CHAPTER IV. THE MANILA ENVELOPE.

“Sufferin’ doom! I’m beginning to think Billy had a bean on the right number, pard, when he said this car would have to kill somebody before it settled down and acted as though it was civilized.”

Matt looked up and saw his cowboy chum. McGlory was rubbing a bruise on the side of his face and was carrying the long manila envelope in his hand.

“Why didn’t you let the car go to blazes?” demanded the cowboy. “What did you want to hang on to it for? The best place for the blamed thing is the junk pile.”

“I couldn’t let go without getting run over,” explained Matt, rising to his feet.

“Well, you’d feel a heap more comfortable under a pneumatic tire than you would under a train of box cars!”

McGlory’s face was white, and his voice trembled. The strain he had been under was just beginning to tell on him.

“The owner of the runabout,” he went on, “showed his good sense when he cut loose from it. The car’s like a broncho, Matt, and you never can tell when its fiendishness is going to break loose. If we had a keg of powder, I’m a Piegan if I wouldn’t scatter that sizz wagon all over this part of Long Island.”

McGlory glared savagely at the white, innocent-looking machine.

The freight train had passed, and Matt was leaning against the car and cudgeling his brains to think of some reason for the runabout’s acting as it did.

“It brought us out of Krug’s Corner as nice as you please,” he mused.

“Which is just the way it took us into Krug’s Corner,” proceeded the cowboy. “That’s the way the pesky thing works. First it lulls you into thinking it wouldn’t side-step, or buck-jump, or do anything else that was crooked or underhand for the world; then, when you think you’re all right, the runabout hauls off and hands you one. That’s the meanest kind of treachery--reaching out the glad hand only to land on you with a bunch of fives. There’s something human about that car, Matt.”

“Inhuman, I should say,” muttered Matt. “Well, it’s too much for me. Get in, Joe, and we’ll cross the track to those trees over there and rest up a little before we go on to the Malvern Country Club.”

“Damaged much, pard?”

“Jolted some, that’s all.”

“Same here. I landed in the road like a thousand of brick. This is my first experience with a crazy automobile, and you can bet your moccasins it will be the last. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“There isn’t,” said Matt. “How can you put together a lot of machine and have anything but a senseless piece of mechanism?”

“I’m by, when you pin me right down, pard, but if this car isn’t locoed, then what’s the matter with it?”

“Something must go wrong.”

“Goes wrong and then fixes itself,” jeered the cowboy. “If you’d look the blamed thing over this minute, you wouldn’t be able to find anything out of order.”

Once more Matt started the car, and once more it acted like a sane and sensible machine, carrying the boys to the shade of the trees and stopping obediently to let them alight.

Matt flung himself down on the grass at the roadside and examined his watch to ascertain whether it had been injured. He found the timepiece in good condition.

“Ten-fifteen, Joe,” he observed, replacing the watch in his vest and noticing that his chum was still carrying the manila envelope in his hand as he sat down beside him. “What are you holding that envelope for?” he inquired.

“I reckon I’ve gone off the jump myself, Matt,” laughed McGlory. “It dropped out of my pocket when I fell into the road. I picked it up, but have been too badly rattled ever since to do anything but hold it in my hand.”

McGlory was about to put it in his pocket when Matt suggested that he examine the contents and see if he could discover the name and address of the man who owned the runabout.

The cowboy pulled out a couple of papers. Unfolding one of them, he read some typewritten words and gave a gasp and turned blank eyes on his chum.

“What’s wrong?” queried Matt.

“Listen to this,” was the answer. “‘Private Report on the Pauper’s Dream Mine, by Hannibal J. Levitt, Mining Engineer, of New York City.’ Wouldn’t that rattle your spurs, Matt?” cried McGlory. “The syndicate had an expert go out to Arizona and make an examination of the ‘Pauper’s Dream,’--you remember the colonel told me about that, in his letter. Here’s the report! It drops into our hands by the queerest happen-chance you ever heard of. Mister Man takes a header from a crazy chug cart, unloads the machine onto you, and then hustles for Krug’s, leaving the report behind. He’s not at Krug’s when we get there, so the report is left in our hands. This couldn’t have happened once in a million times, pard!”

Matt was rubbing his bruised shins and allowing the amazing event to drift through his brain. It was queer, there was no mistake about it. In fact, all the experiences of the boys that Thursday morning were on the “queer” order.

“You say,” said Matt, “that the document is headed ‘Private Report.’ Why should it be a private report if it is for the syndicate?”

“Private for the syndicate, I reckon.”

“Hardly that, Joe. Unless there’s some skullduggery that report ought to be public property--public enough so that it could go into a prospectus. What’s the other paper?”

McGlory opened the other document, and found it to be a letter from Colonel Billings, dated nearly a month previous.

“It’s a letter from the colonel, Matt,” the cowboy announced, “and is addressed to Levitt. The colonel says he will not pay Levitt the balance due until Levitt sends him the private report on the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ proposition.”

“Great spark plugs!” exclaimed Matt.

“What’s strange about that?” demanded McGlory. “If Levitt made an examination of the property he certainly expects pay for it.”

“But not from the colonel, Joe! Levitt was examining the mine for the syndicate, and he’s not entitled to any money from the colonel unless he’s doing shady work of some kind.”

“Speak to me about that!” muttered McGlory. “It looks as though we’d grabbed a live wire when we got hold of this yellow envelope.”

“I don’t like the way the business stacks up,” said Matt earnestly. “The owner of this troublesome runabout happens to be Hannibal J. Levitt, and he’s playing an unscrupulous double game. Glance through that report and give me the gist of it.”

Eagerly--and a little apprehensively--McGlory looked through the private report. His face grew longer and longer as he read.

“Sufferin’ poorhouses!” he cried at last. “Levitt says, in this report, that the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ isn’t a mine, but a pocket, and that the pocket has been worked out. In other words, pard, my hundred shares of stock are worth just about what they’ll bring for scrap paper. And the colonel had me worked up till I thought I was going to be a millionaire! Riddle: Where was Moses when the light went out?”

McGlory fell back on the grass and kicked up his heels dejectedly.

“Can’t you see through the dodge your Tucson colonel is working, Joe?” asked Matt.

“Dodge?” echoed McGlory. “The ‘Pauper’s Dream’ is just a hole in the ground. We can’t any of us dodge that.”

“The colonel,” went on Matt quietly, “is paying Levitt to make a false report to the syndicate. To-night the syndicate meets and decides whether or not it will buy the ‘Pauper’s Dream.’ Levitt’s false report has already been submitted, I suppose, and read. You show up at the meeting with the two bars of bullion, and a sworn statement from the colonel that they came out of the ten-stamp mill on the ‘Dream’ during one week’s run. That clinches the proposition. The syndicate, relying on Levitt’s honesty, and, incidentally, on the colonel’s, pay over a big sum for a worthless hole in the ground, and----”

The cowboy leaped erect, flushed and excited.

“And the colonel,” he cried, “divides the proceeds among the stockholders! That gives me a big profit on my five hundred. Oh, well, I reckon I’ve got my dipper right side up during this rain.”

McGlory chuckled. Matt stared at him as though he hardly believed what he heard.

“Pard,” said Matt quietly, “it’s a game of out-and-out robbery.”

“That’s the syndicate’s lookout, not mine. If they want to drop half a million into that hole in the ground, what is it to me?”

“I don’t think you mean that, Joe,” said Matt, getting up. “We’ll go on to the Malvern Country Club and find out what Griggs has to say to you. We’ve got plenty of time to figure the matter over before the Syndicate meets to-night.”

Matt’s face was set and determined, and there was a smouldering light in his gray eyes, which proved that he had nerved himself for some duty which might be disagreeable. McGlory was wrapped in thought--so concerned in his own affairs that he forgot Matt, forgot the treacherous nature of the runabout, forgot everything but the “Pauper’s Dream” and his chances for winning or losing a fortune.