"The mandarin is getting a good start on the home trail, anyhow," remarked McGlory, as he and Matt turned away to climb the slope that led to their hotel. "He's bound west by train, while Grattan is fooling around, somewhere on the Hudson, with the Iris. I wouldn't turn over my hand, after what Tsan Ti told us, to put the kibosh on Grattan, or even Bunce."
"Grattan and Bunce have got their deserts," asserted Matt. "They'll be punished enough when they discover that they've had all their trouble and taken so many chances for nothing more than a bogus ruby."
"Fine business," chuckled McGlory; "and yet," he added, with a perceptible change in his voice, "there's something about that Philo Grattan that makes a hit with me. Maybe I've got a yellow streak in my make-up, somewhere, and that it's wrong for me to own up to such a notion, but it's the truth."
"If Grattan was honest," said Matt, "he'd be a fellow any one could like. But his ideas are all wrong. He can't see where the harm comes in removing a valuable ruby from an idol in a heathen temple, but if he'd step into Tiffany's, in New York, and extract a gem like that from the show case and make off with it, his crime wouldn't be any the less."
"A heathen has got property rights," agreed the cowboy, "just the same as you or me—or Grattan, himself. Where do you suppose Grattan, and that choice assortment of tinhorns he has with him on the Iris, are going?"
"I don't know, pard, and what happens to them now doesn't bother me much. We're rid of them all, and I'm thankful for it. We've had too much of Tsan Ti, as well as of Grattan and Bunce."
"That's what you say now, but just let the mandarin write you one of those embroidered letters of his, asking for help, and you'll head in his direction just a-smoking."
"Not again, Joe. I know what the Yellow Peril is, now, and I'm going to fight shy of it."
"Amen to that, pard, and I hope you stick to it."
"I will."