THREE IN A ROW.
“Who are to be killed first?” asked Nick Carter, when they had been
looking into the amphitheater for some minutes.
“Well,” returned Lord Slava, “the first three are malefactors who
deserve no better fate. But after that comes the challenge.”
“What challenge?” burst out the inquisitive Patsy.
“According to custom, there must be a challenge before any person of
high degree may be put to death. The next victim on the list is the
wife of that man who ran amuck in the street and whom you saw slain
this morning.”
“A woman?” exclaimed Chick, in horror.
“Yes. But we are determined to save her if we can. So, after the
challenge, in the pause before she is brought in, I will give you the
signal,” said Lord Slava, addressing Nick Carter.
“But what is the challenge?” asked the detective, still mystified.
“According to the law of Bolongu, any man not condemned may step into
the arena, armed with his own weapons, and demand to fight the Scarab.”
“And is there always some one to offer this challenge?” broke in Chick.
“There has been none in the last generation,” replied Lord Slava. “Even
before that the Scarab has never been vanquished. Were some one to step
out and beat it, then these executions would have to stop.”
“It looks to me as if it would be a swell thing to put a bug in the ear
of this other bug—or whatever the Scarab is,” observed Patsy. “It is
some kind of a bug, isn’t it?”
“A beetle,” answered Slava.
Jai Singh had been busy with his usual occupation when there was
nothing else to be done—namely, polishing his spear. He looked up now,
with an eager light in his eyes.
“I should like to have a look at that beetle,” he remarked. “It sounds
like a good fight. I should have my spear and this Golden Scarab could
come at me with all his claws. That would be a little in his favor.
Still, I believe I should be the victor.”
Lord Slava smiled and shook his head.
“You are a brave man, stranger. But you know not what you ask. The
Scarab is no ordinary foe. The very touch of one of its claws is
instant and awful death.”
“My spear is swift, and so am I,” returned Jai Singh simply.
He went on with his polishing, as if there was nothing more to be
argued, but he listened to all that might be said.
“There’s nothing slow about Jai Singh,” volunteered Patsy.
“His spear is as powerful and quick as a shot, it has always seemed to
me,” added Chick.
“At the same time,” went on Patsy, “if you can’t let Jai Singh take it
up, what’s the matter with little boy Patsy having some fun with this
big lightning bug? I’d make his overcoat rattle, even if I couldn’t
plug a few holes in it.”
“Wouldn’t do,” was the veto Nick Carter put on this. “I can’t afford to
lose you yet, Patsy.”
Lord Slava evidently admired Patsy Garvan’s pluck, but he agreed with
Nick Carter that the young assistant would not be the man to offer the
challenge on which so much would depend.
“You will await the signal,” he directed, turning to Nick. “Do not show
yourselves before. As you see, the amphitheater is fast filling up. It
is not safe for me to stay here any longer. Your escape must have been
discovered by this time.”
“Is any one likely to come here after us?” asked Nick. “If there should
be an attack on us here, why——”
He held up his rifle significantly. Lord Slava shook his head again.
“There is no danger,” he replied. “Here you are secure. No man can
reach you in this tunnel. I will see to that. But when you hear the
trumpets that will open the festival, then keep well back, where the
shadows are deep, and do not speak overloud.”
“Who is there to hear us if we do speak?” asked Nick, somewhat puzzled.
“There are seats right over your head. Calaman’s throne is immediately
above where you are standing. The walls are thick, but it might chance
that he would hear you if you raised your voice even for a word or two.”
Saying this, Lord Slava gripped the hands of each of the white men,
smiled, and vanished by the way they had come.
“Not a bad fellow—for a lord,” observed Chick. “But I didn’t expect to
find such things in an out-of-the-way corner of India like this. You
can’t lose ’em. They will wear titles, no matter where you go.”
“I wonder who gave him his title, anyhow?” mused Patsy. “There doesn’t
seem to be anybody in this country higher than old Calaman, and I don’t
think much of him. Gee! Jai Singh!” he went on, addressing the Hindu.
“Why don’t you give yourself a rest from polishing that old spear of
yours? It’s got me all dazzled as it is! It shines like an icicle under
an electric light.”
“It may lose its shine when I use it up there,” answered Jai Singh,
with a grim smile, as he nodded toward the opening of the amphitheater.
“I polish only when it is not used, Sahib Patsy.”
“That’s so, too,” murmured Patsy to himself. “When there’s real action,
you don’t see him primping either his spear or himself.”
The festival in the arena began, and the thousands of spectators who
had gathered settled down to enjoy the exhibition.
The first victim was a slouching, hangdog-looking man, who, if his
appearance was a criterion of his character, ought never to have been
out of jail. He was one of the malefactors who, according to Lord
Slava, were to be the first victims of the Golden Scarab.
He was shoved out of one of the gateways, and as he stood, shivering,
on the sandy floor of the great arena, with not a look or word of mercy
for him anywhere, he whimpered like a beaten hound.
Then he limped farther into the arena, and gazed about, as if to see
where the enemy that he knew must be at hand was coming from.
There was a roar from the multitude as the opposite gates were flung
open with a clang.
The man in the middle of the arena seemed to wilt, as he hugged himself
and stared around for a way of escape.
There was no hope for him.
From the gateway a great, nondescript creature, like a beetle enlarged
hundreds of times, and enveloped in a glistening armor of red and
black, worked its way out. It moved over to its intended victim with a
sideways motion, varied by little darts straight forward.
The man tried to run away, but he was petrified with fear and could
only move a few steps.
A howl of excitement arose from one side of the massed spectators,
spreading rapidly around the whole of the great amphitheater.
There was no pity in the sound—only interest and that cruel rapture
which is heard at a bullfight when the matador is no match for his
furious enemy charging upon him.
The first time the Scarab came near the man, he managed to jump to one
side and avoid it. But the respite was only for the slightest fraction
of a second. With a hurried scuffle, the thing swung around, and its
two great horns, looking like the claws of a gigantic lobster, closed
on him!
The man dropped into the sand, without even a groan.
Almost before the people in the seats realized what had happened, or
had obtained a clear view, the monster had scuttled back to its den,
and attendants were dragging the dead body of the man out another way
by long chains.
The second victim, who looked a great deal like the first, was disposed
of by the Scarab in about the same way as the other, except that it was
done in rather less time.
The awful creature had gone back to its retreat, while the body of its
victim was taken out, before the spectators had time to take in all the
details of the encounter.
The third man proved to be of tougher metal than his two predecessors.
Obviously he was a natural-born fighter.
When he was pushed into the arena by the attendants, his shoulders
humped and a look of savage determination in his pale eyes, there was
a general feeling that he would be more interesting than the other two
men who had been disposed of so quickly.
This fellow kept his gaze on the ground for the most part. Soon it was
seen why he did this. He was looking for missiles to use against his
uncanny foe.
He picked up a pebble here, a lump of rock there, and an odd piece of
metal somewhere else.
He huddled them up in his left arm against his body, keeping his right
hand free to hurl them when the time should come.
It soon did come. The Golden Scarab came out of its gateway faster than
before, making straight for the desperate being it was expected to
destroy.
The man sent two big stones, but the Scarab seemed to be incased in
such a hard shell that stones would not hurt it. Instead, it rushed
forward with greater fury than ever.
It was a curious battle, and to Nick Carter it seemed as if it did not
belong to this age at all. The man, in his strange garments—what there
were of them—the Golden Scarab, looking like nothing that the detective
ever had seen before, and yet so full of life and activity, and then
the massed people, yelling in delight at the imminent fate of a fellow
being!
Used as Nick was to all kinds of sights that only few men are
privileged to see, this one gave him a sinking feel inside that he
could not have described, but which indubitably was there.
The Scarab moved with incredible swiftness, and the man was obliged to
leap about with the agility of a pantomimic dancer to keep out of its
reach.
The insect—or reptile, whichever it might be called—measured a good six
feet in length, and was about half as broad. The shell back resembled
that of a turtle. But this creature was much more supple. Besides,
the plates that composed its shell slipped about with an ease and
smoothness never seen in the commoner animal.
It had six legs, with two horns, the length of a tall man’s arm. These
were furnished at the ends with hooked claws and incisors of a most
vicious aspect.
As it darted here and there, its whole body rippled sinuously, while
its scaly back glistened and flashed in the rays of the bright morning
sun.
Its method of attack was peculiarly its own. Every time it approached
its adversary it would raise its horns and the fore part of its body,
strike with the speed of a cat, and retreat before it could suffer a
reprisal.
Not that it seemed to fear anything the man could do. Several of his
stones had struck it, but without any noticeable effect. The stones
made no impression on its hard shell.
Four times the man dodged around the great ring, his uncanny foe close
behind him. Although he was making a better showing against the Scarab
than most persons ever had, it was evidently only a question of how
long he could hold out.
At last he tripped over a sharp rock that he had hurled at his enemy
only just before. Down he went, and the blood flowed from a gash in his
foot where he had struck the edge of the stone.
In a flash the Golden Scarab was upon him. Before he could scramble
to his feet, the two great horns were flung wide and came together
with a clash. The incisors drove deeply into his chest. He dropped to
the ground, senseless, a stone still clenched between his stiffening
fingers.
A great gasp went up from the thousands of spectators, and the hideous
Scarab scuttled back to its lair.
Out came several attendants, to drag the remains of the man away, as
they had the others, and the people waited for the next item of the
ghastly program.
Chick and Patsy were gazing steadily at the proceedings from their
sheltered place, and for once the latter had nothing to say. Only
Chick, looking pale under the coat of tan he had acquired in the fierce
heat of tropical suns, turned to Nick Carter with a husky whisper:
“What do you make of it, chief?”
The detective shook his head frowningly. He was confessedly puzzled, as
well as horrified.
“I can’t tell you, Chick,” he whispered back. “I’ve seen many strange
sights in the course of my life, but this beats them all. I don’t think
it is mechanism. But it is an ingenious trick of some kind.”
“Well, I’d like to know what it means?” confessed Chick.
“So would I,” put in Jefferson Arnold, who had been listening to the
low-voiced colloquy.