“I see. You were to be a decoy?”
Adil evidently did not exactly understand this word “decoy,” but he knew, in a general way, what it meant, and he nodded.
“What did you tell them?”
“I would not speak,” replied Adil. “That is why they told the medicine man to make me see clearly what must be done.”
“The blackguards!” ejaculated the millionaire. “They were trying to torture him into obeying them.”
“Say, chief!” interrupted Patsy. “Let’s pull out of this. We ought to get after the gang that have Mr. Arnold’s son without wasting any more time. Adil can take us to the place, can’t he?”
“If he can’t, I can,” boomed the deep tones of Jai Singh. “These men are of the low caste who are servants of the men of the Golden Scarab.”
“What’s a scarab?” asked Patsy. He always liked to get to the bottom of things without loss of time.
“It is a beetle, Patsy,” replied Nick Carter. “Go on, Jai Singh. What do you know about it?”
“I know there is a country far up above the hills where the snows are, and that the Golden Scarab is their god. They are big men, who fight well, and they have cities as fine as any in India, with great temples, on which are signs cut in stone by their ancestors, and where they worship the Golden Scarab. It is in one of those cities that we shall find Sahib Leslie.”