“Keep quiet!” he ordered sternly. “Unless you try to play us false, no harm will come to you. I could kill you if I liked. But I have no intention of doing so unless you make me.”
“What do you want?” growled the fellow, deep in his throat. “This is my home. Why are you here?”
“To find a place that you know. You will show us the way.”
A loud laugh that was hardly a human sound broke croakingly from the witch doctor’s lips.
“I will not show you anything.”
“I think you will,” rejoined Nick Carter coolly. “Chick, give me that knife.”
He took in his hand the long knife that had been raised against him menacingly when he had surprised the man at his gruesome work, and held its sharp point just above the head of the beetle tattooed on his chest.
“Now,” said Nick, “I have but to give one thrust, and there would be an end. Yet my hand does not move. Why? Because you will do what I say. You will take us over the pass that leads to the city of Shangore, in the heart of the Bolongu country.”
“Why would you go there?”
“That is no concern of yours,” Nick Carter flashed back at him. “We are going there.”