“That’s as it may be,” observed Nick Carter. “Anyhow, we all know that it was the intention of Calaman to hold us as prisoners, and perhaps to kill us all eventually. That was why we got out.”
“The only thing there was for us to do,” growled Jefferson Arnold.
“Now he is trying to entice us in again,” said Chick. “How do we know Leslie Arnold is in the city?”
“Here is his necktie, sent over to us on a spear,” Nick reminded him.
“Well, what of that? Leslie may have dropped it.”
“No,” interposed Jefferson Arnold. “I saw that necktie tightly knotted around his neck as we came over the drawbridge. It could not have come off accidentally. The only way old Calaman could have got hold of it was by having it taken from the boy’s neck. Leslie is a prisoner in Shangore.”
“That is my reading of it,” agreed Nick Carter. “We shall have to go and get him out.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to do that, even if we get into the city,” remarked Jai Singh. “Those thick walls and the gates that no one can pass must be kept in mind.”
Arnold looked at the tall, dignified Hindu resentfully.
“What are you croaking about, Jai Singh? It isn’t like you to hold back when there is to be some fighting. Why do you oppose our going back to Shangore?”