Tsan Ti picked up the card and the yellow cord. Thoughtfully he twisted the cord around and around his fat palm and tucked it into the black box. On the cord he placed the card, and over all closed the box lid. With a rumbling sigh, he dropped the black box into the breast of his blouse.
"Foreign devils," said he, once more bracing himself against the tree trunk, "call the temple of Hai-chwang-sze the Honam Joss House. It is by the beautiful river, in the suburb named Honam. Around the temple there is a wall. The avenue of a thousand delights leads from the great gate to the temple courts, and noble banyan trees shade the avenue. At vespers, some weeks ago, two foreign devils were present. The hour was five in the afternoon. One of the foreign devils was English, and wore a tourist hat with a pugree; the other had but a single eye. Lob Loo, a priest, told me what happened.
"The Englishman threw a shimmering ball upon the temple floor. Odors came from it, quick as an eyeflash. Quick as another eyeflash, the priests reeled where they stood, their senses leaving them. Lob Loo tells me the foreign devils had covered their faces suddenly with white masks. Then, after seeing that much, Lob Loo lost his five senses, and wandered in fields of darkness.
"When Lob Loo opened his eyes, he saw glass fragments on the floor, and a ladder of silk swinging from the neck of the god. The image, renowned sirs, is twenty feet in height, and to reach the ruby eye the foreign devils had to climb. The eye was gone. When Lob Loo told me these things, I was seized of a mighty fear, and fled to Hongkong. There the five hundred gods favored me, and I learned that a man in a tourist hat with a pugree, and another with a single eye, had sailed for San Francisco. Quickly I caught the next steamer, after sending cable messages to the leaders of a San Francisco tong who are Cantonese, and friends of mine. When the ship brought the thieves through the Golden Gate, some of the tong watched the landing. The thieves were in San Francisco three days, and Sam Wing followed them when they left for Chicago, then for New York, and then for these Catskill Mountains. When I reached San Francisco, the leading men of the tong had telegrams from Sam Wing. By use of the telegrams, I followed, and arrived here. Wing had left a writing for me at the hotel, telling me to wait. I waited, but Wing had disappeared. I kept on waiting, and out of my discouragement, remarkable sir, I wrote to you. That is all, until this morning, when Kien Lung came with the yellow cord. Two weeks are left me. If the Eye of Buddha is not found in that time, then"—and Tsan Ti tapped the breast of his sagging blouse—"all that remains is the quick dispatch."
Both Matt and McGlory had listened with intense interest to this odd yarn. Although a heathen, and lately keeper of a heathen temple, the mandarin was nevertheless a person of culture and of considerable importance. The sending of the yellow cord was a custom of his country, and it was evident that he intended to abide by the custom in case the Eye of Buddha was not recovered within two weeks.
"Shall we turn the trick for him, pard?" asked McGlory. "This palaver of his makes a bit of a hit with me. I'd hate like Sam Hill to have him shut off his breath with that yellow cord. If——"
The hum of an approaching automobile reached the ears of those at the roadside. The machine was coming from above, and Matt pulled the broken bicycle out of the road.
The boys and the mandarin stood in a group while waiting for the car to pass. Tsan Ti, seemingly wrapped up in his own miseries, gave no attention to the car, at first.
There were two passengers in the car—the driver, and another in the tonneau.
The car, on the down grade, was coming at a terrific clip, and the man in the tonneau was hanging on for dear life and yelling at the top of his voice: