Motor Matt's Promise; or, The Wreck of the Hawk

by Stanley R. Matthews

Shirley nodded.

"A man named Hobart, an American," he went on, "worked in the Bloemfontein diamond mine. He was a clever scoundrel and accomplished what many another man had tried in vain to do, and that was to steal diamonds out of the workings. How he got them to the place where he lived is a mystery that has not yet been solved, for Hobart kept his plan strictly to himself and did not even let his confederate in the enterprise know how the thieving was done.

"In the house where Hobart had his rooms the diamonds were carefully secreted in the head of a particularly vicious-looking idol. Hobart used to show the idol to his friends, taking it from an iron chest where it was carefully packed in sawdust, and to which, after a few moments of exhibiting, he was always careful to return it.

"Hobart declared that the head was a fragment of the malefic Obboney, a deity of the Koromantyn, or Gold Coast, negroes. This was entirely fiction, for, it afterward developed, he had had the head carved by a man in the Portuguese settlements, and then steeped in a deadly liquor which caused it to give off a poisonous effluvia. This was intended as a protection for the stolen diamonds.

"In due course, Hobart and his confederate, Sharpe, an Australian, quit the diamond mines and prepared to leave for the States with their booty. They sailed for England, and from there took a West Indian trader for the Bahamas. When near the Bahamas, Sharpe demanded a division of the treasure. Hobart put him off with some excuse, and then, that night, mysteriously vanished with a whale boat and his iron chest, leaving Sharpe behind.

"Sharpe never found out where his treacherous comrade had gone, nor what he had done with the iron chest. Moved by a spirit of vengeance, he sailed for England and told the entire story of the theft of the diamonds to the head of the syndicate that had charge of the diamond mines. The case was placed in my hands, and I traced Hobart to Philadelphia and found that he had lived there in poverty and had finally died and been buried in the Potters Field.

"I also learned that Hobart had had a friend, a wealthy inventor named Townsend. Having reached the end of my quest, so far as Hobart was concerned, I turned my attention to finding Townsend, in the hope that he could tell me something about the iron chest.

"But Townsend seemed every whit as hard to locate as Hobart had been. He had invented a submarine and was trying it out somewhere on a long-distance cruise. I bided my time and, at last, saw an account in a daily paper of the theft of a submarine belonging to one Captain Nemo, Jr., from the Inlet at Atlantic City, and of the pursuit of the submarine by a flying machine.

"I was a little mixed by the name of Captain Nemo, Jr., but I started out to follow the flying machine. This was comparatively easy, for wherever the machine was seen it was reported to the daily press, and all I had to do was to read the newspapers. Well, to be brief, I finally reached New Orleans last night. My coming was most opportune—a stroke of luck that does not come a detective's way more than once in a lifetime.

"A big diamond robbery had occurred here. The victim was one Archibald Townsend, and there were strong rumors flying about of a head carved from wood, of an iron chest, and of the thieves mixed up in the robbery having given their nefarious attentions to Mr. Townsend before. I talked with the authorities, and they told me that they were on the trail of the robbers and were doing their utmost to apprehend them. So, I had perforce to continue my waiting game, although more than certain that I was finally on the right track.