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.
Nick Carter himself saw that the prisoner was properly bound. Then he put blankets upon him, for, at this altitude, the night winds were exceedingly chill.
Two of the coolies were appointed to keep watch for two hours, after which the other two would go on guard, and so on through the night.
When the dawn broke, the witch man seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He sat up when he was told to do so, and he disposed of a good breakfast with perfect docility.
It seemed as if he had slept off his ferocity. But Nick Carter did not trust him.