[CHAPTER VI.]
A SMASH.
The Hotel Kaaterskill was within a stone's throw of the Mountain House. So far as situation went, there was small choice between them, but Matt resented Tsan Ti's deception in declaring he was staying at one when he was really staying at the other. It seemed so trivial a matter compared with the mandarin's critical situation—as set forth by himself.
"I don't like the way you are acting, Tsan Ti," said Matt, as soon as they had reached the trees. "In your letter to me you asked me to meet you at the Mountain House; and on the mountainside, after you received the yellow cord, you spoke about our going up to the Mountain House; and again, as I remember it, it was on the porch of the Mountain House where you were drinking tea when you saw Kien Lung coming toward you, and bolted away on the bicycle. What excuse was there for such a deception? And how can we help you if you are not open and aboveboard with us?"
"The left hand, honored and exalted sir," returned Tsan Ti, "must not know what the right hand does when one is so unfortunate as I. Sam Wing, in leaving word for me at the house named Kaaterskill, remarked upon the courier Kien Lung being after me upon his unhappy errand, and counseled that I keep myself obscurely. But I should have made communication with you at the Mountain House had you arrived by that place for meeting me. My intentions were high-minded, albeit secretive."
"Then, for now," pursued Matt, "we will let that pass. Why did you vanish from the mountainside after we had been left to chase the one-eyed sailor? He threw two of those glass balls at us, and we were dropped in the road, unconscious. It was not a long distance from where we had left you, and you could easily have come down to us."
"Omito fuh!" muttered Tsan Ti. "My regret is most consuming! The gods crossed my will, notable one; nothing else could have kept me at a distance from you. It was thus. Young men on bicycles, pursuing Kien Lung and me who had made away at high speed on two of their go-devil machines, swarmed suddenly around me like the sacred rocks in the banyans at Honam. In spite of my entreaties, they carried me to the Kaaterskill, and there I made repayment for the broken machine, and for the one which Kien Lung took for himself and did not return. These affairs occupied me profoundly until half an hour since; then I hired yonder devil wagon and started to find you. Behold, you were on the veranda of the hotel as I fared past. Confucius said, in ancient times, 'When I have presented one corner of a subject, and the pupil cannot of himself make out the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.' So the sight of you informed me the sailor of the single eye had escaped, and I concluded best that we hurry after him. Am I not right, honorable friend?"
"He's good with his bazoo," remarked McGlory. "I reckon he makes out a clean case for himself."
Matt was satisfied. Still, he thought that instead of attending to his personal appearance and running around hiring an automobile, Tsan Ti might have taken some quicker method of finding out what had happened down the mountainside. But he was a Chinaman, and his ways and means were not those of a Caucasian.
"Where did you learn to drive an automobile, Tsan Ti?" asked Matt.