Besides this covering, there was a quantity of intricate mechanism, by which the pretended beetle could be moved in any way that might have been possible to a live one.
Inside the case Nick Carter found three dead men. They had been the moving spirits of the thing, and that they had done their work well was proved by the fact that few people doubted the reality of the Golden Scarab.
“I didn’t take any stock in it,” declared Patsy. “You couldn’t tell me a thing like that was alive.”
“It was alive in a sense,” corrected Chick.
“Well, you know what I mean,” grunted Patsy. “How did these men work it, chief?”
“Aren’t any of the men alive?” asked Chick.
“No. They have all paid the penalty of their villainy,” was Nick Carter’s reply. “I cannot say that I am sorry. They would have killed Leslie Arnold if we had not come in time to stop the performance.”
“That’s so. They got just what they deserved,” declared Patsy, with decided vigor.
“And that poor young woman was to have gone first of all,” added Chick. “I wonder if she knows that her husband is dead.”
“We won’t tell her, at all events,” said Nick. “Let me look over these fellows in the Scarab, and see what killed them. Two of them were caught by the spear. That’s plain enough.”