Transcriber’s Notes:
The original spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained,
with the exception of apparent typographical errors which have been
corrected.
Text in Italics is indicated between _underscores_ whereas bold text is
denoted by =equal signs=. Text in small capitals has been replaced by
regular uppercase text.
* * * * *
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,
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=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.