and Carl caught the whole of it. Probably there was no more than a couple of gallons, but Carl, for the moment, was under the impression that it was a tidal wave.
His song died out in a wheezy gurgle and, for a moment, he was stunned. Then, suddenly, he realized that he had been insulted. Ysabel Sixty, the beautiful maiden who had captured his young fancy, had deliberately thrown— But his thoughts were interrupted by a voice from the window—a voice that certainly was not Miss Sixty's.
"Bah Jove! I'll throw the pitcher at you, fellow, if you don't clear out!"
Carl was dazed. He knew, then, that he had made a mistake. While he stood there, half-drowned and trying to find his voice, the bark of an approaching dog came from the rear of the house.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and it flashed over Carl in the instant that if he wanted to save himself he would have to run. Without standing on the order of his going, he whirled and fled toward the fence. The dog was close and rapidly drawing closer. Behind the dog came a white-turbaned figure that was urging the brute onward with strange language.
The front fence looked altogether too high for Carl, and he turned and made for a wall at the side of the yard. Just as he gained the foot of the barrier the dog was snapping at his heels.
"Dere!" he whooped, turning and smashing the guitar over the dog's head, "how you like dot, hey?"
The dog was rebuffed, but not discouraged. Carl had gained a few valuable seconds, and he grabbed at a vine that covered the wall and climbed frantically upward. He heard a growl below him as he ascended, and felt a shock as the savage teeth closed in his trousers. The dog was heavy, his jaws were as strong as a steel trap, and as Carl hung wildly to the vine he knew that something would have to give way or else that he would be captured. It was with a feeling of joy, therefore, that he heard a tearing sound and experienced a sudden relief from his enforced burden. The next moment he was over the wall and floundering about in a thorny rose bush covered with beautiful blossoms. But the beautiful blossoms did not make so deep an impression on Carl as did the thorns.
As he rolled out of the bushes his language was intense and earnest, and when he got up in a cleared stretch of ground he felt a sudden coolness below the waistline that informed him fully of his predicament. He had left an important part of his apparel in the next yard.
"Vat a luck id iss!" he muttered. "I porrowed dot kiddar from der vaider py der hodel, und id vas gone to smash. Meppy I vill haf to pay as mooch as fife tollars for dot. Und den dere vill be anodder fife tollars for some more pands. Fife und fife iss den. Oof I make some more serenadings I vill be busted. Vat a laff Matt und Tick vill gif me! Py shinks, I can't go pack py der hodel like dis! Vat iss to be dit? Mit some clot', und some neetles und t'read, I could make some patches. Vere vill I ged dem?"
He paused to shake his fist in the direction of the yard he had just left. All was silent on the other side, and the man and the dog, Carl reasoned, must have gone back where they belonged.
A survey of the situation in the moonlight showed Carl another bungalow. It was not so pretentious as the house in the next enclosure, but its walls were as brightly whitewashed and the building stood out clearly against its background of shrubbery. The windows of the house were dark. But this was to be expected, as the hour was past midnight. The noise which Carl had made had not seemed to disturb the inmates.
"Oof I hat der nerf," thought Carl, "I vould go dere und ask der beople for somet'ing to fix meinseluf oop, but meppy I vouldt get soaked mit some more vater, und meppy dere iss anodder tog. No, py shinks, I vill go pack py der hodel und led Matt und Tick laff as mooch as dey vill."
But luck was still against Carl; or perhaps, in the inscrutable way whereby fate occasionally works in order to secure the greatest good for the greatest number, he was merely encountering obstacles in order to gain knowledge of a plot that had been leveled against Motor Matt.
Carl found a tall iron gate, set into the high front wall as snugly as a door in its casing. But the gate was locked. More than that, the wall could not be scaled, for there were no vines or nearby trees to offer a lift upward.
Carefully he made his way around all four sides of the enclosure, only to be balked at every point. Then he hunted for a ladder, a box, or some other movable thing on which he could stand while getting over the wall, but his search was fruitless.
"Py shinks," he muttered, again moving toward the house, "I vill haf to shpeak mit somepody in der blace und dry und ged oudt. I don'd vant to shday here undil morning."
At the rear of the house he rapped. Although he pounded heavily, no one answered his summons. Alarmed by the thought that there was no one at home, he moved around to the front door and rapped again, still without effect. Next, he tried the door. To his amazement, he found it unlocked.
When the door swung open a blank darkness yawned beyond it.
"Hello, somepody!" Carl called, thrusting his head inside. "I don'd vas a t'ief, or anyt'ing like dot, aber I vas in drouple. Hello! Come und led me oudt oof der yardt, blease, oof you vill be so kindt."
His voice echoed rumblingly through the interior of the house but won no response. Hesitatingly, Carl stepped across the threshold. He had matches in his pocket, and they had come through the recent deluge unharmed. With fingers none too steady he scratched one, held the flickering glow above him, and peered around.
The next moment his startled eyes encountered an object on the floor that caused him to drop the match from his nerveless fingers and fall back gaspingly against the wall.
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