"It's for Tsan Ti, I am sure," went on Grattan. "He's somewhere in this section, for he left Gardenville on foot, early this morning, preceded by his man, Sam Wing. I don't know exactly what's up, but I'm rather inclined to think that the mandarin is afraid of me, and is trying to get back to Catskill and place himself under the wing of his estimable protector, Motor Matt. You and Matt heard he was coming and advanced to meet him. The same man who told me the fat Chinaman was in the hills must have given you boys the same information."
"Who was the hombre, Grattan?" queried McGlory, secretly delighted to think Grattan's speculations were so wide of the mark.
"A man in a white runabout with a red torpedo beard."
"I wouldn't know a red torpedo beard from a Piute's scalplock, but I do recollect a shuffer in a white car."
This white runabout was one of the cars Matt, Martin, and McGlory had passed on the road, and the driver was one of those of whom they had made inquiries. The inquiries, of course, had been all about the stolen automobile and not about the fat Chinaman. If Grattan had been in the stolen car when asking the man in the white runabout for news of Tsan Ti, then why hadn't the runabout driver remembered the blue car and told Matt something about it?
"Where were you," went on the cowboy, "when you hailed the man in the white car?"
"On foot, by the spring," answered Grattan genially.
He was an educated man and usually good-natured—sometimes under the most adverse circumstances. That was his way, perhaps on the principle that an easy manner is best calculated to disarm suspicion.
"Where was the car you and Bunce stole from the Catskill garage?" asked the cowboy.