“If you do, I’ll stuff a handkerchief in your mouth,” whispered Nick Carter, as he saw the danger. “Pinch your nose if you can’t keep it back in any other way.”
“Look at the roof, chief!” murmured Chick, in Nick’s ear. “What are those things hanging to that crossbar?”
“Merciful heavens!” was the detective’s gasping exclamation. “This is awful!”
The whole roof of the cavern was blackened by smoke, and festoons of soot hung down several feet in length, like black cobwebs. In the middle of the smoke, hanging from an iron bar, were several shriveled round things, varying in size from an orange to a large grapefruit.
Nick Carter saw what the things were, but he did not say anything.
“What’s this stuff on the floor?” whispered Patsy, the irrepressible. “Feels like sand.”
“I guess it is sand,” returned Jefferson Arnold, as he leaned forward to look. “It shines like sea sand. But what I’d like to know is what that gentleman is doing.”
Nick Carter did not reply, but a look of understanding had come into his eyes. He shuddered as he glanced up again to the round things hanging to the crossbar in the smoke and soot.
“It is a witch doctor,” said Jai Singh. “He makes medicine. With my own people we cure men like these with the spear before they go too far and try to make trouble. A medicine man should not be allowed to know too much, or he will do harm.”
“So you just kill them and get them out of the way, eh?” observed Jefferson Arnold. “Not a bad idea! It might help the United States if they would do the same thing with some of our politicians at home.”