CHAPTER X. IN THE GARAGE.

Matt was so bewildered on account of McGlory’s actions that he offered little resistance to Kelly and Levitt. Anyhow, the manila envelope had been taken from him, and Levitt--as Matt reasoned--had nothing to gain by the capture.

“Here’s the rope, Kelly,” said the mining engineer, coming close. “Better put it on him.”

“You don’t have to tie me,” protested Matt. “I’m not a thief, Levitt, and you know it. I’m willing to go, and go quietly, wherever you want to take me. I guess I can explain the affair to the authorities so that I’ll soon have my liberty.”

Levitt gave him an odd look.

“We’ll see about that,” he answered. “Tie his hands, anyway, Kelly,” he added.

Matt lay quietly while the rope was placed around his wrists. He was wondering why Levitt didn’t search him for the report. To all appearances the engineer wasn’t giving a thought to the document.

“I haven’t that manila envelope, Levitt,” said Matt. “If you’ve made a prisoner of me just to recover that you’re having your trouble for nothing.”

“I knew you didn’t have the envelope,” was the surprising answer. “McGlory got that. Kelly and I were close enough to hear him talking with you and to see him when he ran down the road. He fooled you that time, and no mistake.”

There was growing bitterness in Matt’s heart as he listened.

“You knew McGlory was to take the private report from me?” he asked.

“Well, Billings told me the cowboy had put up a deal of some kind.”

“So McGlory had planned the scheme with Billings, had he?”

“Yes.”

“And McGlory took the report to Billings?”

“That’s where he went with it.”

The breath hung in Matt’s throat. His chum’s treachery had been deliberately planned and executed. McGlory was playing into the colonel’s hands, and bringing about his own undoing. Naturally Matt inferred that his friend thought more of his prospective fortune than of his comradeship. Choosing the dishonest wealth, he had turned his back on his friend.

Sad and disheartened, Matt allowed Kelly to pilot him through the woods. With head down, the young motorist stumbled onward, more concerned with his sorrowful reflections than he was over the place to which he was being taken.

Suddenly Matt’s forward movement was stayed, and he heard Levitt speaking:

“I’ll look out for him, Kelly, and you go ahead and make sure that there’s no one around.”

Matt lifted his eyes. They were at the edge of the woods, immediately behind the garage.

While Levitt took charge of him, the prisoner saw Kelly cross the open space separating the timber line from the garage, and enter the building by a rear door. He came back presently, leaving the door ajar.

“Not a soul there, Levitt,” said he. “Come on with him, and come quick.”

Matt was hurried over the intervening space and into the garage. There were only two cars in the garage--the runabout and a large touring car--and not another person in sight.

Matt, pushed to the foot of a stairway leading to the second floor, was told to climb upward. He obeyed. At the top of the flight there was a door. Kelly pushed it open, drew Matt inside, and Levitt came after them.

“Are you sure you understand just what you’re to do, Kelly?” inquired Levitt, in an anxious tone.

“Sure I do,” answered Kelly. “There wasn’t so much of it that I can’t remember it all.”

“Do your work faithfully and you’ll never regret it.”

Levitt drew back out of the room and closed the door behind him.

“Lay down on that bunk there, my lad,” said Kelly, pointing to a cot at one side of the small room.

It was a room set apart for the man in charge of the garage, and was rudely but comfortably furnished.

Matt, still cast down by his cowboy chum’s treachery, was as yet taking but little interest in what happened to him. He stumbled over upon the cot, glad of an opportunity to rest with some degree of comfort while his mind regained its normal powers and allowed him to think clearly of McGlory’s case.

Kelly secured his feet with an end of the rope that bound his hands.

“I’m going to be as considerate of ye, King,” observed Kelly, “as I can. No harm is intended to ye--if there was I wouldn’t be helpin’. But ye’ve got to stay here for a while, an’ orders is that ye’re to remain quiet. The garage is more or less of a public place, an’ yer confinement is to be private. If people happened to be below ye might yell. That wouldn’t do, now, would it? I’m going to tie this piece of cloth over yer mouth jest to make sure ye don’t say anythin’ so loud it can be heard downstairs.”

“Wait a minute, Kelly,” said Matt. “Do you know anything about my chum, Joe McGlory?”

“Never a thing. He’s the boy who came with ye in that runabout?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s not known to me at all. You’re the lad that gave us that chase, and Levitt says you’re a thief. Ye don’t look it, now, but orders is to hold ye, an’ that’s what I’m doin’.”

“You’re helping Colonel Billings and Levitt carry out a big swindling game by this work, Kelly.”

“So? Well, lad, I can’t look out for other people. Number One--which is Kelly, d’ye mind--is enough fer me to take care of.”

“If I’m a thief, why doesn’t Levitt take me to Hempstead and have me locked up by the police?”

“Levitt doesn’t want to disgrace ye by such a move. Bein’ locked up by the police gives a lad a bad record. Ye’re far an’ away better off with me here. We’re to be together three days, and----”

“Three days!”

“The same--no more, no less. We’re going to get along like old cronies, if ye only behave. Now for the gag.”

Matt submitted while the cloth was put in place. Barely had Kelly finished when a car was heard puffing into the big room below.

Kelly jumped to a round opening in the floor, near one end of the room. It was a stovepipe hole, but the pipe was missing.

“One of the members, my lad,” said Kelly, turning away from his observation of the room underneath and speaking in a guarded voice. “I’ll have to go and look after the car. But ye won’t get lonesome against the time I come back. Ye’ve plenty to think of, I take it, an’ that will use up yer time.”

Kelly went out, slamming the door, and Matt could hear him hurrying down the stairs.

Three days! Matt was to be kept in the garage for three days!

That, no doubt, was to prevent him from interfering with the colonel’s plans in New York.

The colonel had won McGlory over, and there would be no interference from him. But perhaps, even without that “private report,” Matt could do something with the syndicate. It might be that he could save the cowboy in spite of himself.

Matt had noticed, while he and the cowboy were in the clubhouse talking with the colonel, that the trickster from Arizona had a powerful influence over McGlory. The colonel had made good use of that influence, and had succeeded in turning the cowboy against his best friend.

The people who had brought the car into the garage had left. A mumble of talk had floated up through the stovepipe hole, and the prisoner was able to keep the general run of events that took place in the garage.

He could hear Kelly tinkering with the car that had just arrived. In the midst of the sounds he heard footfalls, and then a voice, lifted high:

“Hello! Where’s the man that runs this place?”

That was the colonel. Angry blood leaped in Matt’s veins as he listened.

“Here, sir,” responded Kelly.

“Is that big touring car of Griggs’ in shape for the road?”

“Fit as a fiddle, sir, an’ full up with oil and gasoline.”

Then followed cranking, and the sputter of an engine picking up its cycle; and, after that, the moving off of the car.

“The colonel’s away to New York,” thought Matt darkly. “He’s gone to get the two bars of bullion before the bank closes. That’s step number one in the big robbery. I wonder if Levitt and McGlory are with him?”

For an hour or two longer Kelly was alone and busy in the garage. A tin clock hung on one wall of the bedroom, and from where Matt lay he was able to watch the moving hands.

“If I accomplish anything,” Matt thought, “I shall have to reach New York by eight o’clock. How am I to get out of here and to the nearest railroad station?”

That was his problem, and it looked as though he would have to work it out unaided.

He tried to free himself of the ropes, but Kelly had tied them too securely. In order to work at them to better advantage, he swung his bound feet over the side of the cot and sat up. But the ropes defied every effort he made to release his hands.

With the idea of watching what took place in the garage, he slipped to his knees on the floor and then straightened out at full length. By rolling carefully, he succeeded in reaching the stovepipe hole.

His view was limited, but it commanded the broad doors leading into the big room. Kelly was working somewhere in the rear, and could not be seen.

Matt was about to roll away, when two figures appeared in the door. One was McGlory and the other was Levitt.

“Kelly!” shouted Levitt.

“Here!” answered Kelly, coming forward.

“Got a car we can use for a trip back to the city?”

“Only the runabout this young fellow came in.”

“I’m a Piute,” growled McGlory, “if I want to fool with destruction by ridin’ in that.”

“I feel the same way, McGlory,” said Levitt, “but we’ve got to get to New York. If there’s no other car we’ll have to chance that one.”

“Sufferin’ trouble!” groaned McGlory. “It takes Pard Matt to get any kind of service out of that old flugee. You can’t handle it, Levitt. I saw the kind of work you made of it. Can’t we get a rig to take us to the railroad station?”

“There are no rigs here,” answered Levitt. “It’s either the runabout--or travel afoot.”

“I’m a cowpuncher, and a cowpuncher ain’t built right for footwork. Well, let’s chance old Death and Destruction. We’ve got to be at that meeting, and we’ve five hours to get there. If the runabout don’t go backward more than it does ahead, I reckon we can make it.”

Levitt seemed as dubious over the attempt to ride in the runabout as was McGlory.

“Sure,” remarked Kelly, “she looks like a nice, easy-ridin’ little car. I’ve cleaned her, and oiled her, and pumped her full of fuel, and she ought to travel.”

“She ought to, that’s a fact,” said Levitt, “but I’m afraid she won’t. However, we’ve got to take a chance. Hop in, McGlory.”

Levitt speeded up the engine and threw in the clutch. The runabout moved quietly out of the garage.