CHAPTER III. A DEMON IN CONTROL.

“Get out of that, pard! Get out!” McGlory was wild with apprehension, and sprang up and down at the roadside and waved his arms. “The way that car acts would make the hair stand up on a buffalo robe! What are you staying there for?”

“I’m trying to guess how that happened,” said Matt.

“Then stop guessing. You can guess till you’re black in the face and you’ll still be up in the air. Cut loose from that bubble wagon--that’s your cue and mine.”

“There’s a reason for the car acting as it does,” declared Matt, “and I’m going to get down to the bottom of the mystery. We might just as well put in a little time right here. It’s not a very long run to the Malvern Country Club, and we can waste another half hour without missing your appointment.”

“If you took my advice,” muttered McGlory, “you wouldn’t touch that machine with a ten-foot pole.”

There was a determined look on Matt’s face as he leaped into the road and began an exhaustive examination. He could find nothing wrong; nevertheless, he went over the ignition system carefully, step by step; then he took the carburetor to pieces, ran pins through the spray nozzle and sandpapered the float guides; and, after that, he went under the car, broke the gasoline connections and drew wires through the tubes.

The cowboy heaved a long breath of relief as Matt reappeared from under the car.

“Find anything out of whack, pard?” McGlory asked.

“Not a thing,” answered the mystified Matt.

“Then you’re about ready to admit there’s a demon in control of the car?”

“I don’t believe in demons.”

“If a car won’t stop when it ought to stop, and if it won’t go straight when you’re steering that way, and if it backs up when everything is set for going ahead, I’m a Piute if I don’t think there’s something else got a hand in running it.”

Matt was silent. He was facing a proposition that was new to him, but he was dealing with motor details with which he was perfectly familiar. Here was an ordinary four-cycle engine, and an ordinary float-feed carburetor; the transmission was of the common sliding-gear variety; the fuel tank was under the seat, and the gasoline was fed into the engine by gravity. Why was it that the different parts did not coöperate as they should?

“Come on, Joe,” said Matt, putting on the coat which he had laid off while at work, “we’ll go back to Krug’s and see if my tinkering has helped any.”

“I can’t pass up the invitation, pard,” returned McGlory, “but if any one else gave it to me, I’d say _manana_. Every minute we’re aboard that runabout, we’re sitting on a thunderbolt that’s not more than half tame. Here goes, anyhow.”

The cowboy climbed to his place, and Matt “turned the engine over” and got in beside him. Then they backed until the runabout was headed the other way, whereupon Matt changed speeds and they slid over the pike as easily as a girl tripping to market. No. 1313 behaved like the prince of cars. No one, from its present performance, could ever have dreamed that it was anything but the mildest-mannered little buzz wagon that had ever come out of the shop.

“I’m stumped,” declared McGlory. “She acts as though she had never thought of such a thing as taking the bit in her teeth. I reckon, pard, you must have done something that started her to working in the right way.”

“I’ll never be able to understand how she ran for half a mile without any gas in the cylinders or any spark to cause an explosion,” said Matt, as he came to a stop in front of Krug’s. “Return the rope, Joe,” he added, “and see if you can find the owner of the runabout.”

McGlory was gone for ten minutes. When he came back he reported that the man who had cut loose from the runabout was nowhere to be found, and that a fellow answering his description had been taken into a car by a friend and had motored off in the direction of Hempstead.

“Then,” said Matt, “we’ll stop thinking about the owner of the car and continue to use it just as though it belonged to us.”

They turned south from the Corner and moved away in the direction of Hempstead at a good rate of speed. The runabout kept up its excellent behavior, answering instantly Matt’s slightest touch on steering wheel or levers.

“You’ve got the best of her, pard,” observed McGlory. “When you hip-locked with her, after she ran away from Krug’s, you must have poked a wire into something that was causing all the trouble.”

“I couldn’t have done that,” answered Matt. “Still, no matter what the reason, the car is acting handsomely now, and we’ll let it go at that. Read that telegram to me again, Joe.”

McGlory fished around in his pocket until he had brought up a folded yellow sheet. Opening it out, he read as follows:

“‘Meeting of syndicate in the matter of ”Pauper’s Dream“ Mine postponed from Wednesday night to Thursday night. Meet me eleven o’clock Thursday Malvern Country Club, near Hempstead, Long Island. Important.

“‘JOSHUA GRIGGS.’”

The “Pauper’s Dream” Mine was located near Tucson, in Arizona. It was owned by a stock company, and the cowboy had a hundred shares of the stock. A friend of his, named Colonel Mark Antony Billings, had induced him to invest in the “Pauper’s Dream” when it was little more than an undeveloped claim. Development seemingly proved the claim worthless, and McGlory had been surprised, while he and Matt were in New York, to receive a letter stating that a rich vein had been struck, and that the colonel was planning to sell the property at a big figure to a syndicate of New York capitalists. Random & Griggs, brokers, in Liberty Street, were the colonel’s New York agents, and the meeting of the syndicate was to be held in their office.

Two bars of gold bullion from the “Pauper’s Dream” mill had been sent by the colonel to New York, and McGlory had been requested to get the bullion and exhibit it to the members of the syndicate at the meeting. Matt and McGlory had had a good deal of trouble with that bullion, and the cowboy was not intending to take it from the bank, to whose care it had been consigned, until three o’clock in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, this telegram from Griggs was taking the boys to the Malvern Country Club; but just why it was necessary for McGlory to talk with Griggs was more than either of the lads could understand.

“Griggs, I reckon,” said McGlory, as he returned the telegram to his pocket, “is one of the members of the firm of Random & Griggs.”

“That’s my guess,” returned Matt; “but, if he is, why couldn’t he talk with you at the office in Liberty Street instead of having you come all the way out here?”

“I’ll have to shy at that, pard. Maybe Griggs is a plutocrat, and is accustomed to having people jump whenever he cracks the whip. Like as not he didn’t want to go in to the office to-day and just shot that message at us to save him the trouble of going too far for a palaver.”

“He told you all it was necessary for you to know, in the message. The meeting was postponed from last night to to-night. What else is there that he could want to tell you?”

“Pass again. Maybe he wants to ask about the colonel’s health, or----”

The cowboy bit off his words suddenly. Without the least warning, the runabout had made a wild lunge toward the side of the road.

“She’s cut loose again!” yelled McGlory, hanging to the seat with both hands.

Matt was holding the steering wheel firmly. So far as he could see, there was not the least excuse for the car’s making that frantic plunge toward the roadside.

Just ahead of the machine was a railroad track, and the noise of an approaching train was loud in the boys’ ears. Matt was thinking that, if the runabout repeated the performance it had given at Krug’s Corner, he, and Joe, and the car, stood a grave chance of being hung up on the pilot of a locomotive.

Before he could disengage the clutch or give a kick at the switch, one of the forward wheels struck a bowlder. The car jumped, throwing McGlory out on one side and Matt on the other.

As Matt fell, he caught at the two levers on the right of the driver’s seat and clung to them desperately. Although the car was running wild, with no hand on the steering wheel, yet it bounded away along the centre of the road, dragging Matt along with it.

With his elbows on the footboard, and the lower half of his body trailing in the dust, Matt endeavored again and again to get back on the running board and regain a grip on the steering wheel.

A freight train was almost at the crossing. Unless Matt could check the runabout in its wild flight, it would surely be demolished by the locomotive or else hurl itself to destruction against the sides of the swiftly moving box cars.

The situation was desperate to the last degree. Unless he could get hold of the steering wheel and regain his seat, nothing could be done to avert the threatening catastrophe. If he let go, and abandoned the runabout to its fate, he was in danger of being thrown under the racing wheels.

A demon of perversity seemed to possess the car and to be bent upon the destruction of Matt King.

Again and again the young motorist tried to reach the steering post with one hand and wriggled up onto the running board. Each attempt was unsuccessful until a lurch of the car helped in executing the manœuvre.

Hanging to the wheel, Matt threw himself over the upright levers, dropped into the driver’s seat, disengaged the clutch and jammed both brakes home.

Even then he was in doubt as to whether he would succeed in stopping the car. If it continued mysteriously to refuse control, there was certain destruction for both Matt and the car against the side of the train, the box cars of which were already flashing over the crossing.

But the car stopped--stopped within a yard of the rushing box cars!

Matt dared not throw in the reverse, fearing the machine might move forward instead of backward, so he dropped into the road and lay there, panting and exhausted, while the freight rolled on.