After some persuasion, Jefferson Arnold followed Nick’s advice. The eagerness with which the soldier took the grisly relic told them they had hit on the right thing.
“Lord Slava would have given many jewels for this,” he said. “May I take it to him?”
“You certainly may,” answered Jefferson, trying to hide a grimace of disgust. “With my compliments, and the gratitude of both my son and myself.”
* * * * *
It was three months later, when Nick Carter and his two assistants sat in the handsome library in Nick Carter’s home in Madison Avenue, New York, that the detective asked Patsy what the little three-cornered plate of gold was that he had seen in his hand the night before.
Patsy grinned.
“It is a relic of our trip into Shangore, in the Himalayas,” he replied. “I grabbed it before we left that amphitheater after all the fuss. I found it in the sand.”
“Well, but what is it?”
“Only one of the scales from the Golden Scarab. I was going to have it mounted in a frame, to hang up in the library. It was to be a present to you from Chick and myself.”
“I shall be very glad to accept it,” smiled Nick Carter. “It will help me to realize, when I look at it, that all that adventure in Shangore was not a dream.”