It was long after noon when Matt got back to the boathouse, where Lorry and McGlory were impatiently awaiting him.
"You were longer than we thought you'd be," remarked Lorry, a look of relief crossing his face as Matt trundled the motor cycle through the open door.
"Did you get what you wanted, pard?" inquired McGlory.
"Yes," laughed Matt, leaning the wheel against the wall, "and a little more than I was expecting. I was stopped by Merton and seven of his friends, just this side of the asylum and----"
"Sufferin' brain-twisters!" exclaimed the cowboy. "How could that be? Why, pard, I left Merton on Third Lake, in the _Dart_."
"Merton must have come ashore, Joe, pretty soon after you left. He picked up seven of his friends somewhere and started around Fourth Lake to have a talk with me at the boathouse. They saw me coming down the hill from the point, stopped the automobile around a bend, tied handkerchiefs over their faces and stopped me with a fence rail. Before I fairly realized what was going on, the eight of them had me off the wheel and into the timber."
"What an outrage!" growled Lorry. "You're getting more than your share of rough work, Matt, seems to me. What did those fellows want?"
Matt pulled out a lunch box of generous size, opened it on the workbench and invited his two companions to help themselves.
"I went into town to send a telegram for a new propeller," he observed, "but I didn't even take time to stop at a restaurant for a meal."
"No matter what happens," said Lorry admiringly, "you never forget anything. But go on and tell us what Merton and those other chaps stopped you for."
"They were trying to run in a rhinecaboo of some sort. I'll be bound," averred McGlory.
"The plain truth of the matter is, fellows," declared Matt, "Merton and his crowd are scared. They offered me two hundred dollars to leave town at once and never come back."
"Tell me about that!" chuckled the cowboy. "Scared? You bet they are! Motor Matt has put a crimp in the confidence they had about the outcome of the race."
"And that leads me to believe," went on Matt, "that, in spite of the fact that Merton has that roll of drawings and knows what we were doing to the _Sprite_, he's still afraid of us. The _Dart_ can't be such a phenomenally fast boat as you imagined, Joe. If it was, why should Merton fear the _Sprite_? He's judging her, you understand, according to our first plans for changing her. He doesn't know a thing about the automobile engine and the other propeller we're going to install."