Pike had been a trusted employee—the manager of the Indian branch of the great New York house—and he had taken advantage of his position to steal what might be called a fortune.
For the moral effect on others, he should be caught and made to answer for his crime.
Perhaps there was another, and potent, reason for the great detective desiring to penetrate the mysteries of the great Himalayan range that he confessed hardly to himself—his innate love of adventure.
Nick Carter always had been interested in the vast unknown stretches of Asia, and what he had heard of Bolongu, the Land of the Golden Scarab, had been of a nature to make him long to go there.
There was every reason to suppose that William Pike had found his way into this strange country, because Leslie Arnold knew that he himself was on his way there when he managed to escape. Pike had some kind of compact with the natives of Bolongu, and it was to their land he had doubtless gone when his scheme against young Arnold failed.
“Sahib! We must fight!” suddenly boomed a deep voice out of the darkness of the cave in which smoldered the remains of the camp fire. “They come.”
The owner of the voice stalked into the red glow of the fire and made a deep salaam to the detective.
“Hello, Jai Singh! Where did you get that news?” asked Nick Carter.
“Jai Singh watches, sahib!” was the grave reply. “The men of the Golden Scarab are far off. But not far enough to hide. They have one of their priests in the rocks across this mountain.”
“You mean in Bolongu? I should say there is more than one there,” rejoined the detective. “If the stories I have heard are true, hundreds of them are in the Land of the Golden Scarab.”