He was not long in discovering the hole in the floor of the wagon. The memorandum book he had discovered soon after getting into the borrowed clothes.
Of course he knew that Motor Matt would follow him! That was the kind of fellow the king of the motor boys was; never had he turned his back on a pard in distress.
Carl, too, was morally certain that Ping had seen him get into the monkey wagon. Motor Matt would discover this from the Chinaman, and then would come the pursuit.
The thing for Carl to do was to point the way by which he had been carried off. The hole in the floor, and the memorandum book in his pocket, were not long in giving him the right tip.
Sitting down on the bottom of the cage, Carl occupied himself in tearing the leaves of the book into scraps and poking the scraps through the opening.
How far Ben Ali drove Carl did not know, but it seemed as though the Hindoo had been hours on the road. There was a pain in Carl's back, where the mule had left its token of remembrance, and the jolt of the wagon was far from pleasant.
Presently there came the rapid beat of a horse's hoofs, a whir of wheels, and a sudden stop of the monkey wagon. The other sounds ceased at the same moment.
For a second or two Carl imagined that Matt had overhauled Ben Ali, but this fancy was dispelled by the strange words that passed between Ben Ali and some one else.
The mahout could be heard climbing swiftly down from his perch and moving around to the rear of the wagon. Carl slipped the book into his pocket and drew away from the hole in the floor.
Once more the key grated in the padlock. The door was drawn open and Ben Ali was revealed, looming large in the rush of sunlight, a bared knife in his hand.