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.”