The man submitted in stolid silence while Nick examined the arm. When it was bound up, he said “Thank you!” in English. That was all, except that he looked rather curiously at the barbed head of the spear which lay in the boat where it had fallen. The detective picked up the spear and made a close examination of the barbed point. “No poison, I should say,” he remarked briefly. “If there were any, it would show in a sort of sticky glaze. Still, the antiseptic salve I’ve put into that gash on the arm won’t do any harm. Besides, it will help to close the wound quickly.” The patient went back to his seat, and Nick glanced at Jefferson Arnold, who was speaking to Adil, as the young man lay, still nearly exhausted, on a blanket under the awning. “What does he say, Mr. Arnold?” asked Nick. “He has told me something about my boy,” answered Arnold, in shaky tones. “Carter, we’re going to catch up with him soon.” “One day’s journey,” put in Adil, in a feeble voice. “Who are those fellows who had you, Adil? And how did you come to be where you are?” asked Jefferson Arnold. “We came to them farther up the country. Sahib Leslie wanted to hunt tigers, and he told me to be ready. I did what I was told.” “Who else was with my son?” “Sahib Pike.” “Ah! He went tiger hunting, too?” “Yes.” “Well?” “We had gone far up, near the head of the Brahmapootra, when Sahib Pike he go away. Sahib Leslie he sorry, but nothing could be done. He was afraid Sahib Pike got hurt, but he did not know.” “I’ll bet he didn’t get hurt,” threw in Patsy Garvan wisely. “This Pike person was working a frame-up on Leslie Arnold, for a dollar.” “There seems reason in your opinion, Patsy,” nodded Nick Carter. “But we haven’t heard it all, remember.” “I don’t see where we want to hear much more,” growled Jefferson Arnold. “It’s a pretty clear case, I think. I’ll fix Pike when I meet him. It is all his doings. I am confident of that.” “You haven’t told us how Leslie Arnold got into the power of these men up in the hill country,” Nick Carter reminded Adil. “We were in camp one night, when Pike called out that there was danger. Sahib Leslie was asleep, in his blanket, to keep off the snakes that go about at night in the forest. We had a fire, but it had gone down.” “You bet it had gone down,” remarked Patsy Garvan. “I never knew a camp fire that didn’t go down, unless you lay down before it and blew it most of the night.” Nick Carter and Chick both smiled. They gave Patsy credit for close observation. Both had noticed this peculiarity of camp fires themselves. “There was a fight, and I believe Sahib Leslie killed some of them,” continued Adil. “We could not tell how many there were. But it seemed as if fifty men jumped out of the darkness and grabbed at him.” “They wanted to take him prisoner, eh?”