CHAPTER X.
WHAT THE GOLDEN SCARAB WAS.
It was just as Nick Carter’s friends rushed to his side, to help him in case there should be any hostile demonstration, that Lord Slava, with his men, came swarming into the arena, and gave a loud command.
The soldiers who had been under the dominion of Calaman were merely hirelings, and when they saw that the death of the Golden Scarab appeared to mean the overthrow of the men who had for so long been the rulers, they were eager to flock to the new leader’s standard.
So they rushed to the gates which held back the intended victims of the Golden Scarab and flung them wide open.
Out poured a number of prisoners, blinking in the sunlight, and most of them wondering what it was all about.
Suddenly, with a wild shout of delight, and a sobbing, hysterical laugh. Jefferson Arnold dashed across the wide space and flung his arms around a young man who was carrying a woman in his arms.
“Leslie!”
“Dad!”
“Is it you? My boy?”
Jefferson Arnold seemed as if he could not realize that he again had his son back, and he squeezed Leslie without noticing that he held a young woman in his arms.
“Mind the lady, dad!” laughed Leslie. “She’s not very strong, and you have a hug like a grizzly bear.”
“Put her down, Leslie!” returned the millionaire. “What is the matter with her? Poor thing! She looks dazed.”
“No wonder,” said Leslie. “She was to have been the next one given to the Golden Scarab. You’ve managed to save her somehow, but I don’t know how.”
“Carter did it!” answered Jefferson. “He’s killed the thing. Can’t you give that poor girl to somebody to take care of, and come over here? You know, my boy,” he whispered, in a grave tone, “I don’t know whether we are out of this infernal trap yet. I hope we are, but I’m not sure.”
Just then Nick Carter came running up, with a rifle in his hand. He gave the weapon to Leslie, together with a handful of cartridges.
“There you are, old man!” he said hurriedly. “Use that if you have to. I have an automatic and a few cartridges in my pocket, so I don’t need the rifle. Pass the girl to somebody and come over here.”
Leslie Carter beckoned to one of Lord Slava’s men, and put the young woman in his charge.
“Take care of her. It’s Lord Slava’s orders,” he said.
This was not the absolute truth, but Leslie felt sure Slava would agree when he was told.
“Ready, Leslie!” asked Nick.
“Quite!”
“Come on, then!”
Jefferson Arnold had a rifle in his hand, and, with his son by his side, felt that he could defy the whole of Shangore. He grinned like a schoolboy as he slapped Leslie on the back and rushed forward to help his friends on the other side of the arena.
Now that they had accomplished the purpose for which they had come, the rescue of Leslie Arnold, Nick Carter and his friends would have been content to go out of the city.
But there was work to be done for the man who had given them their first chance to overcome the Golden Scarab and save Leslie, by releasing them from their dungeon—Lord Slava.
With his soldiers at his back, he met the first rush of Calaman’s forces. Nick Carter, Chick, Patsy, and the others were with him, and they sent in a volley at close quarters that did terrible execution.
Jefferson Arnold shot down three of the guards, and Chick accounted for two more. As for Patsy, he did not know how many he got. He just pumped bullets at the enemy with the same cheerful earnestness with which he did everything that came in the line of duty.
Calaman rushed forward with his men, wielding a long knife.
As has been remarked already, the old priest was no coward. He was willing to take all the risks that might be encountered by his men, and he fought like a demon until he was laid low.
It was Lord Slava who killed Calaman with a slash of his sword, after he had parried a venomous cut the priest made at him with his wicked-looking knife.
With the death of Calaman, it seemed as if all the opposition to Slava melted away.
The followers of Calaman fled in all directions. They were chased ruthlessly by the ordinary people whom they had tyrannized over for years, and if there were some excessive cruelties by the indignant populace now that they held the upper hand, it is not a cause for much wonder.
“Say, chief,” whispered Patsy to Nick Carter, “have you found out what that big gold bug really is?”
“No, Patsy. I have been too busy helping Lord Slava. His trouble is about over now, however, and I have a little time to look over my late enemy. Where is it?”
“Still lying over there, where you knocked it,” was Patsy’s reply. “It’s a wonder somebody didn’t drag it away, like they did the poor wretches it killed.”
Nick Carter, Chick, and Patsy all went over to examine the carcass of the Golden Scarab.
“Just what I thought,” muttered Nick, as he knelt by the side of it. “I was pretty certain this was the game?”
“What?” asked Chick.
“I’ll show you.”
The detective took his heavy jackknife from his pocket, and, without ceremony, ripped open the monster with one long slash.
The Golden Scarab was not a real beetle!
Its form was built of fine steel bands and bamboo, and over it was stretched a network of fine-meshed steel. It was a miracle of skill. The steel network made a foundation for heavy scales like those of a fish, made of pure gold.
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.”
“This other one, in the head of the beast, has a bullet hole in his forehead,” announced Chick.
“He was the one who worked the horns and caught the victims in the poisoned knives. What an unmitigated set of ruffians they were. They were under the domination of Calaman, of course. But, if they had not been evilly inclined to begin with, he would have known that they would not serve him in this way.”
“Calaman knew his men. You can bet on that,” remarked Patsy, with conviction.
Nick Carter did not reply. He was examining the mechanism of the horns.
He found that they were hollow, and that they were jointed, like those of a lobster, to give free play to an inward thrust.
“We’ll have to get this fellow out before we can investigate properly,” observed Nick. “Lend me a hand, Patsy!”
Between them, they dragged out by the heels the man who had worked the head of the Scarab. His arms had been fitted into the hollow horns, and in each hand was a long, curving, narrow-bladed knife, with a very sharp point.
These knives formed the points of the horns, and were charged with a deadly poison.
The poison was concealed in the handles of the knives, the blades of which were hollow, so that the deadly stuff would run through and empty into a wound made by the weapon.
The knives were gilded to look like part of the Scarab’s claws, the whole work being completed with the skill that marked everything done under the guidance of Calaman and his colleagues.
“I always suspected that the Golden Scarab worked in this way,” put in the deep voice of Lord Slava behind them. “I never knew till now. Well, this is the end of that kind of thing.”
Nick Carter got up and saw that Lord Slava was accompanied by a dozen or so more of men of dignified mien, and he understood that the trouble with Calaman’s guards was over.
“Where are all the soldiers that were so bent on killing you and your people a few minutes ago?” asked the detective.
“A few of them are dead,” replied Slava, with a shrug. “But most of them have gone to their quarters, to remain there till they are summoned to the palace.”
Hardly were the words out of Lord Slava’s mouth, when the sound of tramping feet on the sand made them all turn around.
There was a loud shout of angry men, and the next moment the little party around the remains of the Golden Scarab found themselves in the midst of as hot an affray as the average man could possibly desire.