Originally published: Sept. 25, 1909
Genres: Adventure, Children's
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200517870-motor-matt-s-mariner-or-filling-the-bill-for-bunce
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53466
Chapters: 16
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
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 theater 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 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 theater 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 a 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 center 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 silent, 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 and 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 were 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 in 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 that 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, and 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.
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 chairmen 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 on 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.
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