“Look!” gasped Chick. “For Heaven’s sake, look!”
The shapeless lump in the center began to move—slowly and rhythmically. Suddenly, with a hoarse croak, it ceased its swaying to and fro and sprang suddenly into life.
Rearing upright, it revealed itself as a tall, nearly naked Hindu, with the lean and haggard face of what is strangely called, in India, “a holy man.”
His only clothing, besides the inevitable turban, was a loin cloth, and his long, lean arms and legs, his scraggy neck, and the fiercely burning eyes, set deeply under his shriveled forehead, gave him an eerie aspect that was indescribably terrible.
For a few moments he stood raised to his fullest height—for he had reared himself on his toes—as he took from the ground at his feet a small bag suspended from some kind of string that looked like part of a shriveled vine.
Besides the bag, which he hung around his neck, he had a collection of gruesome objects. They seemed to be withered parts of animals or reptiles, bones, and other horrors.
Beyond question they were charms of various kinds, and equally certain this wretched creature was a medicine man or dealer in “black art.”
Nick Carter knew that there were thousands of fanatics in India who practiced all kinds of strange rites. Many of them were horrible, and there were tales of murders done for sacrifices to their gods. These murders the British government had never been able to stop.
The man began to dance around in uncouth gyrations. The green light was always upon him, and the collection of strange things suspended about his body rattled horribly at each movement.
Now and then he paused in his dance to bend his ear to some object he gripped in his right hand. Through it all there was a dreadful hypnotic influence emanating from him which held Nick Carter and his companions spellbound.