Transcriber’s Notes:

The original spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained, with the exception of apparent typographical errors which have been corrected.

NICK CARTER
STORIES

Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York Post Office, by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Ave., New York.

Copyright, 1915, by Street & Smith. O.G. Smith and G.C. Smith, Proprietors.

Terms to NICK CARTER STORIES Mail Subscribers.

(Postage Free.)

Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each.

How to Send Money—By post-office or express money order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage stamps in ordinary letter.

Receipts—Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once.

No. 134. NEW YORK, April 3, 1915. Price Five Cents.

THE SECRET OF SHANGORE;
Or, NICK CARTER AMONG THE SPEARMEN.

Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.

CHAPTER I.
AN ECHO FROM THE FOE.

“No, Carter! I shall not go back until I have got my hands on that wretched crook, William Pike, and I don’t care if it leads me into the very heart of this strange country where they say a white man never has come from alive.”

The speaker was Jefferson Arnold, the multimillionaire shipowner and importer of Oriental goods, whose establishment was one of the best known of its kind in New York City.

His firm jaw came together with a snap, and his dark eyes sparkled with determination in the red light of the camp fire, as he looked at the world-renowned detective for approval of his determination.

“I am rather glad to hear you say that,” was Nick Carter’s calm reply.

Jefferson Arnold jumped up from the rock upon which he had been sitting and went around to shake the detective by the hand.

“I knew you would agree with me,” he shouted. “We have found my son Leslie among these rascals, and we’ve driven them back, over the Himalayas all right. But that is not enough for me. I want to see what these mysteries are that we have heard so much about.”

“Bully for you, Mr. Arnold!” cried Patsy Garvan. “That’s the stuff. I want to lick one or two of those black brutes for what they did to us the last time we had a mix-up.”

“What do you mean?” put in Chick. “I ask that as first lieutenant of the greatest detective in the world. We licked ’em, didn’t we?”

“Sure we licked them!” agreed Patsy promptly. “But they blazed away at us with poisoned arrows and tried to dig holes in us with their spears. It wasn’t their fault they did not lay out our whole bunch.”

Nick Carter laughed heartily.

“When people get into a fight, Patsy,” he reminded his young second assistant, “the object is understood to be to hurt the enemy as much as possible. You should not hold that against anybody who puts up a fair fight.”

“That’s all right!” conceded Patsy. “But this wasn’t any fair fight—at least on the side of these Indians from the Land of the Golden—what is it?”

“The Land of the Golden Scarab,” supplied Nick.

“All right! I’d forgotten that word. It’s always a sticker to me,” grumbled Patsy. “But, anyhow, when those fellows, with their white turbans and black faces, and their thin shirts and short pants, came surging from behind the rocks, trying to get us by surprise, I hadn’t any use for them. What I want is a man to stand up before me and give me a fair-and-square give-and-take. Then I haven’t any kick coming if I get the worst of it.”

“When shall we start?” asked Jefferson Arnold impatiently.

“You mean you will not go down to Calcutta, to get re-enforcements, then?” asked Nick.

“No, indeed,” returned the millionaire. “What would be the use of that? Here we are, right among the foothills of the Himalayas, and we know—or think we know—that this mysterious race of beings, who worship the Golden Scarab, are just on the other side of the range, in front of us.”

“That’s what I learned when those fellows were leading me along,” put in Leslie Arnold, as he carelessly took from his belt the automatic revolver given to him by Nick Carter a short time before, and lovingly regarded the cartridges. “Ask Adil.”

Adil—tall, dark, grave, and of the best type of Hindu—came forward from the shadows and made a salaam to the company in general.

“Adil is my friend,” continued Leslie.

“Thy servant, sahib,” corrected Adil respectfully.

“His valet, as we should say in New York,” came from Jefferson Arnold. “Here in India they say body servant—except when they use an Indian word. It’s all the same. Go ahead, Adil!”

“They were taking us to Bolongu, where the Golden Scarab is all powerful,” explained Adil. “They said we should get there in another day. It was then that Sahib Leslie and I got away. So we did not go.”

“You bet you didn’t go,” put in Patsy Garvan. “You ran into us, and we had a word or two to say.”

“And that is all you know about it?” asked Jefferson Arnold, disregarding Patsy’s interruption.

“I have heard much more,” replied Adil. “But I do not know any more than I have said.”

“We can go on with the force we have,” remarked Nick Carter slowly. “Because, no matter how large a one we might take with us, they would count for little against the hordes of Bolongu.”

“Do you mean that you don’t think we can get hold of Pike, if he stands in with them?” asked Jefferson Arnold.

“No. What I mean is that we may have to depend more on strategy than on physical violence,” smiled Nick Carter. “We shall have to pit our brains against theirs.”

“That ought to be easy,” snorted Patsy. “What do these Indian ‘smokes’ know?”

“The wisdom of the East is proverbial,” returned Nick, in grave tones. “There is not the slightest doubt that the men of the Land of the Golden Scarab have more general knowledge than many white men.”

“Wow!” howled Patsy, at what he regarded as a horrible reflection on his race. “If I didn’t think I knew more than any of these black spear throwers we’ve met in India, I’d quit business and go to playing checkers the rest of my life.”

“Well, that’s all about that—isn’t it?” interrupted Jefferson Arnold impatiently. “Let’s get a move on.”

“We will wait another hour,” suggested Nick Carter. “By that time the moon will be down. We shall be in an exposed situation as soon as we get out of this cave. If there were moonlight, any of those fellows who might be farther up the mountain could shoot poisoned arrows into us, or even reach us with spears.”

“Well, this is something I didn’t expect,” remarked Chick, as the others moved from the fire, leaving him alone with Nick Carter. “We were lucky enough to rescue young Leslie, and we got his man Adil, too. That is all you were asked to do, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered Nick. “We came to India to find Leslie Arnold. His father was in such pitiful distress, that I should have been disposed to lend him what help I could, even if he had not engaged me on a business basis.”

“Of course you would,” assented Chick, and he knew it was the exact truth. “But now that you have found Leslie, and he’s all right, do you think it is worth while to go any farther?”

“Why not?” asked Nick dryly.

“Because, as you know, your desk in New York must be piled up with business by this time,” returned Chick, with some warmth. “It is a question whether such a man as you, on whom so many persons depend when they are in trouble, has the right to stay away longer than he is absolutely obliged.”

“Legal right—or moral?” smiled the famous detective.

“Moral, of course,” was Chick’s quick response. “And that has always had as much weight with you as the other kind. Therefore, I say that we ought to let Pike go. The Arnolds can find him without you. That is, if he can be found at all.”

“Think so?”

“Anyhow, if they can’t, it’s none of our business. We are a long way from Madison Avenue, remember. It will take us many weeks to get home, even if we were to start to-night. We shall have to travel nearly half around the world.”

Nick Carter was amused at his companion’s earnestness. He knew that Chick’s advice was given with the very best motives. His assistant would follow him into the very jaws of death—had done so on many occasions. But it seemed to Chick, now that they had finished the job they had come for, that it would be better to get home as quickly as possible.

It was quite true, as he had said, that there would most likely be piles of business on his chief’s desk in his Madison Avenue home by this time, and that scores of people would be anxiously awaiting his return.

But Nick Carter believed that he owed it to Jefferson Arnold to help him bring the rascally William Pike to justice, whether the money he had stolen from the Arnold Company’s Calcutta office—a hundred thousand dollars—were recovered or not.

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.”

“This priest is much nearer,” returned Jai Singh. “He prepares the things required for feasts of the god in Bolongu.”

Nick Carter got to his feet and looked at the tall, dignified Hindu in some impatience.

“What the deuce do you mean?” he demanded. “And why should we care for one priest? Where are the men we drove back yesterday?”

Before Jai Singh could speak, there came an answer to Nick Carter’s query which could not be mistaken.

It was a concerted howl of hatred and vengeance, which reverberated among the rocks and seemed to be close at hand.

Nick jumped to his feet, his rifle in hand, ready for instant use, as he looked around for the other men of his party.

Jai Singh smiled soberly and shook his head.

“They are not in our camp, nor very near the place we hide,” he said. “The sahib can put down his gun for the present.”

“I heard them not more than a hundred yards away,” insisted Nick Carter.

Again Jai Singh shook his head, while the smile his dark face had worn before crept slowly to the corners of his mouth and into his deep eyes.

“You think you heard them close. That is because the mountain walls carry sounds from a long distance. It was the echo that came to us. The men who shouted are two miles away.”

For a moment Nick looked at the tall East Indian as if inclined to contradict him. Then he recollected that he had heard a great deal about these wonderful mountain echoes, and he said nothing.

“It is on the same principle as the whispering galleries of great buildings,” he thought. “I have heard whispers from a distance seemingly right in my ear in the Capitol at Washington. Why should I doubt the phenomenon in this wonderful land of strange things?”

“What’s the orders, chief?” suddenly broke in Patsy Garvan, whose unquenchable curiosity brought him over when he saw Jai Singh and Nick Carter in conference. “Do we go ahead and clean out those blacks in the mountains, or are we to take a quiet jaunt into the Land of the Golden Pelican, or whatever it is?”

“We shall get to the Land of the Golden Scarab in due time, I hope,” was Nick Carter’s quiet reply. “We shall start in five minutes. Tell everybody to get ready. And——”

But Patsy had already rushed off to announce joyfully that they were going into action, and he did not hear anything more from his chief.

CHAPTER II.
WHAT THEY FOUND IN THE CAVE.

“The fact that we know the rascals are two miles away makes it unnecessary for us to care about the moonlight,” remarked Nick Carter, as, ten minutes afterward he strode along a narrow ledge that wound its way up the mountainside.

“I am glad of it,” grunted Jefferson Arnold. “I didn’t want to wait for anything.”

Nick did not reply. He turned to see that all his little army was coming along, and that all were properly equipped for anything that might happen in the way of fighting.

There were his two assistants, the two Arnolds, Adil, and Jai Singh, with the four coolies, whom he could perhaps be able to depend on in a scrimmage, but who, at all events, were useful to carry most of the baggage.

In addition to all these, there was one member of the party who said nothing, but who was not to be despised in a pinch—the magnificent bloodhound, Captain.

Trained to do police work from his puppyhood, and with a scent that never failed so long as there was anything for him to follow, Captain might still prove himself to be the most valuable individual in the party when it was desirable to follow some slippery and cunning foe.

They were walking along a narrow path of rock, with a towering wall on one side and a seemingly bottomless cañon on the other. It was such a trail as is often found in the mountainous districts of the Far West of America.

“Be cautious,” Nick Carter admonished his followers. “This is the kind of place where there might easily be a guard at intervals, if the Bolongu men know as much about the strategy of warfare as I believe.”

“You need not fear, sahib,” came from Jai Singh. “They are frightened. They will not attack us till we have got out of this part of the mountains. They shout, but that is all.”

“I wish they would show up a little nearer,” observed Patsy. “I’m getting as rusty as an old gate for want of a scrap.”

“Keep quiet, Patsy!” growled Chick, by his side. “You’ll get all the fighting you want before this trip is over—perhaps a little more. What’s this cave just in front of us, I wonder? I see several of them.”

“They have been used by outposts,” volunteered Jai Singh. “See! Here is a rusted spear head. It has been here for years, from the look of it. But it shows that sentries have used these caves at some time.”

“There always have been fights in this part of the country, I should say,” remarked Nick Carter. “Is that a flight of steps I see yonder?”

“Yes, sahib.”

“How far is it away?”

“Three miles.”

“It does not look so far,” declared Nick. “Don’t you think you are stretching it, Jai Singh?”

“It may be a little nearer as the eagle flies,” replied the Hindu. “But the trail is even more than three miles.”

“Gee! This is more like a Marathon than a healthy scrap,” grumbled Patsy. “He talks about three miles as easily as if it were only three feet. This kind of stunt might fit a letter carrier from the Bronx. But I wish we had horses or a motor car.”

Patsy Garvan liked to complain in this way. It was exercise for his tongue and gave his lively mind something to do. His discontent was only skin-deep, however. He did not mean anything, and Nick Carter, who overheard, smiled in amusement.

The path became narrower, so that only one person could walk at a time, and even then with the greatest of care. Then again it widened out, with room for three men abreast without being crowded.

“There are the steps!” exclaimed Nick Carter, as they turned a sharp corner. “We are getting into warm quarters.”

“Some of the Bolongu men may be at the top,” suggested Jai Singh.

“Do you think so?” asked Jefferson Arnold.

“I do not,” returned the Hindu.

“You don’t?” spluttered Jefferson. “Then why in thunder do you say——”

“It is wise to be steady,” was Jai Singh’s grave rebuke.

The flight of steps was a long one. When they got to the top, Patsy Garvan said he had counted three hundred and nine steps.

“That is correct,” confirmed Jai Singh. “I have counted them before, as well as now. I have often thought that, with a picked twoscore of men I could hold it against a hundred. What do you say, sahib?”

He turned to Nick Carter—as he generally did when he sought confirmation of some statement he had made.

“I think you are right,” returned the detective. “But I am glad the Bolongus are not here, keeping us off. These steps have saved us going a long way around, from the appearance of it.”

“They have,” assented Jai Singh. “You want to get to their land quickly, and I help you to do it. We could have gone a longer and safer way. But this is straight.”

“What do you mean by ‘a safer way,’ Jai Singh—Bolongus?”

“There would have been no fear of meeting Bolongus. But we may have to fight our way after coming up these steps.”

Nick Carter did not reply. It would have been waste of time to tell the Hindu that there was no desire to avoid the Bolongus. Jai Singh knew that as well as anybody.

The trail seemed now more perilous than ever. So narrow was it in places that they had to edge along sideways, with their toes actually overhanging the dizzy abyss. And it was some three thousand feet to the bottom, at that.

Once the butt of Jefferson Arnold’s rifle touched a projection behind him. He tilted forward, and it was only the quick throwing out of Nick Carter’s arm that saved him from lurching headlong into space.

It was Chick who saved the next man from deadly danger. One of the four coolies stepped on a loose pebble, which rolled under his feet and caused him to half turn toward the brink of the precipice.

The coolie was carrying rather a heavy load. Chick saw him sway under it, and an agonized expression came into his face.

“Look out there, son!” called out Patsy.

But Patsy was too far away to help, willing as he was to do it. It was up to Chick. He gripped the man by the legs below the knees and flung him flat, to take the jerking strain which he knew must come.

It did come, too. The coolie flung up his arms and fell over the edge of the precipice. But Chick held on grimly till the man had wriggled back to safety. That was what he had laid himself out to do.

It was all over in two or three seconds. But it seemed more than a minute before they heard the reverberating crash as the load he had carried reached the bottom of the cañon.

The sound sent a chilly feeling to Chick’s heart that nothing in the way of any ordinary danger could have done.

“I reckon we’ll use ropes,” decided Nick Carter, who saw that his assistant had actually turned a little pale. “We won’t take any more chances.”

Two long lines of rope were knotted together and a loop turn taken around the waist of each man in the party.

Nick Carter took the lead, while Jai Singh was in the middle, they being the heaviest members of the party, and Chick at the rear end. Captain trotted along behind. He was sure-footed enough not to require ropes to keep him out of trouble.

“What’s that big cave ahead of us, Jai Singh?” asked Nick Carter, when they had proceeded in this manner for two miles or more.

“It is the first sign that we are getting near Bolongu,” was the reply. “We should stop before we go into it. What there is inside it is not for me to say. We must see.”

“That sounds rather pleasantly mysterious,” remarked Jefferson Arnold.

The Hindu did not reply, but kept his eyes fixed on Nick, to see what the detective meant to do.

“I understand,” said Nick, quietly. “We will make camp just inside the cave, to be out of the wind. How far does the cave go back?”

“Farther than any white man has ever been. Neither has Jai Singh gone in. It belongs to the men of the Golden Scarab.”

“Do you mean that we shall find a lot of the rascals inside?” asked Jefferson. “If that is the case, it will not be wise to light a fire.”

“There is nothing to fear,” returned Jai Singh. “Only priests ever go into this cave, and they are a long, long way back. We will see.”

Nick Carter had perfect faith in the tall Hindu. He proved it by having a fire lighted in the entrance of the cave, and telling Adil, who had been appointed chief cook, to get supper.

They all dispatched their supper with appetites that might be expected in men who had been following a rough and difficult trail all day. But every one had his rifle ready for use, and Jai Singh’s spear was always at his hand, while the revolver he carried in a regular cartridge belt at his waist could have been brought into use at any instant.

Nothing was seen to disturb them, however, and when, at last, Nick Carter got to his feet and announced that he was going to explore the cave, his two assistants, Jefferson Arnold, and Jai Singh were ready to go with him.

Leslie Arnold and Adil would have liked to go, too. But the detective told them to stay and guard the entrance to the cave, in company with the four coolies and the bloodhound.

Nick Carter gave his orders quietly, but at the same time in a manner that told of his determination to be obeyed. No one thought of disputing him.

“I will take one of our lanterns, and you, Chick, carry the other,” he directed. “We can give light enough with them for all of us.”

The entrance of the cave was some thirty feet wide, and of about the same height.

They had not gone in more than two or three hundred yards, however, before they found themselves in a very circumscribed space. At the same time, they noticed that the cave seemed no longer to have been the work of nature, but of a human skill that struck them, under the circumstances, as decidedly uncanny.

The sides and roof of the rock had been smoothed until they glistened in the light of the lanterns, while the floor was paved with regularly laid blocks of different-colored stone that had the appearance of veined marble.

This was not all. On the smooth walls were engraved pictures of battles between warriors in the garb of Indians of long ago, intermingled with representations of strange animals which might have belonged to another world.

“Gee! This kind of thing gives me the willies!” exclaimed Patsy. “Look ahead there! What’s that?”

He was pointing to a sort of stone table. On it lay the body of a man without a head!

CHAPTER III.
THE WITCH DOCTOR.

It was a grisly object to be encountered so unexpectedly, and, as the light of the lanterns flickered upon it, Patsy’s overwrought imagination made him think it was preparing to get up.

“Gee! I wish I was out of this!” ejaculated Patsy involuntarily.

“Why?” whispered Chick. “That can’t hurt you.”

“How do I know that? Look on his chest. There’s some kind of tattooing. Looks like a lobster.”

“It’s a beetle,” corrected Jefferson Arnold.

“The Golden Scarab!” explained Jai Singh, in his deep, resonant voice. “You see that they are on the walls, too.”

“You’re right,” agreed Nick Carter. “There are etchings of beetles all over the walls and ceilings. But they are mixed up with men and trees and rocks. I did not detect the beetles at once.”

Indeed, the drawings had been so skillfully made that it was only after looking at them a second time that one saw how many representations of the strange god of these people there were.

Nick Carter stepped in front of the others, to inspect closely the still form on the stone table.

He noted that the table—a mere slab—was long and narrow. There was room on it for the body of a tall man, and not much more.

The dead man had nothing on but a loin cloth, and the skin was much lighter than that of the ordinary East Indian. Indeed, it was more like that of a Chinese, although taller than most Chinamen. Even without the head, it could be determined that the man in life had been of considerable height.

“Dead a long time, from its general appearance,” muttered Nick Carter. “But the embalming has been done with Oriental skillfulness.”

Indeed, the preserving was so wonderful that the figure looked more like an image in some kind of polished dark marble than something of human clay.

Some glistening, lacquerlike substance had been employed, which, although colorless and transparent, kept out all the air. It had hardened after being applied as a liquid, and was now like glass to the touch.

No living person was in sight, and the invaders determined to go on farther.

They had come upon a mystery, and not one of them was willing to go back until they should discover the solution.

Patsy had recovered from his first shock of horror, and now was bending over the table, studying intently the sketch of the Golden Scarab on the breast of the corpse.

“Rather a nasty thing!” he remarked. “I don’t mind seeing a man who has been knocked out in a fair scrap, even if it has killed him. But this business of a fellow losing his head and being iced over—— Well, he isn’t any wedding cake, I’ll tell you those.”

“That will do, Patsy,” interposed Nick Carter. “You need not lose your own head over it. The cave extends a long way yet, from the look of it. We are going. Do you want to come along?”

“Ugh!”

Patsy grunted at the very thought of being left alone with this gruesome thing, and was close by the side of his chief on the instant.

Farther and farther into the strange tunnel they pushed their way, and at every step were confirmed in their first conviction that it was a place used for unholy rites by a strange people.

There were other stone slabs like the one on which lay the headless body, but all of them were empty. They counted nine in all.

The cave ended abruptly a few paces beyond the last of the nine slabs. At least, that was Nick Carter’s first impression. Then he saw that there was a narrow passage which went on into the darkness, but how far he could not conjecture.

“Are we going to squeeze in there?” whispered Patsy.

“Yes.”

Nick Carter had already entered when he answered, and was working his way through, his elbows at his sides, so as to take up as little room as possible.

“Don’t make any noise,” he whispered to his followers. “We don’t know what we are going to run into. We may find a hundred men back in this place for anything we can tell.”

“I only hope that blackguard, Pike, will be among them,” growled Jefferson Arnold. “I wouldn’t care how many others there might be if I could get my fingers on him.”

“We must wait and see,” replied Nick.

He had gone about a hundred feet, the others close behind, when the floor sloped down steeply, and they had to walk on their heels to keep upright.

“I see a light a little distance ahead,” he whispered. “It is red, as if it came from a fire. Put out the lanterns, and don’t talk until we know what this is all about.”

Nick had stopped abruptly, and he was listening, in the hope that something might come to his ears which would explain the mystery.

When the lanterns were darkened, all they could make out was the red glare some way in front, while a faint aromatic odor, as if spices were burning, drifted to them in fitful gusts.

All at once the tunnel widened, and they were able to stand side by side and move about more freely.

They found themselves at the top of a flight of shallow steps—not more than three or four—looking down into an almost circular cavern, in the middle of which was a large brazier, full of live coals.

That accounted at once for the red glare, and soon they saw how the fragrance of burning spices had come to them.

Seated in front of the brazier was a man, clad in a loose white robe which he had permitted to slip down to his waist. His back was toward the intruders, and he seemed quite unconscious of their presence.

So intent was he on his work, whatever it might be, that when Patsy made quite a noisy shuffle in his effort to get a better view, the strange being did not turn around.

They could see his elbows moving, as if he were kneading something in the big caldron that rested on the brazier, and from time to time he took something from a cloth by his side and threw a handful of powdery stuff into the brazier.

When he did this, a great splash of flame and smoke shot upward, and the whole place was filled with a pungent odor that threatened to make Patsy break into a terrific sneeze.

“If you do, I’ll stuff a handkerchief in your mouth,” whispered Nick Carter, as he saw the danger. “Pinch your nose if you can’t keep it back in any other way.”

“Look at the roof, chief!” murmured Chick, in Nick’s ear. “What are those things hanging to that crossbar?”

“Merciful heavens!” was the detective’s gasping exclamation. “This is awful!”

The whole roof of the cavern was blackened by smoke, and festoons of soot hung down several feet in length, like black cobwebs. In the middle of the smoke, hanging from an iron bar, were several shriveled round things, varying in size from an orange to a large grapefruit.

Nick Carter saw what the things were, but he did not say anything.

“What’s this stuff on the floor?” whispered Patsy, the irrepressible. “Feels like sand.”

“I guess it is sand,” returned Jefferson Arnold, as he leaned forward to look. “It shines like sea sand. But what I’d like to know is what that gentleman is doing.”

Nick Carter did not reply, but a look of understanding had come into his eyes. He shuddered as he glanced up again to the round things hanging to the crossbar in the smoke and soot.

“It is a witch doctor,” said Jai Singh. “He makes medicine. With my own people we cure men like these with the spear before they go too far and try to make trouble. A medicine man should not be allowed to know too much, or he will do harm.”

“So you just kill them and get them out of the way, eh?” observed Jefferson Arnold. “Not a bad idea! It might help the United States if they would do the same thing with some of our politicians at home.”

They watched the man bending over his caldron and brazier for at least ten minutes before he leaned back and held at arm’s length the thing he had been kneading over the fire.

He scrutinized it with the air of an artist looking over a sketch he had just made. Then he made some slight alterations and held it out again.

Nick observed that there was a low couch, with a roll of skins, at one side of the cavern, and that a pitcher and some coarse cakes lay beside it on the floor.

“He must live alone,” remarked Chick. “A cheerful existence, I don’t think.”

Patsy Garvan could not hold back his curiosity any longer. He pushed his way past the others, stole down the shallow steps, and tiptoed across the white sand until he was close behind the man.

He clapped his hand to his mouth to stifle a cry.

What Patsy had seen in the strange creature’s skinny fingers was the head of a man—a man with a light-colored beard, hair, and eyebrows. The head had been reduced to the size of an orange.

The head was not artificial. A single glance was enough to assure him of that. No, it was a real head, but in miniature.

The things Nick Carter had noted hanging to the crossbar were human heads drying in the smoke!

In spite of Patsy’s endeavor to keep back his ejaculation of horror, he had made sound enough to break the spell which had overhung the place.

The man at the brazier leaped to his feet in a flash, at the same time whipping out an immense two-edged knife of portentous length and sharpened to a needle point.

The fellow was big and powerful, although he had not seemed so when crouched over the fire. His hair was tinged with gray and his black eyes were sunk in their sockets. But he was full of furious energy.

With a roar of savage anger, he charged at Patsy Garvan.

But Patsy was too much on the alert to be there when his foe got to where he had been. The medicine man missed Patsy altogether. Then he found himself in the sinewy hands of Nick Carter.

The detective had seized him just below the elbows and was holding his hands to his sides. Chick raised his revolver, to knock him senseless if he should break loose from his captor.

“I have him safe,” cried Nick Carter. “Don’t hurt him. We want him alive.”

“You do, eh?” mumbled Patsy Garvan. “Well, I wouldn’t want him, alive or dead, either.”

CHAPTER IV.
AN ENEMY FOR A GUIDE.

Nick Carter had the witch doctor in such a firm grip that there was no danger of his getting away.

“Keep back!” requested the detective. “I’d rather deal with him alone. We’ll have him where we want him in a moment.”

Slowly, Nick twisted the man’s right arm until his fingers relaxed and the knife he had kept firmly in his grasp throughout dropped from his hand.

“Pick up that knife!” directed the detective.

Chick had the knife in his hand almost before his chief spoke, and stuck it in his belt.

“There’s some rope by that couch, Patsy,” went on Nick. “Bring it over. We’ll tie him up. Then we shall be able to see what we have to do.”

A minute or two was sufficient time in which to secure the wretch’s arms and legs. Then they put him on the couch, where he lay silent, except for his heavy breathing.

The expression on his swarthy face told plainly enough that there would be murder if only he were able to get the upper hand for a few seconds.

Nick Carter gingerly picked up the shriveled head from the floor and examined it in the glow of the relighted lanterns.

The hideous article was perfect in everything but size. The face was not larger than a doll’s. The eyes were closed and the eyelashes and brows had been trimmed down. Some process had been applied to the mouth to reduce its dimensions, but the hair and beard had been left at their full length.

The effect was that of a pigmy face peering from a mass of red-brown hair, while over the forehead, where the skull should have been, was a fillet of soft gold, like a bracelet such as might be worn by a young girl.

“Gee! It makes me feel sick!” groaned Patsy. “Put it down, chief!”

“It is an evil charm!” rumbled Jai Singh. “Throw it away, and I’ll drive my spear into the man who made it. Then we can go on. We are wasting time here.”

It was not like Jai Singh to exhibit impatience, and Nick Carter glanced at him curiously. The Hindu’s dark face had become gray, and his skin was moist with a deadly, superstitious fear.

Nick Carter had no idea of putting the head down until he had learned all possible about it. He had been weighing it thoughtfully in his hand. A sudden idea caused him to turn it upside down and look at the place where the neck should have been.

“I thought so,” he remarked. “Look!”

He pulled out a plug, and a small shower of silver sand poured out. When the sand ceased to come forth, the head was hollow, but perfectly firm, with walls about half an inch thick.

“I’ve heard of this method of embalming the dead in India,” murmured Nick Carter reflectively. “A specimen like this would bring more than a thousand dollars from a museum in any part of the United States, because it is rare. Moreover, it is very well done. It is a magnificent example of this sort of work.”

“I don’t see anything magnificent about it,” grunted Patsy. “What are we going to do now?”

Nick Carter deliberately wrapped the head in his handkerchief and dropped it into his coat pocket.

“Look on this man’s chest,” he said, pointing to the prisoner on the couch. “He has a beetle, like that on the body we saw back there in that other part of the cave. I wish I knew what it means.”

He addressed the man in English, but there was no answer except an intensifying of the savage scowl. Then Nick tried several of the Indian dialects, without success.

Once the man spat at him like an angry cat.

“Well-behaved old scout, isn’t he?” remarked Patsy. “He ought to be yowling along a back fence, somewhere.”

Whatever else this strange creature might have been, certainly he was no coward. He wanted to fight, and it was only because he was bound hand and foot that he did not attack his captors, notwithstanding that they were five to his one.

Evidently he expected no more mercy at their hands than he would have shown them had their positions been reversed. With the philosophy of the true Oriental, he accepted his fate and made no complaint.

“He’s a low-caste blackguard, I guess,” remarked Nick to Jai Singh, loudly enough for the prisoner to overhear.

Instantly the witch doctor began to writhe on his couch, while from his lips poured a whole-hearted and comprehensive stream of blasphemy in English that might have come from some unregenerate habitant of “Hell’s Kitchen,” in New York.

Nick Carter smiled. He had counted on his sarcastic allusion to the man to bring forth some such demonstration which would reveal his origin, as well as the tongue he commonly used.

“That fetched him!” observed Chick quietly. “Anything about their caste gets these fellows going before they know it.”

The man was cursing again, and Nick could not but admire the ingenuity with which he seemed to find new oaths ready for use as he wanted them.

“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.”

“Suppose I should refuse to show the way?”

“We would find it, anyhow,” replied the detective. “That is, unless it is only a collection of little huts. In that case, we might overlook them—for a while.”

Again Nick Carter had stirred up the anger of his prisoner, with the satisfactory result of his saying more than could have been got out of him in any other way.

“My people are not dogs, to live in huts,” he stormed. “Our palaces are of marble and pure gold. Take the ropes off me, and I will show you. The city of Shangore is more beautiful than such white-faced curs as you can think of.”

“He’s the soul of politeness, that chap!” observed Jefferson Arnold. “If he were worth the trouble, I’d lick him myself, just to teach him to keep his tongue in order. He swears worse than a Malay, too.”

“Are we to kill you and leave you here?” went on Nick, addressing the witch doctor. “Or will you show us the way?”

“I will take you,” answered the man promptly.

This sudden acquiescence made Nick Carter suspicious. Moreover, he had noted a fleeting gleam in the man’s eyes which bade him beware of treachery.

“We will go with you,” he said sternly. “But it will be in our own fashion. We will set out at the breaking of the dawn, and you yourself shall go first. A rope will be around you, holding your arms to your sides even as they are now.”

“I am to walk tied? Will my feet be free?” sneered the prisoner.

“Of course. But, at the first sign that you intend to play us false, this knife of yours shall be driven into you between the shoulder blades. You know how sharp the knife is. It will surely find your life.”

“I shan’t play false,” growled the prisoner. “What I say I will do is done.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” muttered Patsy. “I wouldn’t trust him half a block with my back to him.”

“Bring him along. We will take him to our camp at the opening of the big cave. In the morning we will start.”

As the detective gave his orders, he stuck the knife into his own belt and watched Jai Singh and Chick help the man from the couch. After taking the rope from his ankles, they led him over to the shallow steps, and thence along the passage in the direction of the outer air.

The brazier was left burning, and none of the remainder of the witch man’s ghastly paraphernalia was interfered with.

Nick Carter did not like the willingness with which the man seemed to accompany them. It gave him a misgiving that there might be a trap ahead somewhere, and that it was the prisoner’s intention to lead them into it, even though it should mean his own destruction.

The fatalism of India tends to make its people fearless of death. If it cannot come till a certain time that has been set, then why be afraid?

When they got back to camp, the four coolies still had the fire going, and all of them seemed to be very much alive.