CHAPTER IX.
THE WHITE MAN AT THE WINDOW.
It was the humor of Calaman, sitting on his white mule, to play the part of host with all the courtesy of an Arab chief. Incidentally, it may be remarked that he was just about as sincere as the average Bedouin is under such circumstances.
“Welcome to Shangore!” he cried, as they passed under the heavy portcullis.
He led them straight to his own palace, and showed them their quarters, which were in a spacious wing separate from the remainder of the building. The white men and Jai Singh were bestowed here, in well-furnished rooms.
The four coolies were put in another part of the palace, at a considerable distance.
Servants waited on Nick and his friends with the punctilious politeness of the East. Better than anything else, they all enjoyed the comfort of a bath, for the first time for many days.
After a bountiful and well-cooked meal had been served to them in a large apartment which had been put at their disposal for a dining room, with soft-footed servants anticipating their wants, cigarettes made from native-grown leaf were placed on the table.
Jefferson Arnold, who appreciated good living and tobacco about as thoroughly as anybody, was the first one to praise the tobacco.
“As good as anything I ever got in New York,” he declared. “This old priest may be a villain. But his cigarettes are fine, and his dinner all through could hardly be better, even in a Broadway hotel. What do you say, Jai Singh?”
But there was no answer. Jai Singh was industriously polishing his spear, trying its edge on the stone floor at intervals.
“There is nothing wrong with the dinner, and the cigarettes are not bad,” observed Nick Carter. “But I wish our four coolies were within reach, and I don’t like our cartridges being put in another place, where we can’t get at them. It smells bad to me.”
“And I hear that to-morrow is the Feast of the Golden Scarab,” put in Chick. “I was not supposed to overhear that, I guess. But it happened that I was listening when two of the guards became rather confidential just before we walked over the drawbridge.”
“If there is to be a feast, it might be a chance for us to do something for ourselves in the confusion,” suggested Patsy.
“What about the city walls?” asked Chick. “Don’t forget that they are high and thick, Patsy.”
A knock sounded at the door, and a tall servant, with a deep bow, presented himself.
“If my lords are ready,” he murmured, as if he felt himself unworthy in such presence to speak aloud, “the great priest, Calaman, would be pleased to show them the sights of the city. He humbly begs that you will bring with you the death sticks which kill at many yards, so that he may see again what they can do.”
“Slick old duck!” observed Patsy. “I’d like to show him what they can do while he looks down the muzzle.”
Nick Carter waved his hand to Patsy for silence and nodded to the tall servant, who was waiting gravely for an answer.
“We will go,” he told the man. “Lead on!”
When they reached the great courtyard of the palace, they found Calaman waiting for them, with a guard of honor consisting of twenty of his finest warriors, each armed with a spear and sword.
The priest glanced at Captain, who followed close at the heels of Chick, and seemed about to object to the presence of the bloodhound. But he changed his mind and said nothing about it.
He was shrewd enough to know that it would be unwise to quarrel with these white people until he had learned a little more about the death sticks, and he was sure that they would try to insist on a dog going with them.
So Calaman led them through the main streets of the city in silence, while Nick Carter and the others took careful note of everything they saw.
Suddenly Chick caught Nick Carter by the arm, and whispered, in agitated tones:
“Look! That window on the right! Do you see that face? It is a white man. Now he has moved away. But he was there.”
“I saw him,” answered Nick quietly. “Where is Mr. Arnold—Jefferson?”
The guards were all on the left side of the party, having moved to avoid a party of soldiers who were marching toward them on the right. There had been a momentary confusion, and in the midst of it Jefferson Arnold and his son Leslie had darted across the street toward the house at whose window Chick and Nick Carter both had seen the face of the white man.
“Look, chief! They’re going into the house.”
“I see them,” was the reply. “But I don’t think Calaman or any of his men noticed that they ran away.”
It was fortunate that Calaman was so impressed with his own dignity, which he always maintained with the greatest care when before the people of Shangore, that he had been looking straight ahead as the other soldiers came toward him.
Each man saluted as he passed, and the priest received their homage with grave bows, occasionally glancing out of the corner of his eye to see how Nick Carter took it all.
If it had not been for this bit of ceremony, the priest hardly could have avoided seeing Jefferson Arnold and Leslie dart across the street and into the open door.
Nick Carter would have liked to go into the house at once. But he could not do it while everybody was looking at him.
“That white man must be Pike,” he whispered to Chick. “Let Adil slip away and find out. He is not very different in appearance from the other men of this place. He can get in without being noticed, I dare say.”
But Chick would not agree to this. He pointed out to Nick that it was a mission requiring more knowledge of white men’s ways than Adil was likely to possess, bright as he was.
“I suppose we must wait and see what turns up, Chick,” answered Nick Carter. “But if Pike is there, our business in the city is finished. All we have to do is to get hold of that money and depart.”
Before he had finished he missed Chick from his side. Looking around in some surprise, he was just in time to see his assistant slipping into the same doorway that previously had swallowed up the two Arnolds.
“Well, we are getting action,” muttered Nick Carter. “I only hope Chick was not too hasty.”
It happened that they had got to the place where the priest wanted a second demonstration of the power of the death sticks. It was a large open space, like a market place or public square, with houses all around.
One of the houses was that at whose window they had seen the face of the white man, and into which Chick had just run to see what had become of Jefferson and Leslie Arnold, and incidentally to look after William Pike.
Calaman, who had been at a little distance, giving instructions to some of his men, rode his mule up to Nick Carter and those of his party who remained, and nodded to the famous detective. He did not appear to notice the absence of Chick and the two Arnolds.
“If you will, my stranger guests,” he said, “I want to see how you use those death sticks against those who are not goats.”
“Gee! The whole caboodle of them around here look like goats to me,” was Patsy Garvan’s inward comment.
Patsy was much disgusted with the whole of the population of Shangore, particularly with Calaman, and he could not help expressing it to any one who would listen—or to himself, in the absence of any other sympathetic listener.
“I have already shown you that I can kill at a distance,” returned Nick Carter, regarding the priest somewhat defiantly. “Does not that satisfy you of the power of the death stick?”
“Not quite. It may kill mountain goats, but be useless against men. There are three malefactors who have been sentenced to death. They shall die at your hands if the sticks you have can do it. See!”
Several of the guards who had been doing something at the other side of the large square moved at this moment, and Nick saw that three men, naked save for their loin cloths, were bound to stakes fixed firmly in the ground.
“Why are they to be killed?” asked the detective, fencing for time.
“Each one has killed a man,” replied the priest. “They are robbers, as well as murderers. The laws of Shangore have no mercy on such as they. The festival of the Golden Scarab takes place to-morrow. These men would be cut to death at daybreak. If you kill them for me, your man that you seek shall be given up to you. But first I must see how your sticks are used, and how the little metal cases that make a noise are put into them.”
The whole plot was clear. Calaman meant to learn how the rifles were used for his own purposes. He had already taken possession of two thousand rounds of ammunition. If once he thoroughly comprehended the mechanism of the rifles, it would be good night to his stranger guests.
Nick Carter looked from the priest to the three men tied to the stakes, and seemed to be considering.
“Are you ready?” asked Calaman.
“No,” was the unexpected reply.
“Why?”
“Because I will not shoot at men who are tied,” declared Nick. “In my country we never do such things.”
The priest flamed into a fury.
“You will kill those men!” he roared.
“I don’t think so,” returned Nick imperturbably.
“If you don’t, I shall——”
He hesitated, and the detective swung around sharply to see why he did not continue. He saw that the sinister features of the old priest were working convulsively. He was in a seething passion.
“What shall you do?” asked Nick.
“I shall have you and your friends tied to stakes like those, to be cut to pieces at sunrise,” howled Calaman, losing all control of himself.