← catalogue

The Return of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs · English · Gutenberg #81 · 512,713 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Return of Tarzan
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Return of Tarzan

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs


        
Release date: September 1, 1993 [eBook #81]
                Most recently updated: June 20, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/81

Credits: Judy Boss


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN OF TARZAN ***




The Return Of Tarzan

By Edgar Rice Burroughs


Contents

 Chapter I The Affair on the Liner
 Chapter II Forging Bonds of Hate and ——?
 Chapter III What Happened in the Rue Maule
 Chapter IV The Countess Explains
 Chapter V The Plot That Failed
 Chapter VI A Duel
 Chapter VII The Dancing Girl of Sidi Aissa
 Chapter VIII The Fight in the Desert
 Chapter IX Numa “El Adrea”
 Chapter X Through the Valley of the Shadow
 Chapter XI John Caldwell, London
 Chapter XII Ships That Pass
 Chapter XIII The Wreck of the “Lady Alice”
 Chapter XIV Back to the Primitive
 Chapter XV From Ape to Savage
 Chapter XVI The Ivory Raiders
 Chapter XVII The White Chief of the Waziri
 Chapter XVIII The Lottery of Death
 Chapter XIX The City of Gold
 Chapter XX La
 Chapter XXI The Castaways
 Chapter XXII The Treasure Vaults of Opar
 Chapter XXIII The Fifty Frightful Men
 Chapter XXIV How Tarzan Came Again to Opar
 Chapter XXV Through the Forest Primeval
 Chapter XXVI The Passing of the Ape-Man




Chapter I
The Affair on the Liner


“Magnifique!” ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath.

“Eh?” questioned the count, turning toward his young wife. “What is it
that is magnificent?” and the count bent his eyes in various directions
in quest of the object of her admiration.

“Oh, nothing at all, my dear,” replied the countess, a slight flush
momentarily coloring her already pink cheek. “I was but recalling with
admiration those stupendous skyscrapers, as they call them, of New
York,” and the fair countess settled herself more comfortably in her
steamer chair, and resumed the magazine which “nothing at all” had
caused her to let fall upon her lap.

Her husband again buried himself in his book, but not without a mild
wonderment that three days out from New York his countess should
suddenly have realized an admiration for the very buildings she had but
recently characterized as horrid.

Presently the count put down his book. “It is very tiresome, Olga,” he
said. “I think that I shall hunt up some others who may be equally
bored, and see if we cannot find enough for a game of cards.”

“You are not very gallant, my husband,” replied the young woman,
smiling, “but as I am equally bored I can forgive you. Go and play at
your tiresome old cards, then, if you will.”

When he had gone she let her eyes wander slyly to the figure of a tall
young man stretched lazily in a chair not far distant.

“_Magnifique!_” she breathed once more.

The Countess Olga de Coude was twenty. Her husband forty. She was a
very faithful and loyal wife, but as she had had nothing whatever to do
with the selection of a husband, it is not at all unlikely that she was
not wildly and passionately in love with the one that fate and her
titled Russian father had selected for her. However, simply because she
was surprised into a tiny exclamation of approval at sight of a
splendid young stranger it must not be inferred therefrom that her
thoughts were in any way disloyal to her spouse. She merely admired, as
she might have admired a particularly fine specimen of any species.
Furthermore, the young man was unquestionably good to look at.

As her furtive glance rested upon his profile he rose to leave the
deck. The Countess de Coude beckoned to a passing steward. “Who is that
gentleman?” she asked.

“He is booked, madam, as Monsieur Tarzan, of Africa,” replied the
steward.

“Rather a large estate,” thought the girl, but now her interest was
still further aroused.

As Tarzan walked slowly toward the smoking-room he came unexpectedly
upon two men whispering excitedly just without. He would have
vouchsafed them not even a passing thought but for the strangely guilty
glance that one of them shot in his direction. They reminded Tarzan of
melodramatic villains he had seen at the theaters in Paris. Both were
very dark, and this, in connection with the shrugs and stealthy glances
that accompanied their palpable intriguing, lent still greater force to
the similarity.

Tarzan entered the smoking-room, and sought a chair a little apart from
the others who were there. He felt in no mood for conversation, and as
he sipped his absinth he let his mind run rather sorrowfully over the
past few weeks of his life. Time and again he had wondered if he had
acted wisely in renouncing his birthright to a man to whom he owed
nothing. It is true that he liked Clayton, but—ah, but that was not the
question. It was not for William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, that he
had denied his birth. It was for the woman whom both he and Clayton had
loved, and whom a strange freak of fate had given to Clayton instead of
to him.

That she loved him made the thing doubly difficult to bear, yet he knew
that he could have done nothing less than he did do that night within
the little railway station in the far Wisconsin woods. To him her
happiness was the first consideration of all, and his brief experience
with civilization and civilized men had taught him that without money
and position life to most of them was unendurable.

Jane Porter had been born to both, and had Tarzan taken them away from
her future husband it would doubtless have plunged her into a life of
misery and torture. That she would have spurned Clayton once he had
been stripped of both his title and his estates never for once occurred
to Tarzan, for he credited to others the same honest loyalty that was
so inherent a quality in himself. Nor, in this instance, had he erred.
Could any one thing have further bound Jane Porter to her promise to
Clayton it would have been in the nature of some such misfortune as
this overtaking him.

Tarzan’s thoughts drifted from the past to the future. He tried to look
forward with pleasurable sensations to his return to the jungle of his
birth and boyhood; the cruel, fierce jungle in which he had spent
twenty of his twenty-two years. But who or what of all the myriad
jungle life would there be to welcome his return? Not one. Only Tantor,
the elephant, could he call friend. The others would hunt him or flee
from him as had been their way in the past.

Not even the apes of his own tribe would extend the hand of fellowship
to him.

If civilization had done nothing else for Tarzan of the Apes, it had to
some extent taught him to crave the society of his own kind, and to
feel with genuine pleasure the congenial warmth of companionship. And
in the same ratio had it made any other life distasteful to him. It was
difficult to imagine a world without a friend—without a living thing
who spoke the new tongues which Tarzan had learned to love so well. And
so it was that Tarzan looked with little relish upon the future he had
mapped out for himself.

As he sat musing over his cigarette his eyes fell upon a mirror before
him, and in it he saw reflected a table at which four men sat at cards.
Presently one of them rose to leave, and then another approached, and
Tarzan could see that he courteously offered to fill the vacant chair,
that the game might not be interrupted. He was the smaller of the two
whom Tarzan had seen whispering just outside the smoking-room.

It was this fact that aroused a faint spark of interest in Tarzan, and
so as he speculated upon the future he watched in the mirror the
reflection of the players at the table behind him. Aside from the man
who had but just entered the game Tarzan knew the name of but one of
the other players. It was he who sat opposite the new player, Count
Raoul de Coude, whom an over-attentive steward had pointed out as one
of the celebrities of the passage, describing him as a man high in the
official family of the French minister of war.

Suddenly Tarzan’s attention was riveted upon the picture in the glass.
The other swarthy plotter had entered, and was standing behind the
count’s chair. Tarzan saw him turn and glance furtively about the room,
but his eyes did not rest for a sufficient time upon the mirror to note
the reflection of Tarzan’s watchful eyes. Stealthily the man withdrew
something from his pocket. Tarzan could not discern what the object
was, for the man’s hand covered it.

Slowly the hand approached the count, and then, very deftly, the thing
that was in it was transferred to the count’s pocket. The man remained
standing where he could watch the Frenchman’s cards. Tarzan was
puzzled, but he was all attention now, nor did he permit another detail
of the incident to escape him.

The play went on for some ten minutes after this, until the count won a
considerable wager from him who had last joined the game, and then
Tarzan saw the fellow back of the count’s chair nod his head to his
confederate. Instantly the player arose and pointed a finger at the
count.

“Had I known that monsieur was a professional card sharp I had not been
so ready to be drawn into the game,” he said.

Instantly the count and the two other players were upon their feet.

De Coude’s face went white.

“What do you mean, sir?” he cried. “Do you know to whom you speak?”

“I know that I speak, for the last time, to one who cheats at cards,”
replied the fellow.

The count leaned across the table, and struck the man full in the mouth
with his open palm, and then the others closed in between them.

“There is some mistake, sir,” cried one of the other players. “Why,
this is Count de Coude, of France.”

“If I am mistaken,” said the accuser, “I shall gladly apologize; but
before I do so first let monsieur le count explain the extra cards
which I saw him drop into his side pocket.”

And then the man whom Tarzan had seen drop them there turned to sneak
from the room, but to his annoyance he found the exit barred by a tall,
gray-eyed stranger.

“Pardon,” said the man brusquely, attempting to pass to one side.

“Wait,” said Tarzan.

“But why, monsieur?” exclaimed the other petulantly. “Permit me to
pass, monsieur.”

“Wait,” said Tarzan. “I think that there is a matter in here that you
may doubtless be able to explain.”

The fellow had lost his temper by this time, and with a low oath seized
Tarzan to push him to one side. The ape-man but smiled as he twisted
the big fellow about and, grasping him by the collar of his coat,
escorted him back to the table, struggling, cursing, and striking in
futile remonstrance. It was Nikolas Rokoff’s first experience with the
muscles that had brought their savage owner victorious through
encounters with Numa, the lion, and Terkoz, the great bull ape.

The man who had accused De Coude, and the two others who had been
playing, stood looking expectantly at the count. Several other
passengers had drawn toward the scene of the altercation, and all
awaited the dénouement.

“The fellow is crazy,” said the count. “Gentlemen, I implore that one
of you search me.”

“The accusation is ridiculous.” This from one of the players.

“You have but to slip your hand in the count’s coat pocket and you will
see that the accusation is quite serious,” insisted the accuser. And
then, as the others still hesitated to do so: “Come, I shall do it
myself if no other will,” and he stepped forward toward the count.

“No, monsieur,” said De Coude. “I will submit to a search only at the
hands of a gentleman.”

“It is unnecessary to search the count. The cards are in his pocket. I
myself saw them placed there.”

All turned in surprise toward this new speaker, to behold a very
well-built young man urging a resisting captive toward them by the
scruff of his neck.

“It is a conspiracy,” cried De Coude angrily. “There are no cards in my
coat,” and with that he ran his hand into his pocket. As he did so
tense silence reigned in the little group. The count went dead white,
and then very slowly he withdrew his hand, and in it were three cards.

He looked at them in mute and horrified surprise, and slowly the red of
mortification suffused his face. Expressions of pity and contempt
tinged the features of those who looked on at the death of a man’s
honor.

“It is a conspiracy, monsieur.” It was the gray-eyed stranger who
spoke. “Gentlemen,” he continued, “monsieur le count did not know that
those cards were in his pocket. They were placed there without his
knowledge as he sat at play. From where I sat in that chair yonder I
saw the reflection of it all in the mirror before me. This person whom
I just intercepted in an effort to escape placed the cards in the
count’s pocket.”

De Coude had glanced from Tarzan to the man in his grasp.

“_Mon Dieu_, Nikolas!” he cried. “You?”

Then he turned to his accuser, and eyed him intently for a moment.

“And you, monsieur, I did not recognize you without your beard. It
quite disguises you, Paulvitch. I see it all now. It is quite clear,
gentlemen.”

“What shall we do with them, monsieur?” asked Tarzan. “Turn them over
to the captain?”

“No, my friend,” said the count hastily. “It is a personal matter, and
I beg that you will let it drop. It is sufficient that I have been
exonerated from the charge. The less we have to do with such fellows,
the better. But, monsieur, how can I thank you for the great kindness
you have done me? Permit me to offer you my card, and should the time
come when I may serve you, remember that I am yours to command.”

Tarzan had released Rokoff, who, with his confederate, Paulvitch, had
hastened from the smoking-room. Just as he was leaving, Rokoff turned
to Tarzan. “Monsieur will have ample opportunity to regret his
interference in the affairs of others.”

Tarzan smiled, and then, bowing to the count, handed him his own card.

The count read:

M. JEAN C. TARZAN


“Monsieur Tarzan,” he said, “may indeed wish that he had never
befriended me, for I can assure him that he has won the enmity of two
of the most unmitigated scoundrels in all Europe. Avoid them, monsieur,
by all means.”

“I have had more awe-inspiring enemies, my dear count,” replied Tarzan
with a quiet smile, “yet I am still alive and unworried. I think that
neither of these two will ever find the means to harm me.”

“Let us hope not, monsieur,” said De Coude; “but yet it will do no harm
to be on the alert, and to know that you have made at least one enemy
today who never forgets and never forgives, and in whose malignant
brain there are always hatching new atrocities to perpetrate upon those
who have thwarted or offended him. To say that Nikolas Rokoff is a
devil would be to place a wanton affront upon his satanic majesty.”

That night as Tarzan entered his cabin he found a folded note upon the
floor that had evidently been pushed beneath the door. He opened it and
read:

M. TARZAN:
    Doubtless you did not realize the gravity of your offense, or you
    would not have done the thing you did today. I am willing to
    believe that you acted in ignorance and without any intention to
    offend a stranger. For this reason I shall gladly permit you to
    offer an apology, and on receiving your assurances that you will
    not again interfere in affairs that do not concern you, I shall
    drop the matter.
    Otherwise—but I am sure that you will see the wisdom of adopting
    the course I suggest.


Very respectfully,
NIKOLAS ROKOFF.


Tarzan permitted a grim smile to play about his lips for a moment, then
he promptly dropped the matter from his mind, and went to bed.

In a nearby cabin the Countess de Coude was speaking to her husband.

“Why so grave, my dear Raoul?” she asked. “You have been as glum as
could be all evening. What worries you?”

“Olga, Nikolas is on board. Did you know it?”

“Nikolas!” she exclaimed. “But it is impossible, Raoul. It cannot be.
Nikolas is under arrest in Germany.”

“So I thought myself until I saw him today—him and that other arch
scoundrel, Paulvitch. Olga, I cannot endure his persecution much
longer. No, not even for you. Sooner or later I shall turn him over to
the authorities. In fact, I am half minded to explain all to the
captain before we land. On a French liner it were an easy matter, Olga,
permanently to settle this Nemesis of ours.”

“Oh, no, Raoul!” cried the countess, sinking to her knees before him as
he sat with bowed head upon a divan. “Do not do that. Remember your
promise to me. Tell me, Raoul, that you will not do that. Do not even
threaten him, Raoul.”

De Coude took his wife’s hands in his, and gazed upon her pale and
troubled countenance for some time before he spoke, as though he would
wrest from those beautiful eyes the real reason which prompted her to
shield this man.

“Let it be as you wish, Olga,” he said at length. “I cannot understand.
He has forfeited all claim upon your love, loyalty, or respect. He is a
menace to your life and honor, and the life and honor of your husband.
I trust you may never regret championing him.”

“I do not champion him, Raoul,” she interrupted vehemently. “I believe
that I hate him as much as you do, but—Oh, Raoul, blood is thicker than
water.”

“I should today have liked to sample the consistency of his,” growled
De Coude grimly. “The two deliberately attempted to besmirch my honor,
Olga,” and then he told her of all that had happened in the
smoking-room. “Had it not been for this utter stranger, they had
succeeded, for who would have accepted my unsupported word against the
damning evidence of those cards hidden on my person? I had almost begun
to doubt myself when this Monsieur Tarzan dragged your precious Nikolas
before us, and explained the whole cowardly transaction.”

“Monsieur Tarzan?” asked the countess, in evident surprise.

“Yes. Do you know him, Olga?”

“I have seen him. A steward pointed him out to me.”

“I did not know that he was a celebrity,” said the count.

Olga de Coude changed the subject. She discovered suddenly that she
might find it difficult to explain just why the steward had pointed out
the handsome Monsieur Tarzan to her. Perhaps she flushed the least
little bit, for was not the count, her husband, gazing at her with a
strangely quizzical expression. “Ah,” she thought, “a guilty conscience
is a most suspicious thing.”




Chapter II
Forging Bonds of Hate and ——?


It was not until late the following afternoon that Tarzan saw anything
more of the fellow passengers into the midst of whose affairs his love
of fair play had thrust him. And then he came most unexpectedly upon
Rokoff and Paulvitch at a moment when of all others the two might least
appreciate his company.

They were standing on deck at a point which was temporarily deserted,
and as Tarzan came upon them they were in heated argument with a woman.
Tarzan noted that she was richly appareled, and that her slender,
well-modeled figure denoted youth; but as she was heavily veiled he
could not discern her features.

The men were standing on either side of her, and the backs of all were
toward Tarzan, so that he was quite close to them without their being
aware of his presence. He noticed that Rokoff seemed to be threatening,
the woman pleading; but they spoke in a strange tongue, and he could
only guess from appearances that the girl was afraid.

Rokoff’s attitude was so distinctly filled with the threat of physical
violence that the ape-man paused for an instant just behind the trio,
instinctively sensing an atmosphere of danger. Scarcely had he
hesitated ere the man seized the woman roughly by the wrist, twisting
it as though to wring a promise from her through torture. What would
have happened next had Rokoff had his way we may only conjecture, since
he did not have his way at all. Instead, steel fingers gripped his
shoulder, and he was swung unceremoniously around, to meet the cold
gray eyes of the stranger who had thwarted him on the previous day.

“_Sapristi!_” screamed the infuriated Rokoff. “What do you mean? Are
you a fool that you thus again insult Nikolas Rokoff?”

“This is my answer to your note, monsieur,” said Tarzan, in a low
voice. And then he hurled the fellow from him with such force that
Rokoff lunged sprawling against the rail.

“Name of a name!” shrieked Rokoff. “Pig, but you shall die for this,”
and, springing to his feet, he rushed upon Tarzan, tugging the
meanwhile to draw a revolver from his hip pocket. The girl shrank back
in terror.

“Nikolas!” she cried. “Do not—oh, do not do that. Quick, monsieur, fly,
or he will surely kill you!” But instead of flying Tarzan advanced to
meet the fellow. “Do not make a fool of yourself, monsieur,” he said.

Rokoff, who was in a perfect frenzy of rage at the humiliation the
stranger had put upon him, had at last succeeded in drawing the
revolver. He had stopped, and now he deliberately raised it to Tarzan’s
breast and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a futile click on
an empty chamber—the ape-man’s hand shot out like the head of an angry
python; there was a quick wrench, and the revolver sailed far out
across the ship’s rail, and dropped into the Atlantic.

For a moment the two men stood there facing one another. Rokoff had
regained his self-possession. He was the first to speak.

“Twice now has monsieur seen fit to interfere in matters which do not
concern him. Twice he has taken it upon himself to humiliate Nikolas
Rokoff. The first offense was overlooked on the assumption that
monsieur acted through ignorance, but this affair shall not be
overlooked. If monsieur does not know who Nikolas Rokoff is, this last
piece of effrontery will insure that monsieur later has good reason to
remember him.”

“That you are a coward and a scoundrel, monsieur,” replied Tarzan, “is
all that I care to know of you,” and he turned to ask the girl if the
man had hurt her, but she had disappeared. Then, without even a glance
toward Rokoff and his companion, he continued his stroll along the
deck.

Tarzan could not but wonder what manner of conspiracy was on foot, or
what the scheme of the two men might be. There had been something
rather familiar about the appearance of the veiled woman to whose
rescue he had just come, but as he had not seen her face he could not
be sure that he had ever seen her before. The only thing about her that
he had particularly noticed was a ring of peculiar workmanship upon a
finger of the hand that Rokoff had seized, and he determined to note
the fingers of the women passengers he came upon thereafter, that he
might discover the identity of her whom Rokoff was persecuting, and
learn if the fellow had offered her further annoyance.

Tarzan had sought his deck chair, where he sat speculating on the
numerous instances of human cruelty, selfishness, and spite that had
fallen to his lot to witness since that day in the jungle four years
since that his eyes had first fallen upon a human being other than
himself—the sleek, black Kulonga, whose swift spear had that day found
the vitals of Kala, the great she-ape, and robbed the youth, Tarzan, of
the only mother he had ever known.

He recalled the murder of King by the rat-faced Snipes; the abandonment
of Professor Porter and his party by the mutineers of the _Arrow;_ the
cruelty of the black warriors and women of Mbonga to their captives;
the petty jealousies of the civil and military officers of the West
Coast colony that had afforded him his first introduction to the
civilized world.

“_Mon Dieu!_” he soliloquized, “but they are all alike. Cheating,
murdering, lying, fighting, and all for things that the beasts of the
jungle would not deign to possess—money to purchase the effeminate
pleasures of weaklings. And yet withal bound down by silly customs that
make them slaves to their unhappy lot while firm in the belief that
they be the lords of creation enjoying the only real pleasures of
existence. In the jungle one would scarcely stand supinely aside while
another took his mate. It is a silly world, an idiotic world, and
Tarzan of the Apes was a fool to renounce the freedom and the happiness
of his jungle to come into it.”

Presently, as he sat there, the sudden feeling came over him that eyes
were watching from behind, and the old instinct of the wild beast broke
through the thin veneer of civilization, so that Tarzan wheeled about
so quickly that the eyes of the young woman who had been
surreptitiously regarding him had not even time to drop before the gray
eyes of the ape-man shot an inquiring look straight into them. Then, as
they fell, Tarzan saw a faint wave of crimson creep swiftly over the
now half-averted face.

He smiled to himself at the result of his very uncivilized and
ungallant action, for he had not lowered his own eyes when they met
those of the young woman. She was very young, and equally good to look
upon. Further, there was something rather familiar about her that set
Tarzan to wondering where he had seen her before. He resumed his former
position, and presently he was aware that she had arisen and was
leaving the deck. As she passed, Tarzan turned to watch her, in the
hope that he might discover a clew to satisfy his mild curiosity as to
her identity.

Nor was he disappointed entirely, for as she walked away she raised one
hand to the black, waving mass at the nape of her neck—the peculiarly
feminine gesture that admits cognizance of appraising eyes behind
her—and Tarzan saw upon a finger of this hand the ring of strange
workmanship that he had seen upon the finger of the veiled woman a
short time before.

So it was this beautiful young woman Rokoff had been persecuting.
Tarzan wondered in a lazy sort of way whom she might be, and what
relations one so lovely could have with the surly, bearded Russian.

After dinner that evening Tarzan strolled forward, where he remained
until after dark, in conversation with the second officer, and when
that gentleman’s duties called him elsewhere Tarzan lolled lazily by
the rail watching the play of the moonlight upon the gently rolling
waters. He was half hidden by a davit, so that two men who approached
along the deck did not see him, and as they passed Tarzan caught enough
of their conversation to cause him to fall in behind them, to follow
and learn what deviltry they were up to. He had recognized the voice as
that of Rokoff, and had seen that his companion was Paulvitch.

Tarzan had overheard but a few words: “And if she screams you may choke
her until—” But those had been enough to arouse the spirit of adventure
within him, and so he kept the two men in sight as they walked, briskly
now, along the deck. To the smoking-room he followed them, but they
merely halted at the doorway long enough, apparently, to assure
themselves that one whose whereabouts they wished to establish was
within.

Then they proceeded directly to the first-class cabins upon the
promenade deck. Here Tarzan found greater difficulty in escaping
detection, but he managed to do so successfully. As they halted before
one of the polished hardwood doors, Tarzan slipped into the shadow of a
passageway not a dozen feet from them.

To their knock a woman’s voice asked in French: “Who is it?”

“It is I, Olga—Nikolas,” was the answer, in Rokoff’s now familiar
guttural. “May I come in?”

“Why do you not cease persecuting me, Nikolas?” came the voice of the
woman from beyond the thin panel. “I have never harmed you.”

“Come, come, Olga,” urged the man, in propitiary tones; “I but ask a
half dozen words with you. I shall not harm you, nor shall I enter your
cabin; but I cannot shout my message through the door.”

Tarzan heard the catch click as it was released from the inside. He
stepped out from his hiding-place far enough to see what transpired
when the door was opened, for he could not but recall the sinister
words he had heard a few moments before upon the deck, “And if she
screams you may choke her.”

Rokoff was standing directly in front of the door. Paulvitch had
flattened himself against the paneled wall of the corridor beyond. The
door opened. Rokoff half entered the room, and stood with his back
against the door, speaking in a low whisper to the woman, whom Tarzan
could not see. Then Tarzan heard the woman’s voice, level, but loud
enough to distinguish her words.

“No, Nikolas,” she was saying, “it is useless. Threaten as you will, I
shall never accede to your demands. Leave the room, please; you have no
right here. You promised not to enter.”

“Very well, Olga, I shall not enter; but before I am done with you, you
shall wish a thousand times that you had done at once the favor I have
asked. In the end I shall win anyway, so you might as well save trouble
and time for me, and disgrace for yourself and your—”

“Never, Nikolas!” interrupted the woman, and then Tarzan saw Rokoff
turn and nod to Paulvitch, who sprang quickly toward the doorway of the
cabin, rushing in past Rokoff, who held the door open for him. Then the
latter stepped quickly out. The door closed. Tarzan heard the click of
the lock as Paulvitch turned it from the inside. Rokoff remained
standing before the door, with head bent, as though to catch the words
of the two within. A nasty smile curled his bearded lip.

Tarzan could hear the woman’s voice commanding the fellow to leave her
cabin. “I shall send for my husband,” she cried. “He will show you no
mercy.”

Paulvitch’s sneering laugh came through the polished panels.

“The purser will fetch your husband, madame,” said the man. “In fact,
that officer has already been notified that you are entertaining a man
other than your husband behind the locked door of your cabin.”

“Bah!” cried the woman. “My husband will know!”

“Most assuredly your husband will know, but the purser will not; nor
will the newspaper men who shall in some mysterious way hear of it on
our landing. But they will think it a fine story, and so will all your
friends when they read of it at breakfast on—let me see, this is
Tuesday—yes, when they read of it at breakfast next Friday morning. Nor
will it detract from the interest they will all feel when they learn
that the man whom madame entertained is a Russian servant—her brother’s
valet, to be quite exact.”

“Alexis Paulvitch,” came the woman’s voice, cold and fearless, “you are
a coward, and when I whisper a certain name in your ear you will think
better of your demands upon me and your threats against me, and then
you will leave my cabin quickly, nor do I think that ever again will
you, at least, annoy me,” and there came a moment’s silence in which
Tarzan could imagine the woman leaning toward the scoundrel and
whispering the thing she had hinted at into his ear. Only a moment of
silence, and then a startled oath from the man—the scuffling of feet—a
woman’s scream—and silence.

But scarcely had the cry ceased before the ape-man had leaped from his
hiding-place. Rokoff started to run, but Tarzan grasped him by the
collar and dragged him back. Neither spoke, for both felt instinctively
that murder was being done in that room, and Tarzan was confident that
Rokoff had had no intention that his confederate should go that far—he
felt that the man’s aims were deeper than that—deeper and even more
sinister than brutal, cold-blooded murder. Without hesitating to
question those within, the ape-man threw his giant shoulder against the
frail panel, and in a shower of splintered wood he entered the cabin,
dragging Rokoff after him. Before him, on a couch, the woman lay, and
on top of her was Paulvitch, his fingers gripping the fair throat,
while his victim’s hands beat futilely at his face, tearing desperately
at the cruel fingers that were forcing the life from her.

The noise of his entrance brought Paulvitch to his feet, where he stood
glowering menacingly at Tarzan. The girl rose falteringly to a sitting
posture upon the couch. One hand was at her throat, and her breath came
in little gasps. Although disheveled and very pale, Tarzan recognized
her as the young woman whom he had caught staring at him on deck
earlier in the day.

“What is the meaning of this?” said Tarzan, turning to Rokoff, whom he
intuitively singled out as the instigator of the outrage. The man
remained silent, scowling. “Touch the button, please,” continued the
ape-man; “we will have one of the ship’s officers here—this affair has
gone quite far enough.”

“No, no,” cried the girl, coming suddenly to her feet. “Please do not
do that. I am sure that there was no real intention to harm me. I
angered this person, and he lost control of himself, that is all. I
would not care to have the matter go further, please, monsieur,” and
there was such a note of pleading in her voice that Tarzan could not
press the matter, though his better judgment warned him that there was
something afoot here of which the proper authorities should be made
cognizant.

“You wish me to do nothing, then, in the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing, please,” she replied.

“You are content that these two scoundrels should continue persecuting
you?”

She did not seem to know what answer to make, and looked very troubled
and unhappy. Tarzan saw a malicious grin of triumph curl Rokoff’s lip.
The girl evidently was in fear of these two—she dared not express her
real desires before them.

“Then,” said Tarzan, “I shall act on my own responsibility. To you,” he
continued, turning to Rokoff, “and this includes your accomplice, I may
say that from now on to the end of the voyage I shall take it upon
myself to keep an eye on you, and should there chance to come to my
notice any act of either one of you that might even remotely annoy this
young woman you shall be called to account for it directly to me, nor
shall the calling or the accounting be pleasant experiences for either
of you.

“Now get out of here,” and he grabbed Rokoff and Paulvitch each by the
scruff of the neck and thrust them forcibly through the doorway, giving
each an added impetus down the corridor with the toe of his boot. Then
he turned back to the stateroom and the girl. She was looking at him in
wide-eyed astonishment.

“And you, madame, will confer a great favor upon me if you will but let
me know if either of those rascals troubles you further.”

“Ah, monsieur,” she answered, “I hope that you will not suffer for the
kind deed you attempted. You have made a very wicked and resourceful
enemy, who will stop at nothing to satisfy his hatred. You must be very
careful indeed, Monsieur—”

“Pardon me, madame, my name is Tarzan.”

“Monsieur Tarzan. And because I would not consent to notify the
officers, do not think that I am not sincerely grateful to you for the
brave and chivalrous protection you rendered me. Good night, Monsieur
Tarzan. I shall never forget the debt I owe you,” and, with a most
winsome smile that displayed a row of perfect teeth, the girl curtsied
to Tarzan, who bade her good night and made his way on deck.

It puzzled the man considerably that there should be two on board—this
girl and Count de Coude—who suffered indignities at the hands of Rokoff
and his companion, and yet would not permit the offenders to be brought
to justice. Before he turned in that night his thoughts reverted many
times to the beautiful young woman into the evidently tangled web of
whose life fate had so strangely introduced him. It occurred to him
that he had not learned her name. That she was married had been
evidenced by the narrow gold band that encircled the third finger of
her left hand. Involuntarily he wondered who the lucky man might be.

Tarzan saw nothing further of any of the actors in the little drama
that he had caught a fleeting glimpse of until late in the afternoon of
the last day of the voyage. Then he came suddenly face to face with the
young woman as the two approached their deck chairs from opposite
directions. She greeted him with a pleasant smile, speaking almost
immediately of the affair he had witnessed in her cabin two nights
before. It was as though she had been perturbed by a conviction that he
might have construed her acquaintance with such men as Rokoff and
Paulvitch as a personal reflection upon herself.

“I trust monsieur has not judged me,” she said, “by the unfortunate
occurrence of Tuesday evening. I have suffered much on account of
it—this is the first time that I have ventured from my cabin since; I
have been ashamed,” she concluded simply.

“One does not judge the gazelle by the lions that attack it,” replied
Tarzan. “I had seen those two work before—in the smoking-room the day
prior to their attack on you, if I recollect it correctly, and so,
knowing their methods, I am convinced that their enmity is a sufficient
guarantee of the integrity of its object. Men such as they must cleave
only to the vile, hating all that is noblest and best.”

“It is very kind of you to put it that way,” she replied, smiling. “I
have already heard of the matter of the card game. My husband told me
the entire story. He spoke especially of the strength and bravery of
Monsieur Tarzan, to whom he feels that he owes an immense debt of
gratitude.”

“Your husband?” repeated Tarzan questioningly.

“Yes. I am the Countess de Coude.”

“I am already amply repaid, madame, in knowing that I have rendered a
service to the wife of the Count de Coude.”

“Alas, monsieur, I already am so greatly indebted to you that I may
never hope to settle my own account, so pray do not add further to my
obligations,” and she smiled so sweetly upon him that Tarzan felt that
a man might easily attempt much greater things than he had
accomplished, solely for the pleasure of receiving the benediction of
that smile.

He did not see her again that day, and in the rush of landing on the
following morning he missed her entirely, but there had been something
in the expression of her eyes as they parted on deck the previous day
that haunted him. It had been almost wistful as they had spoken of the
strangeness of the swift friendships of an ocean crossing, and of the
equal ease with which they are broken forever.

Tarzan wondered if he should ever see her again.




Chapter III
What Happened in the Rue Maule


On his arrival in Paris, Tarzan had gone directly to the apartments of
his old friend, D’Arnot, where the naval lieutenant had scored him
roundly for his decision to renounce the title and estates that were
rightly his from his father, John Clayton, the late Lord Greystoke.

“You must be mad, my friend,” said D’Arnot, “thus lightly to give up
not alone wealth and position, but an opportunity to prove beyond doubt
to all the world that in your veins flows the noble blood of two of
England’s most honored houses—instead of the blood of a savage she-ape.
It is incredible that they could have believed you—Miss Porter least of
all.

“Why, I never did believe it, even back in the wilds of your African
jungle, when you tore the raw meat of your kills with mighty jaws, like
some wild beast, and wiped your greasy hands upon your thighs. Even
then, before there was the slightest proof to the contrary, I knew that
you were mistaken in the belief that Kala was your mother.

“And now, with your father’s diary of the terrible life led by him and
your mother on that wild African shore; with the account of your birth,
and, final and most convincing proof of all, your own baby finger
prints upon the pages of it, it seems incredible to me that you are
willing to remain a nameless, penniless vagabond.”

“I do not need any better name than Tarzan,” replied the ape-man; “and
as for remaining a penniless vagabond, I have no intention of so doing.
In fact, the next, and let us hope the last, burden that I shall be
forced to put upon your unselfish friendship will be the finding of
employment for me.”

“Pooh, pooh!” scoffed D’Arnot. “You know that I did not mean that. Have
I not told you a dozen times that I have enough for twenty men, and
that half of what I have is yours? And if I gave it all to you, would
it represent even the tenth part of the value I place upon your
friendship, my Tarzan? Would it repay the services you did me in
Africa? I do not forget, my friend, that but for you and your wondrous
bravery I had died at the stake in the village of Mbonga’s cannibals.
Nor do I forget that to your self-sacrificing devotion I owe the fact
that I recovered from the terrible wounds I received at their hands—I
discovered later something of what it meant to you to remain with me in
the amphitheater of apes while your heart was urging you on to the
coast.

“When we finally came there, and found that Miss Porter and her party
had left, I commenced to realize something of what you had done for an
utter stranger. Nor am I trying to repay you with money, Tarzan. It is
that just at present you need money; were it sacrifice that I might
offer you it were the same—my friendship must always be yours, because
our tastes are similar, and I admire you. That I cannot command, but
the money I can and shall.”

“Well,” laughed Tarzan, “we shall not quarrel over the money. I must
live, and so I must have it; but I shall be more contented with
something to do. You cannot show me your friendship in a more
convincing manner than to find employment for me—I shall die of
inactivity in a short while. As for my birthright—it is in good hands.
Clayton is not guilty of robbing me of it. He truly believes that he is
the real Lord Greystoke, and the chances are that he will make a better
English lord than a man who was born and raised in an African jungle.
You know that I am but half civilized even now. Let me see red in anger
but for a moment, and all the instincts of the savage beast that I
really am, submerge what little I possess of the milder ways of culture
and refinement.

“And then again, had I declared myself I should have robbed the woman I
love of the wealth and position that her marriage to Clayton will now
insure to her. I could not have done that—could I, Paul?

“Nor is the matter of birth of great importance to me,” he went on,
without waiting for a reply. “Raised as I have been, I see no worth in
man or beast that is not theirs by virtue of their own mental or
physical prowess. And so I am as happy to think of Kala as my mother as
I would be to try to picture the poor, unhappy little English girl who
passed away a year after she bore me. Kala was always kind to me in her
fierce and savage way. I must have nursed at her hairy breast from the
time that my own mother died. She fought for me against the wild
denizens of the forest, and against the savage members of our tribe,
with the ferocity of real mother love.

“And I, on my part, loved her, Paul. I did not realize how much until
after the cruel spear and the poisoned arrow of Mbonga’s black warrior
had stolen her away from me. I was still a child when that occurred,
and I threw myself upon her dead body and wept out my anguish as a
child might for his own mother. To you, my friend, she would have
appeared a hideous and ugly creature, but to me she was beautiful—so
gloriously does love transfigure its object. And so I am perfectly
content to remain forever the son of Kala, the she-ape.”

“I do not admire you the less for your loyalty,” said D’Arnot, “but the
time will come when you will be glad to claim your own. Remember what I
say, and let us hope that it will be as easy then as it is now. You
must bear in mind that Professor Porter and Mr. Philander are the only
people in the world who can swear that the little skeleton found in the
cabin with those of your father and mother was that of an infant
anthropoid ape, and not the offspring of Lord and Lady Greystoke. That
evidence is most important. They are both old men. They may not live
many years longer. And then, did it not occur to you that once Miss
Porter knew the truth she would break her engagement with Clayton? You
might easily have your title, your estates, and the woman you love,
Tarzan. Had you not thought of that?”

Tarzan shook his head. “You do not know her,” he said. “Nothing could
bind her closer to her bargain than some misfortune to Clayton. She is
from an old southern family in America, and southerners pride
themselves upon their loyalty.”

Tarzan spent the two following weeks renewing his former brief
acquaintance with Paris. In the daytime he haunted the libraries and
picture galleries. He had become an omnivorous reader, and the world of
possibilities that were opened to him in this seat of culture and
learning fairly appalled him when he contemplated the very
infinitesimal crumb of the sum total of human knowledge that a single
individual might hope to acquire even after a lifetime of study and
research; but he learned what he could by day, and threw himself into a
search for relaxation and amusement at night. Nor did he find Paris a
whit less fertile field for his nocturnal avocation.

If he smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much absinth it was
because he took civilization as he found it, and did the things that he
found his civilized brothers doing. The life was a new and alluring
one, and in addition he had a sorrow in his breast and a great longing
which he knew could never be fulfilled, and so he sought in study and
in dissipation—the two extremes—to forget the past and inhibit
contemplation of the future.

He was sitting in a music hall one evening, sipping his absinth and
admiring the art of a certain famous Russian dancer, when he caught a
passing glimpse of a pair of evil black eyes upon him. The man turned
and was lost in the crowd at the exit before Tarzan could catch a good
look at him, but he was confident that he had seen those eyes before
and that they had been fastened on him this evening through no passing
accident. He had had the uncanny feeling for some time that he was
being watched, and it was in response to this animal instinct that was
strong within him that he had turned suddenly and surprised the eyes in
the very act of watching him.

Before he left the music hall the matter had been forgotten, nor did he
notice the swarthy individual who stepped deeper into the shadows of an
opposite doorway as Tarzan emerged from the brilliantly lighted
amusement hall.

Had Tarzan but known it, he had been followed many times from this and
other places of amusement, but seldom if ever had he been alone.
Tonight D’Arnot had had another engagement, and Tarzan had come by
himself.

As he turned in the direction he was accustomed to taking from this
part of Paris to his apartments, the watcher across the street ran from
his hiding-place and hurried on ahead at a rapid pace.

Tarzan had been wont to traverse the Rue Maule on his way home at
night. Because it was very quiet and very dark it reminded him more of
his beloved African jungle than did the noisy and garish streets
surrounding it. If you are familiar with your Paris you will recall the
narrow, forbidding precincts of the Rue Maule. If you are not, you need
but ask the police about it to learn that in all Paris there is no
street to which you should give a wider berth after dark.

On this night Tarzan had proceeded some two squares through the dense
shadows of the squalid old tenements which line this dismal way when he
was attracted by screams and cries for help from the third floor of an
opposite building. The voice was a woman’s. Before the echoes of her
first cries had died Tarzan was bounding up the stairs and through the
dark corridors to her rescue.

At the end of the corridor on the third landing a door stood slightly
ajar, and from within Tarzan heard again the same appeal that had lured
him from the street. Another instant found him in the center of a
dimly-lighted room. An oil lamp burned upon a high, old-fashioned
mantel, casting its dim rays over a dozen repulsive figures. All but
one were men. The other was a woman of about thirty. Her face, marked
by low passions and dissipation, might once have been lovely. She stood
with one hand at her throat, crouching against the farther wall.

“Help, monsieur,” she cried in a low voice as Tarzan entered the room;
“they were killing me.”

As Tarzan turned toward the men about him he saw the crafty, evil faces
of habitual criminals. He wondered that they had made no effort to
escape. A movement behind him caused him to turn. Two things his eyes
saw, and one of them caused him considerable wonderment. A man was
sneaking stealthily from the room, and in the brief glance that Tarzan
had of him he saw that it was Rokoff. But the other thing that he saw
was of more immediate interest. It was a great brute of a fellow
tiptoeing upon him from behind with a huge bludgeon in his hand, and
then, as the man and his confederates saw that he was discovered, there
was a concerted rush upon Tarzan from all sides. Some of the men drew
knives. Others picked up chairs, while the fellow with the bludgeon
raised it high above his head in a mighty swing that would have crushed
Tarzan’s head had it ever descended upon it.

But the brain, and the agility, and the muscles that had coped with the
mighty strength and cruel craftiness of Terkoz and Numa in the fastness
of their savage jungle were not to be so easily subdued as these
apaches of Paris had believed.

Selecting his most formidable antagonist, the fellow with the bludgeon,
Tarzan charged full upon him, dodging the falling weapon, and catching
the man a terrific blow on the point of the chin that felled him in his
tracks.

Then he turned upon the others. This was sport. He was reveling in the
joy of battle and the lust of blood. As though it had been but a
brittle shell, to break at the least rough usage, the thin veneer of
his civilization fell from him, and the ten burly villains found
themselves penned in a small room with a wild and savage beast, against
whose steel muscles their puny strength was less than futile.

At the end of the corridor without stood Rokoff, waiting the outcome of
the affair. He wished to be sure that Tarzan was dead before he left,
but it was not a part of his plan to be one of those within the room
when the murder occurred.

The woman still stood where she had when Tarzan entered, but her face
had undergone a number of changes with the few minutes which had
elapsed. From the semblance of distress which it had worn when Tarzan
first saw it, it had changed to one of craftiness as he had wheeled to
meet the attack from behind; but the change Tarzan had not seen.

Later an expression of surprise and then one of horror superseded the
others. And who may wonder. For the immaculate gentleman her cries had
lured to what was to have been his death had been suddenly
metamorphosed into a demon of revenge. Instead of soft muscles and a
weak resistance, she was looking upon a veritable Hercules gone mad.

“_Mon Dieu!_” she cried; “he is a beast!” For the strong, white teeth
of the ape-man had found the throat of one of his assailants, and
Tarzan fought as he had learned to fight with the great bull apes of
the tribe of Kerchak.

He was in a dozen places at once, leaping hither and thither about the
room in sinuous bounds that reminded the woman of a panther she had
seen at the zoo. Now a wrist-bone snapped in his iron grip, now a
shoulder was wrenched from its socket as he forced a victim’s arm
backward and upward.

With shrieks of pain the men escaped into the hallway as quickly as
they could; but even before the first one staggered, bleeding and
broken, from the room, Rokoff had seen enough to convince him that
Tarzan would not be the one to lie dead in that house this night, and
so the Russian had hastened to a nearby den and telephoned the police
that a man was committing murder on the third floor of Rue Maule, 27.
When the officers arrived they found three men groaning on the floor, a
frightened woman lying upon a filthy bed, her face buried in her arms,
and what appeared to be a well-dressed young gentleman standing in the
center of the room awaiting the reenforcements which he had thought the
footsteps of the officers hurrying up the stairway had announced—but
they were mistaken in the last; it was a wild beast that looked upon
them through those narrowed lids and steel-gray eyes. With the smell of
blood the last vestige of civilization had deserted Tarzan, and now he
stood at bay, like a lion surrounded by hunters, awaiting the next
overt act, and crouching to charge its author.

“What has happened here?” asked one of the policemen.

Tarzan explained briefly, but when he turned to the woman for
confirmation of his statement he was appalled by her reply.

“He lies!” she screamed shrilly, addressing the policeman. “He came to
my room while I was alone, and for no good purpose. When I repulsed him
he would have killed me had not my screams attracted these gentlemen,
who were passing the house at the time. He is a devil, monsieurs; alone
he has all but killed ten men with his bare hands and his teeth.”

So shocked was Tarzan by her ingratitude that for a moment he was
struck dumb. The police were inclined to be a little skeptical, for
they had had other dealings with this same lady and her lovely coterie
of gentlemen friends. However, they were policemen, not judges, so they
decided to place all the inmates of the room under arrest, and let
another, whose business it was, separate the innocent from the guilty.

But they found that it was one thing to tell this well-dressed young
man that he was under arrest, but quite another to enforce it.

“I am guilty of no offense,” he said quietly. “I have but sought to
defend myself. I do not know why the woman has told you what she has.
She can have no enmity against me, for never until I came to this room
in response to her cries for help had I seen her.”

“Come, come,” said one of the officers; “there are judges to listen to
all that,” and he advanced to lay his hand upon Tarzan’s shoulder. An
instant later he lay crumpled in a corner of the room, and then, as his
comrades rushed in upon the ape-man, they experienced a taste of what
the apaches had but recently gone through. So quickly and so roughly
did he handle them that they had not even an opportunity to draw their
revolvers.

During the brief fight Tarzan had noted the open window and, beyond,
the stem of a tree, or a telegraph pole—he could not tell which. As the
last officer went down, one of his fellows succeeded in drawing his
revolver and, from where he lay on the floor, fired at Tarzan. The shot
missed, and before the man could fire again Tarzan had swept the lamp
from the mantel and plunged the room into darkness.

The next they saw was a lithe form spring to the sill of the open
window and leap, panther-like, onto the pole across the walk. When the
police gathered themselves together and reached the street their
prisoner was nowhere to be seen.

They did not handle the woman and the men who had not escaped any too
gently when they took them to the station; they were a very sore and
humiliated detail of police. It galled them to think that it would be
necessary to report that a single unarmed man had wiped the floor with
the whole lot of them, and then escaped them as easily as though they
had not existed.

The officer who had remained in the street swore that no one had leaped
from the window or left the building from the time they entered until
they had come out. His comrades thought that he lied, but they could
not prove it.

When Tarzan found himself clinging to the pole outside the window, he
followed his jungle instinct and looked below for enemies before he
ventured down. It was well he did, for just beneath stood a policeman.
Above, Tarzan saw no one, so he went up instead of down.

The top of the pole was opposite the roof of the building, so it was
but the work of an instant for the muscles that had for years sent him
hurtling through the treetops of his primeval forest to carry him
across the little space between the pole and the roof. From one
building he went to another, and so on, with much climbing, until at a
cross street he discovered another pole, down which he ran to the
ground.

For a square or two he ran swiftly; then he turned into a little
all-night café and in the lavatory removed the evidences of his
over-roof promenade from hands and clothes. When he emerged a few
moments later it was to saunter slowly on toward his apartments.

Not far from them he came to a well-lighted boulevard which it was
necessary to cross. As he stood directly beneath a brilliant arc light,
waiting for a limousine that was approaching to pass him, he heard his
name called in a sweet feminine voice. Looking up, he met the smiling
eyes of Olga de Coude as she leaned forward upon the back seat of the
machine. He bowed very low in response to her friendly greeting. When
he straightened up the machine had borne her away.

“Rokoff and the Countess de Coude both in the same evening,” he
soliloquized; “Paris is not so large, after all.”




Chapter IV
The Countess Explains


“Your Paris is more dangerous than my savage jungles, Paul,” concluded
Tarzan, after narrating his adventures to his friend the morning
following his encounter with the apaches and police in the Rue Maule.
“Why did they lure me there? Were they hungry?”

D’Arnot feigned a horrified shudder, but he laughed at the quaint
suggestion.

“It is difficult to rise above the jungle standards and reason by the
light of civilized ways, is it not, my friend?” he queried banteringly.

“Civilized ways, forsooth,” scoffed Tarzan. “Jungle standards do not
countenance wanton atrocities. There we kill for food and for
self-preservation, or in the winning of mates and the protection of the
young. Always, you see, in accordance with the dictates of some great
natural law. But here! Faugh, your civilized man is more brutal than
the brutes. He kills wantonly, and, worse than that, he utilizes a
noble sentiment, the brotherhood of man, as a lure to entice his unwary
victim to his doom. It was in answer to an appeal from a fellow being
that I hastened to that room where the assassins lay in wait for me.

“I did not realize, I could not realize for a long time afterward, that
any woman could sink to such moral depravity as that one must have to
call a would-be rescuer to death. But it must have been so—the sight of
Rokoff there and the woman’s later repudiation of me to the police make
it impossible to place any other construction upon her acts. Rokoff
must have known that I frequently passed through the Rue Maule. He lay
in wait for me—his entire scheme worked out to the last detail, even to
the woman’s story in case a hitch should occur in the program such as
really did happen. It is all perfectly plain to me.”

“Well,” said D’Arnot, “among other things, it has taught you what I
have been unable to impress upon you—that the Rue Maule is a good place
to avoid after dark.”

“On the contrary,” replied Tarzan, with a smile, “it has convinced me
that it is the one worth-while street in all Paris. Never again shall I
miss an opportunity to traverse it, for it has given me the first real
entertainment I have had since I left Africa.”

“It may give you more than you will relish even without another visit,”
said D’Arnot. “You are not through with the police yet, remember. I
know the Paris police well enough to assure you that they will not soon
forget what you did to them. Sooner or later they will get you, my dear
Tarzan, and then they will lock the wild man of the woods up behind
iron bars. How will you like that?”

“They will never lock Tarzan of the Apes behind iron bars,” replied he,
grimly.

There was something in the man’s voice as he said it that caused
D’Arnot to look up sharply at his friend. What he saw in the set jaw
and the cold, gray eyes made the young Frenchman very apprehensive for
this great child, who could recognize no law mightier than his own
mighty physical prowess. He saw that something must be done to set
Tarzan right with the police before another encounter was possible.

“You have much to learn, Tarzan,” he said gravely. “The law of man must
be respected, whether you relish it or no. Nothing but trouble can come
to you and your friends should you persist in defying the police. I can
explain it to them once for you, and that I shall do this very day, but
hereafter you must obey the law. If its representatives say ‘Come,’ you
must come; if they say ‘Go,’ you must go. Now we shall go to my great
friend in the department and fix up this matter of the Rue Maule.
Come!”

Together they entered the office of the police official a half hour
later. He was very cordial. He remembered Tarzan from the visit the two
had made him several months prior in the matter of finger prints.

When D’Arnot had concluded the narration of the events which had
transpired the previous evening, a grim smile was playing about the
lips of the policeman. He touched a button near his hand, and as he
waited for the clerk to respond to its summons he searched through the
papers on his desk for one which he finally located.

“Here, Joubon,” he said as the clerk entered. “Summon these
officers—have them come to me at once,” and he handed the man the paper
he had sought. Then he turned to Tarzan.

“You have committed a very grave offense, monsieur,” he said, not
unkindly, “and but for the explanation made by our good friend here I
should be inclined to judge you harshly. I am, instead, about to do a
rather unheard-of-thing. I have summoned the officers whom you
maltreated last night. They shall hear Lieutenant D’Arnot’s story, and
then I shall leave it to their discretion to say whether you shall be
prosecuted or not.

“You have much to learn about the ways of civilization. Things that
seem strange or unnecessary to you, you must learn to accept until you
are able to judge the motives behind them. The officers whom you
attacked were but doing their duty. They had no discretion in the
matter. Every day they risk their lives in the protection of the lives
or property of others. They would do the same for you. They are very
brave men, and they are deeply mortified that a single unarmed man
bested and beat them.

“Make it easy for them to overlook what you did. Unless I am gravely in
error you are yourself a very brave man, and brave men are proverbially
magnanimous.”

Further conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the four
policemen. As their eyes fell on Tarzan, surprise was writ large on
each countenance.

“My children,” said the official, “here is the gentleman whom you met
in the Rue Maule last evening. He has come voluntarily to give himself
up. I wish you to listen attentively to Lieutenant D’Arnot, who will
tell you a part of the story of monsieur’s life. It may explain his
attitude toward you of last night. Proceed, my dear lieutenant.”

D’Arnot spoke to the policemen for half an hour. He told them something
of Tarzan’s wild jungle life. He explained the savage training that had
taught him to battle like a wild beast in self-preservation. It became
plain to them that the man had been guided by instinct rather than
reason in his attack upon them. He had not understood their intentions.
To him they had been little different from any of the various forms of
life he had been accustomed to in his native jungle, where practically
all were his enemies.

“Your pride has been wounded,” said D’Arnot, in conclusion. “It is the
fact that this man overcame you that hurts the most. But you need feel
no shame. You would not make apologies for defeat had you been penned
in that small room with an African lion, or with the great Gorilla of
the jungles.

“And yet you were battling with muscles that have time and time again
been pitted, and always victoriously, against these terrors of the dark
continent. It is no disgrace to fall beneath the superhuman strength of
Tarzan of the Apes.”

And then, as the men stood looking first at Tarzan and then at their
superior the ape-man did the one thing which was needed to erase the
last remnant of animosity which they might have felt for him. With
outstretched hand he advanced toward them.

“I am sorry for the mistake I made,” he said simply. “Let us be
friends.” And that was the end of the whole matter, except that Tarzan
became a subject of much conversation in the barracks of the police,
and increased the number of his friends by four brave men at least.

On their return to D’Arnot’s apartments the lieutenant found a letter
awaiting him from an English friend, William Cecil Clayton, Lord
Greystoke. The two had maintained a correspondence since the birth of
their friendship on that ill-fated expedition in search of Jane Porter
after her theft by Terkoz, the bull ape.

“They are to be married in London in about two months,” said D’Arnot,
as he completed his perusal of the letter. Tarzan did not need to be
told who was meant by “they.” He made no reply, but he was very quiet
and thoughtful during the balance of the day.

That evening they attended the opera. Tarzan’s mind was still occupied
by his gloomy thoughts. He paid little or no attention to what was
transpiring upon the stage. Instead he saw only the lovely vision of a
beautiful American girl, and heard naught but a sad, sweet voice
acknowledging that his love was returned. And she was to marry another!

He shook himself to be rid of his unwelcome thoughts, and at the same
instant he felt eyes upon him. With the instinct that was his by virtue
of training he looked up squarely into the eyes that were looking at
him, to find that they were shining from the smiling face of Olga,
Countess de Coude. As Tarzan returned her bow he was positive that
there was an invitation in her look, almost a plea. The next
intermission found him beside her in her box.

“I have so much wished to see you,” she was saying. “It has troubled me
not a little to think that after the service you rendered to both my
husband and myself no adequate explanation was ever made you of what
must have seemed ingratitude on our part in not taking the necessary
steps to prevent a repetition of the attacks upon us by those two men.”

“You wrong me,” replied Tarzan. “My thoughts of you have been only the
most pleasant. You must not feel that any explanation is due me. Have
they annoyed you further?”

“They never cease,” she replied sadly. “I feel that I must tell some
one, and I do not know another who so deserves an explanation as you.
You must permit me to do so. It may be of service to you, for I know
Nikolas Rokoff quite well enough to be positive that you have not seen
the last of him. He will find some means to be revenged upon you. What
I wish to tell you may be of aid to you in combating any scheme of
revenge he may harbor. I cannot tell you here, but tomorrow I shall be
at home to Monsieur Tarzan at five.”

“It will be an eternity until tomorrow at five,” he said, as he bade
her good night. From a corner of the theater Rokoff and Paulvitch saw
Monsieur Tarzan in the box of the Countess de Coude, and both men
smiled.

At four-thirty the following afternoon a swarthy, bearded man rang the
bell at the servants’ entrance of the palace of the Count de Coude. The
footman who opened the door raised his eyebrows in recognition as he
saw who stood without. A low conversation passed between the two.

At first the footman demurred from some proposition that the bearded
one made, but an instant later something passed from the hand of the
caller to the hand of the servant. Then the latter turned and led the
visitor by a roundabout way to a little curtained alcove off the
apartment in which the countess was wont to serve tea of an afternoon.

A half hour later Tarzan was ushered into the room, and presently his
hostess entered, smiling, and with outstretched hands.

“I am so glad that you came,” she said.

“Nothing could have prevented,” he replied.

For a few moments they spoke of the opera, of the topics that were then
occupying the attention of Paris, of the pleasure of renewing their
brief acquaintance which had had its inception under such odd
circumstances, and this brought them to the subject that was uppermost
in the minds of both.

“You must have wondered,” said the countess finally, “what the object
of Rokoff’s persecution could be. It is very simple. The count is
intrusted with many of the vital secrets of the ministry of war. He
often has in his possession papers that foreign powers would give a
fortune to possess—secrets of state that their agents would commit
murder and worse than murder to learn.

“There is such a matter now in his possession that would make the fame
and fortune of any Russian who could divulge it to his government.
Rokoff and Paulvitch are Russian spies. They will stop at nothing to
procure this information. The affair on the liner—I mean the matter of
the card game—was for the purpose of blackmailing the knowledge they
seek from my husband.

“Had he been convicted of cheating at cards, his career would have been
blighted. He would have had to leave the war department. He would have
been socially ostracized. They intended to hold this club over him—the
price of an avowal on their part that the count was but the victim of
the plot of enemies who wished to besmirch his name was to have been
the papers they seek.

“You thwarted them in this. Then they concocted the scheme whereby my
reputation was to be the price, instead of the count’s. When Paulvitch
entered my cabin he explained it to me. If I would obtain the
information for them he promised to go no farther, otherwise Rokoff,
who stood without, was to notify the purser that I was entertaining a
man other than my husband behind the locked doors of my cabin. He was
to tell every one he met on the boat, and when we landed he was to have
given the whole story to the newspaper men.

“Was it not too horrible? But I happened to know something of Monsieur
Paulvitch that would send him to the gallows in Russia if it were known
by the police of St. Petersburg. I dared him to carry out his plan, and
then I leaned toward him and whispered a name in his ear. Like
that”—and she snapped her fingers—“he flew at my throat as a madman. He
would have killed me had you not interfered.”

“The brutes!” muttered Tarzan.

“They are worse than that, my friend,” she said. “They are devils. I
fear for you because you have gained their hatred. I wish you to be on
your guard constantly. Tell me that you will, for my sake, for I should
never forgive myself should you suffer through the kindness you did
me.”

“I do not fear them,” he replied. “I have survived grimmer enemies than
Rokoff and Paulvitch.” He saw that she knew nothing of the occurrence
in the Rue Maule, nor did he mention it, fearing that it might distress
her.

“For your own safety,” he continued, “why do you not turn the
scoundrels over to the authorities? They should make quick work of
them.”

She hesitated for a moment before replying.

“There are two reasons,” she said finally. “One of them it is that
keeps the count from doing that very thing. The other, my real reason
for fearing to expose them, I have never told—only Rokoff and I know
it. I wonder,” and then she paused, looking intently at him for a long
time.

“And what do you wonder?” he asked, smiling.

“I was wondering why it is that I want to tell you the thing that I
have not dared tell even to my husband. I believe that you would
understand, and that you could tell me the right course to follow. I
believe that you would not judge me too harshly.”

“I fear that I should prove a very poor judge, madame,” Tarzan replied,
“for if you had been guilty of murder I should say that the victim
should be grateful to have met so sweet a fate.”

“Oh, dear, no,” she expostulated; “it is not so terrible as that. But
first let me tell you the reason the count has for not prosecuting
these men; then, if I can hold my courage, I shall tell you the real
reason that I dare not. The first is that Nikolas Rokoff is my brother.
We are Russians. Nikolas has been a bad man since I can remember. He
was cashiered from the Russian army, in which he held a captaincy.
There was a scandal for a time, but after a while it was partially
forgotten, and my father obtained a position for him in the secret
service.

“There have been many terrible crimes laid at Nikolas’ door, but he has
always managed to escape punishment. Of late he has accomplished it by
trumped-up evidence convicting his victims of treason against the czar,
and the Russian police, who are always only too ready to fasten guilt
of this nature upon any and all, have accepted his version and
exonerated him.”

“Have not his attempted crimes against you and your husband forfeited
whatever rights the bonds of kinship might have accorded him?” asked
Tarzan. “The fact that you are his sister has not deterred him from
seeking to besmirch your honor. You owe him no loyalty, madame.”

“Ah, but there is that other reason. If I owe him no loyalty though he
be my brother, I cannot so easily disavow the fear I hold him in
because of a certain episode in my life of which he is cognizant.

“I might as well tell you all,” she resumed after a pause, “for I see
that it is in my heart to tell you sooner or later. I was educated in a
convent. While there I met a man whom I supposed to be a gentleman. I
knew little or nothing about men and less about love. I got it into my
foolish head that I loved this man, and at his urgent request I ran
away with him. We were to have been married.

“I was with him just three hours. All in the daytime and in public
places—railroad stations and upon a train. When we reached our
destination where we were to have been married, two officers stepped up
to my escort as we descended from the train, and placed him under
arrest. They took me also, but when I had told my story they did not
detain me, other than to send me back to the convent under the care of
a matron. It seemed that the man who had wooed me was no gentleman at
all, but a deserter from the army as well as a fugitive from civil
justice. He had a police record in nearly every country in Europe.

“The matter was hushed up by the authorities of the convent. Not even
my parents knew of it. But Nikolas met the man afterward, and learned
the whole story. Now he threatens to tell the count if I do not do just
as he wishes me to.”

Tarzan laughed. “You are still but a little girl. The story that you
have told me cannot reflect in any way upon your reputation, and were
you not a little girl at heart you would know it. Go to your husband
tonight, and tell him the whole story, just as you have told it to me.
Unless I am much mistaken he will laugh at you for your fears, and take
immediate steps to put that precious brother of yours in prison where
he belongs.”

“I only wish that I dared,” she said; “but I am afraid. I learned early
to fear men. First my father, then Nikolas, then the fathers in the
convent. Nearly all my friends fear their husbands—why should I not
fear mine?”

“It does not seem right that women should fear men,” said Tarzan, an
expression of puzzlement on his face. “I am better acquainted with the
jungle folk, and there it is more often the other way around, except
among the black men, and they to my mind are in most ways lower in the
scale than the beasts. No, I cannot understand why civilized women
should fear men, the beings that are created to protect them. I should
hate to think that any woman feared me.”

“I do not think that any woman would fear you, my friend,” said Olga de
Coude softly. “I have known you but a short while, yet though it may
seem foolish to say it, you are the only man I have ever known whom I
think that I should never fear—it is strange, too, for you are very
strong. I wondered at the ease with which you handled Nikolas and
Paulvitch that night in my cabin. It was marvellous.” As Tarzan was
leaving her a short time later he wondered a little at the clinging
pressure of her hand at parting, and the firm insistence with which she
exacted a promise from him that he would call again on the morrow.

The memory of her half-veiled eyes and perfect lips as she had stood
smiling up into his face as he bade her good-by remained with him for
the balance of the day. Olga de Coude was a very beautiful woman, and
Tarzan of the Apes a very lonely young man, with a heart in him that
was in need of the doctoring that only a woman may provide.

As the countess turned back into the room after Tarzan’s departure, she
found herself face to face with Nikolas Rokoff.

“How long have you been here?” she cried, shrinking away from him.

“Since before your lover came,” he answered, with a nasty leer.

“Stop!” she commanded. “How dare you say such a thing to me—your
sister!”

“Well, my dear Olga, if he is not your lover, accept my apologies; but
it is no fault of yours that he is not. Had he one-tenth the knowledge
of women that I have you would be in his arms this minute. He is a
stupid fool, Olga. Why, your every word and act was an open invitation
to him, and he had not the sense to see it.”

The woman put her hands to her ears.

“I will not listen. You are wicked to say such things as that. No
matter what you may threaten me with, you know that I am a good woman.
After tonight you will not dare to annoy me, for I shall tell Raoul
all. He will understand, and then, Monsieur Nikolas, beware!”

“You shall tell him nothing,” said Rokoff. “I have this affair now, and
with the help of one of your servants whom I may trust it will lack
nothing in the telling when the time comes that the details of the
sworn evidence shall be poured into your husband’s ears. The other
affair served its purpose well—we now have something tangible to work
on, Olga. A real _affair_—and you a trusted wife. Shame, Olga,” and the
brute laughed.

So the countess told her count nothing, and matters were worse than
they had been. From a vague fear her mind was transferred to a very
tangible one. It may be, too, that conscience helped to enlarge it out
of all proportion.




Chapter V
The Plot That Failed


For a month Tarzan was a regular and very welcome devotee at the shrine
of the beautiful Countess de Coude. Often he met other members of the
select little coterie that dropped in for tea of an afternoon. More
often Olga found devices that would give her an hour of Tarzan alone.

For a time she had been frightened by what Nikolas had insinuated. She
had not thought of this big, young man as anything more than friend,
but with the suggestion implanted by the evil words of her brother she
had grown to speculate much upon the strange force which seemed to
attract her toward the gray-eyed stranger. She did not wish to love
him, nor did she wish his love.

She was much younger than her husband, and without having realized it
she had been craving the haven of a friendship with one nearer her own
age. Twenty is shy in exchanging confidences with forty. Tarzan was but
two years her senior. He could understand her, she felt. Then he was
clean and honorable and chivalrous. She was not afraid of him. That she
could trust him she had felt instinctively from the first.

From a distance Rokoff had watched this growing intimacy with malicious
glee. Ever since he had learned that Tarzan knew that he was a Russian
spy there had been added to his hatred for the ape-man a great fear
that he would expose him. He was but waiting now until the moment was
propitious for a master stroke. He wanted to rid himself forever of
Tarzan, and at the same time reap an ample revenge for the humiliations
and defeats that he had suffered at his hands.

Tarzan was nearer to contentment than he had been since the peace and
tranquility of his jungle had been broken in upon by the advent of the
marooned Porter party. He enjoyed the pleasant social intercourse with
Olga’s friends, while the friendship which had sprung up between the
fair countess and himself was a source of never-ending delight. It
broke in upon and dispersed his gloomy thoughts, and served as a balm
to his lacerated heart.

Sometimes D’Arnot accompanied him on his visits to the De Coude home,
for he had long known both Olga and the count. Occasionally De Coude
dropped in, but the multitudinous affairs of his official position and
the never-ending demands of politics kept him from home usually until
late at night.

Rokoff spied upon Tarzan almost constantly, waiting for the time that
he should call at the De Coude palace at night, but in this he was
doomed to disappointment. On several occasions Tarzan accompanied the
countess to her home after the opera, but he invariably left her at the
entrance—much to the disgust of the lady’s devoted brother.

Finding that it seemed impossible to trap Tarzan through any voluntary
act of his own, Rokoff and Paulvitch put their heads together to hatch
a plan that would trap the ape-man in all the circumstantial evidence
of a compromising position.

For days they watched the papers as well as the movements of De Coude
and Tarzan. At length they were rewarded. A morning paper made brief
mention of a smoker that was to be given on the following evening by
the German minister. De Coude’s name was among those of the invited
guests. If he attended this meant that he would be absent from his home
until after midnight.

On the night of the banquet Paulvitch waited at the curb before the
residence of the German minister, where he could scan the face of each
guest that arrived. He had not long to wait before De Coude descended
from his car and passed him. That was enough. Paulvitch hastened back
to his quarters, where Rokoff awaited him. There they waited until
after eleven, then Paulvitch took down the receiver of their telephone.
He called a number.

“The apartments of Lieutenant D’Arnot?” he asked, when he had obtained
his connection.

“A message for Monsieur Tarzan, if he will be so kind as to step to the
telephone.”

For a minute there was silence.

“Monsieur Tarzan?”

“Ah, yes, monsieur, this is François—in the service of the Countess de
Coude. Possibly monsieur does poor François the honor to recall
him—yes?

“Yes, monsieur. I have a message, an urgent message from the countess.
She asks that you hasten to her at once—she is in trouble, monsieur.

“No, monsieur, poor François does not know. Shall I tell madame that
monsieur will be here shortly?

“Thank you, monsieur. The good God will bless you.”

Paulvitch hung up the receiver and turned to grin at Rokoff.

“It will take him thirty minutes to get there. If you reach the German
minister’s in fifteen, De Coude should arrive at his home in about
forty-five minutes. It all depends upon whether the fool will remain
fifteen minutes after he finds that a trick has been played upon him;
but unless I am mistaken Olga will be loath to let him go in so short a
time as that. Here is the note for De Coude. Hasten!”

Paulvitch lost no time in reaching the German minister’s. At the door
he handed the note to a footman. “This is for the Count de Coude. It is
very urgent. You must see that it is placed in his hands at once,” and
he dropped a piece of silver into the willing hand of the servant. Then
he returned to his quarters.

A moment later De Coude was apologizing to his host as he tore open the
envelope. What he read left his face white and his hand trembling.

MONSIEUR LE COUNT DE COUDE:
    One who wishes to save the honor of your name takes this means to
    warn you that the sanctity of your home is this minute in jeopardy.
    A certain man who for months has been a constant visitor there
    during your absence is now with your wife. If you go at once to
    your countess’ boudoir you will find them together.


A FRIEND.


Twenty minutes after Paulvitch had called Tarzan, Rokoff obtained a
connection with Olga’s private line. Her maid answered the telephone
which was in the countess’ boudoir.

“But madame has retired,” said the maid, in answer to Rokoff’s request
to speak with her.

“This is a very urgent message for the countess’ ears alone,” replied
Rokoff. “Tell her that she must arise and slip something about her and
come to the telephone. I shall call up again in five minutes.” Then he
hung up his receiver. A moment later Paulvitch entered.

“The count has the message?” asked Rokoff.

“He should be on his way to his home by now,” replied Paulvitch.

“Good! My lady will be sitting in her boudoir, very much in negligee,
about now. In a minute the faithful Jacques will escort Monsieur Tarzan
into her presence without announcing him. It will take a few minutes
for explanations. Olga will look very alluring in the filmy creation
that is her night-dress, and the clinging robe which but half conceals
the charms that the former does not conceal at all. Olga will be
surprised, but not displeased.

“If there is a drop of red blood in the man the count will break in
upon a very pretty love scene in about fifteen minutes from now. I
think we have planned marvelously, my dear Alexis. Let us go out and
drink to the very good health of Monsieur Tarzan in some of old
Plancon’s unparalleled absinth; not forgetting that the Count de Coude
is one of the best swordsmen in Paris, and by far the best shot in all
France.”

When Tarzan reached Olga’s, Jacques was awaiting him at the entrance.

“This way, Monsieur,” he said, and led the way up the broad, marble
staircase. In another moment he had opened a door, and, drawing aside a
heavy curtain, obsequiously bowed Tarzan into a dimly lighted
apartment. Then Jacques vanished.

Across the room from him Tarzan saw Olga seated before a little desk on
which stood her telephone. She was tapping impatiently upon the
polished surface of the desk. She had not heard him enter.

“Olga,” he said, “what is wrong?”

She turned toward him with a little cry of alarm.

“Jean!” she cried. “What are you doing here? Who admitted you? What
does it mean?”

Tarzan was thunderstruck, but in an instant he realized a part of the
truth.

“Then you did not send for me, Olga?”

“Send for you at this time of night? _Mon Dieu!_ Jean, do you think
that I am quite mad?”

“François telephoned me to come at once; that you were in trouble and
wanted me.”

“François? Who in the world is François?”

“He said that he was in your service. He spoke as though I should
recall the fact.”

“There is no one by that name in my employ. Some one has played a joke
upon you, Jean,” and Olga laughed.

“I fear that it may be a most sinister ‘joke,’ Olga,” he replied.
“There is more back of it than humor.”

“What do you mean? You do not think that—”

“Where is the count?” he interrupted.

“At the German ambassador’s.”

“This is another move by your estimable brother. Tomorrow the count
will hear of it. He will question the servants. Everything will point
to—to what Rokoff wishes the count to think.”

“The scoundrel!” cried Olga. She had arisen, and come close to Tarzan,
where she stood looking up into his face. She was very frightened. In
her eyes was an expression that the hunter sees in those of a poor,
terrified doe—puzzled—questioning. She trembled, and to steady herself
raised her hands to his broad shoulders. “What shall we do, Jean?” she
whispered. “It is terrible. Tomorrow all Paris will read of it—he will
see to that.”

Her look, her attitude, her words were eloquent of the age-old appeal
of defenseless woman to her natural protector—man. Tarzan took one of
the warm little hands that lay on his breast in his own strong one. The
act was quite involuntary, and almost equally so was the instinct of
protection that threw a sheltering arm around the girl’s shoulders.

The result was electrical. Never before had he been so close to her. In
startled guilt they looked suddenly into each other’s eyes, and where
Olga de Coude should have been strong she was weak, for she crept
closer into the man’s arms, and clasped her own about his neck. And
Tarzan of the Apes? He took the panting figure into his mighty arms,
and covered the hot lips with kisses.

Raoul de Coude made hurried excuses to his host after he had read the
note handed him by the ambassador’s butler. Never afterward could he
recall the nature of the excuses he made. Everything was quite a blur
to him up to the time that he stood on the threshold of his own home.
Then he became very cool, moving quietly and with caution. For some
inexplicable reason Jacques had the door open before he was halfway to
the steps. It did not strike him at the time as being unusual, though
afterward he remarked it.

Very softly he tiptoed up the stairs and along the gallery to the door
of his wife’s boudoir. In his hand was a heavy walking stick—in his
heart, murder.

Olga was the first to see him. With a horrified shriek she tore herself
from Tarzan’s arms, and the ape-man turned just in time to ward with
his arm a terrific blow that De Coude had aimed at his head. Once,
twice, three times the heavy stick fell with lightning rapidity, and
each blow aided in the transition of the ape-man back to the
primordial.

With the low, guttural snarl of the bull ape he sprang for the
Frenchman. The great stick was torn from his grasp and broken in two as
though it had been matchwood, to be flung aside as the now infuriated
beast charged for his adversary’s throat. Olga de Coude stood a
horrified spectator of the terrible scene which ensued during the next
brief moment, then she sprang to where Tarzan was murdering her
husband—choking the life from him—shaking him as a terrier might shake
a rat.

Frantically she tore at his great hands. “Mother of God!” she cried.
“You are killing him, you are killing him! Oh, Jean, you are killing my
husband!”

Tarzan was deaf with rage. Suddenly he hurled the body to the floor,
and, placing his foot upon the upturned breast, raised his head. Then
through the palace of the Count de Coude rang the awesome challenge of
the bull ape that has made a kill. From cellar to attic the horrid
sound searched out the servants, and left them blanched and trembling.
The woman in the room sank to her knees beside the body of her husband,
and prayed.

Slowly the red mist faded from before Tarzan’s eyes. Things began to
take form—he was regaining the perspective of civilized man. His eyes
fell upon the figure of the kneeling woman. “Olga,” he whispered. She
looked up, expecting to see the maniacal light of murder in the eyes
above her. Instead she saw sorrow and contrition.

“Oh, Jean!” she cried. “See what you have done. He was my husband. I
loved him, and you have killed him.”

Very gently Tarzan raised the limp form of the Count de Coude and bore
it to a couch. Then he put his ear to the man’s breast.

“Some brandy, Olga,” he said.

She brought it, and together they forced it between his lips. Presently
a faint gasp came from the white lips. The head turned, and De Coude
groaned.

“He will not die,” said Tarzan. “Thank God!”

“Why did you do it, Jean?” she asked.

“I do not know. He struck me, and I went mad. I have seen the apes of
my tribe do the same thing. I have never told you my story, Olga. It
would have been better had you known it—this might not have happened. I
never saw my father. The only mother I knew was a ferocious she-ape.
Until I was fifteen I had never seen a human being. I was twenty before
I saw a white man. A little more than a year ago I was a naked beast of
prey in an African jungle.

“Do not judge me too harshly. Two years is too short a time in which to
attempt to work the change in an individual that it has taken countless
ages to accomplish in the white race.”

“I do not judge at all, Jean. The fault is mine. You must go now—he
must not find you here when he regains consciousness. Good-by.”

It was a sorrowful Tarzan who walked with bowed head from the palace of
the Count de Coude.

Once outside his thoughts took definite shape, to the end that twenty
minutes later he entered a police station not far from the Rue Maule.
Here he soon found one of the officers with whom he had had the
encounter several weeks previous. The policeman was genuinely glad to
see again the man who had so roughly handled him. After a moment of
conversation Tarzan asked if he had ever heard of Nikolas Rokoff or
Alexis Paulvitch.

“Very often, indeed, monsieur. Each has a police record, and while
there is nothing charged against them now, we make it a point to know
pretty well where they may be found should the occasion demand. It is
only the same precaution that we take with every known criminal. Why
does monsieur ask?”

“They are known to me,” replied Tarzan. “I wish to see Monsieur Rokoff
on a little matter of business. If you can direct me to his lodgings I
shall appreciate it.”

A few minutes later he bade the policeman adieu, and, with a slip of
paper in his pocket bearing a certain address in a semirespectable
quarter, he walked briskly toward the nearest taxi stand.

Rokoff and Paulvitch had returned to their rooms, and were sitting
talking over the probable outcome of the evening’s events. They had
telephoned to the offices of two of the morning papers from which they
momentarily expected representatives to hear the first report of the
scandal that was to stir social Paris on the morrow.

A heavy step sounded on the stairway. “Ah, but these newspaper men are
prompt,” exclaimed Rokoff, and as a knock fell upon the door of their
room: “Enter, monsieur.”

The smile of welcome froze upon the Russian’s face as he looked into
the hard, gray eyes of his visitor.

“Name of a name!” he shouted, springing to his feet, “What brings you
here!”

“Sit down!” said Tarzan, so low that the men could barely catch the
words, but in a tone that brought Rokoff to his chair, and kept
Paulvitch in his.

“You know what has brought me here,” he continued, in the same low
tone. “It should be to kill you, but because you are Olga de Coude’s
brother I shall not do that—now.

“I shall give you a chance for your lives. Paulvitch does not count
much—he is merely a stupid, foolish little tool, and so I shall not
kill him so long as I permit you to live. Before I leave you two alive
in this room you will have done two things. The first will be to write
a full confession of your connection with tonight’s plot—and sign it.

“The second will be to promise me upon pain of death that you will
permit no word of this affair to get into the newspapers. If you do not
do both, neither of you will be alive when I pass next through that
doorway. Do you understand?” And, without waiting for a reply: “Make
haste; there is ink before you, and paper and a pen.”

Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how
little he feared Tarzan’s threats. An instant later he felt the
ape-man’s steel fingers at his throat, and Paulvitch, who attempted to
dodge them and reach the door, was lifted completely off the floor, and
hurled senseless into a corner. When Rokoff commenced to blacken about
the face Tarzan released his hold and shoved the fellow back into his
chair. After a moment of coughing Rokoff sat sullenly glaring at the
man standing opposite him. Presently Paulvitch came to himself, and
limped painfully back to his chair at Tarzan’s command.

“Now write,” said the ape-man. “If it is necessary to handle you again
I shall not be so lenient.”

Rokoff picked up a pen and commenced to write.

“See that you omit no detail, and that you mention every name,”
cautioned Tarzan.

Presently there was a knock at the door. “Enter,” said Tarzan.

A dapper young man came in. “I am from the _Matin_,” he announced. “I
understand that Monsieur Rokoff has a story for me.”

“Then you are mistaken, monsieur,” replied Tarzan. “You have no story
for publication, have you, my dear Nikolas.”

Rokoff looked up from his writing with an ugly scowl upon his face.

“No,” he growled, “I have no story for publication—now.”

“Nor ever, my dear Nikolas,” and the reporter did not see the nasty
light in the ape-man’s eye; but Nikolas Rokoff did.

“Nor ever,” he repeated hastily.

“It is too bad that monsieur has been troubled,” said Tarzan, turning
to the newspaper man. “I bid monsieur good evening,” and he bowed the
dapper young man out of the room, and closed the door in his face.

An hour later Tarzan, with a rather bulky manuscript in his coat
pocket, turned at the door leading from Rokoff’s room.

“Were I you I should leave France,” he said, “for sooner or later I
shall find an excuse to kill you that will not in any way compromise
your sister.”




Chapter VI
A Duel


D’Arnot was asleep when Tarzan entered their apartments after leaving
Rokoff’s. Tarzan did not disturb him, but the following morning he
narrated the happenings of the previous evening, omitting not a single
detail.

“What a fool I have been,” he concluded. “De Coude and his wife were
both my friends. How have I returned their friendship? Barely did I
escape murdering the count. I have cast a stigma on the name of a good
woman. It is very probable that I have broken up a happy home.”

“Do you love Olga de Coude?” asked D’Arnot.

“Were I not positive that she does not love me I could not answer your
question, Paul; but without disloyalty to her I tell you that I do not
love her, nor does she love me. For an instant we were the victims of a
sudden madness—it was not love—and it would have left us, unharmed, as
suddenly as it had come upon us even though De Coude had not returned.
As you know, I have had little experience of women. Olga de Coude is
very beautiful; that, and the dim light and the seductive surroundings,
and the appeal of the defenseless for protection, might have been
resisted by a more civilized man, but my civilization is not even skin
deep—it does not go deeper than my clothes.

“Paris is no place for me. I will but continue to stumble into more and
more serious pitfalls. The man-made restrictions are irksome. I feel
always that I am a prisoner. I cannot endure it, my friend, and so I
think that I shall go back to my own jungle, and lead the life that God
intended that I should lead when He put me there.”

“Do not take it so to heart, Jean,” responded D’Arnot. “You have
acquitted yourself much better than most ‘civilized’ men would have
under similar circumstances. As to leaving Paris at this time, I rather
think that Raoul de Coude may be expected to have something to say on
that subject before long.”

Nor was D’Arnot mistaken. A week later on Monsieur Flaubert was
announced about eleven in the morning, as D’Arnot and Tarzan were
breakfasting. Monsieur Flaubert was an impressively polite gentleman.
With many low bows he delivered Monsieur le Count de Coude’s challenge
to Monsieur Tarzan. Would monsieur be so very kind as to arrange to
have a friend meet Monsieur Flaubert at as early an hour as convenient,
that the details might be arranged to the mutual satisfaction of all
concerned?

Certainly. Monsieur Tarzan would be delighted to place his interests
unreservedly in the hands of his friend, Lieutenant D’Arnot. And so it
was arranged that D’Arnot was to call on Monsieur Flaubert at two that
afternoon, and the polite Monsieur Flaubert, with many bows, left them.

When they were again alone D’Arnot looked quizzically at Tarzan.

“Well?” he said.

“Now to my sins I must add murder, or else myself be killed,” said
Tarzan. “I am progressing rapidly in the ways of my civilized
brothers.”

“What weapons shall you select?” asked D’Arnot. “De Coude is accredited
with being a master with the sword, and a splendid shot.”

“I might then choose poisoned arrows at twenty paces, or spears at the
same distance,” laughed Tarzan. “Make it pistols, Paul.”

“He will kill you, Jean.”

“I have no doubt of it,” replied Tarzan. “I must die some day.”

“We had better make it swords,” said D’Arnot. “He will be satisfied
with wounding you, and there is less danger of a mortal wound.”

“Pistols,” said Tarzan, with finality.

D’Arnot tried to argue him out of it, but without avail, so pistols it
was.

D’Arnot returned from his conference with Monsieur Flaubert shortly
after four.

“It is all arranged,” he said. “Everything is satisfactory. Tomorrow
morning at daylight—there is a secluded spot on the road not far from
Etamps. For some personal reason Monsieur Flaubert preferred it. I did
not demur.”

“Good!” was Tarzan’s only comment. He did not refer to the matter again
even indirectly. That night he wrote several letters before he retired.
After sealing and addressing them he placed them all in an envelope
addressed to D’Arnot. As he undressed D’Arnot heard him humming a
music-hall ditty.

The Frenchman swore under his breath. He was very unhappy, for he was
positive that when the sun rose the next morning it would look down
upon a dead Tarzan. It grated upon him to see Tarzan so unconcerned.

“This is a most uncivilized hour for people to kill each other,”
remarked the ape-man when he had been routed out of a comfortable bed
in the blackness of the early morning hours. He had slept well, and so
it seemed that his head scarcely touched the pillow ere his man
deferentially aroused him. His remark was addressed to D’Arnot, who
stood fully dressed in the doorway of Tarzan’s bedroom.

D’Arnot had scarcely slept at all during the night. He was nervous, and
therefore inclined to be irritable.

“I presume you slept like a baby all night,” he said.

Tarzan laughed. “From your tone, Paul, I infer that you rather harbor
the fact against me. I could not help it, really.”

“No, Jean; it is not that,” replied D’Arnot, himself smiling. “But you
take the entire matter with such infernal indifference—it is
exasperating. One would think that you were going out to shoot at a
target, rather than to face one of the best shots in France.”

Tarzan shrugged his shoulders. “I am going out to expiate a great
wrong, Paul. A very necessary feature of the expiation is the
marksmanship of my opponent. Wherefore, then, should I be dissatisfied?
Have you not yourself told me that Count de Coude is a splendid
marksman?”

“You mean that you hope to be killed?” exclaimed D’Arnot, in horror.

“I cannot say that I hope to be; but you must admit that there is
little reason to believe that I shall not be killed.”

Had D’Arnot known the thing that was in the ape-man’s mind—that had
been in his mind almost from the first intimation that De Coude would
call him to account on the field of honor—he would have been even more
horrified than he was.

In silence they entered D’Arnot’s great car, and in similar silence
they sped over the dim road that leads to Etamps. Each man was occupied
with his own thoughts. D’Arnot’s were very mournful, for he was
genuinely fond of Tarzan. The great friendship which had sprung up
between these two men whose lives and training had been so widely
different had but been strengthened by association, for they were both
men to whom the same high ideals of manhood, of personal courage, and
of honor appealed with equal force. They could understand one another,
and each could be proud of the friendship of the other.

Tarzan of the Apes was wrapped in thoughts of the past; pleasant
memories of the happier occasions of his lost jungle life. He recalled
the countless boyhood hours that he had spent cross-legged upon the
table in his dead father’s cabin, his little brown body bent over one
of the fascinating picture books from which, unaided, he had gleaned
the secret of the printed language long before the sounds of human
speech fell upon his ears. A smile of contentment softened his strong
face as he thought of that day of days that he had had alone with Jane
Porter in the heart of his primeval forest.

Presently his reminiscences were broken in upon by the stopping of the
car—they were at their destination. Tarzan’s mind returned to the
affairs of the moment. He knew that he was about to die, but there was
no fear of death in him. To a denizen of the cruel jungle death is a
commonplace. The first law of nature compels them to cling tenaciously
to life—to fight for it; but it does not teach them to fear death.

D’Arnot and Tarzan were first upon the field of honor. A moment later
De Coude, Monsieur Flaubert, and a third gentleman arrived. The last
was introduced to D’Arnot and Tarzan; he was a physician.

D’Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert spoke together in whispers for a brief
time. The Count de Coude and Tarzan stood apart at opposite sides of
the field. Presently the seconds summoned them. D’Arnot and Monsieur
Flaubert had examined both pistols. The two men who were to face each
other a moment later stood silently while Monsieur Flaubert recited the
conditions they were to observe.

They were to stand back to back. At a signal from Monsieur Flaubert
they were to walk in opposite directions, their pistols hanging by
their sides. When each had proceeded ten paces D’Arnot was to give the
final signal—then they were to turn and fire at will until one fell, or
each had expended the three shots allowed.

While Monsieur Flaubert spoke Tarzan selected a cigarette from his
case, and lighted it. De Coude was the personification of coolness—was
he not the best shot in France?

Presently Monsieur Flaubert nodded to D’Arnot, and each man placed his
principal in position.

“Are you quite ready, gentlemen?” asked Monsieur Flaubert.

“Quite,” replied De Coude.

Tarzan nodded. Monsieur Flaubert gave the signal. He and D’Arnot
stepped back a few paces to be out of the line of fire as the men paced
slowly apart. Six! Seven! Eight! There were tears in D’Arnot’s eyes. He
loved Tarzan very much. Nine! Another pace, and the poor lieutenant
gave the signal he so hated to give. To him it sounded the doom of his
best friend.

Quickly De Coude wheeled and fired. Tarzan gave a little start. His
pistol still dangled at his side. De Coude hesitated, as though waiting
to see his antagonist crumple to the ground. The Frenchman was too
experienced a marksman not to know that he had scored a hit. Still
Tarzan made no move to raise his pistol. De Coude fired once more, but
the attitude of the ape-man—the utter indifference that was so apparent
in every line of the nonchalant ease of his giant figure, and the even
unruffled puffing of his cigarette—had disconcerted the best marksman
in France. This time Tarzan did not start, but again De Coude knew that
he had hit.

Suddenly the explanation leaped to his mind—his antagonist was coolly
taking these terrible chances in the hope that he would receive no
staggering wound from any of De Coude’s three shots. Then he would take
his own time about shooting De Coude down deliberately, coolly, and in
cold blood. A little shiver ran up the Frenchman’s spine. It was
fiendish—diabolical. What manner of creature was this that could stand
complacently with two bullets in him, waiting for the third?

And so De Coude took careful aim this time, but his nerve was gone, and
he made a clean miss. Not once had Tarzan raised his pistol hand from
where it hung beside his leg.

For a moment the two stood looking straight into each other’s eyes. On
Tarzan’s face was a pathetic expression of disappointment. On De
Coude’s a rapidly growing expression of horror—yes, of terror.

He could endure it no longer.

“Mother of God! Monsieur—shoot!” he screamed.

But Tarzan did not raise his pistol. Instead, he advanced toward De
Coude, and when D’Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert, misinterpreting his
intention, would have rushed between them, he raised his left hand in a
sign of remonstrance.

“Do not fear,” he said to them, “I shall not harm him.”

It was most unusual, but they halted. Tarzan advanced until he was
quite close to De Coude.

“There must have been something wrong with monsieur’s pistol,” he said.
“Or monsieur is unstrung. Take mine, monsieur, and try again,” and
Tarzan offered his pistol, butt foremost, to the astonished De Coude.

“_Mon Dieu_, monsieur!” cried the latter. “Are you mad?”

“No, my friend,” replied the ape-man; “but I deserve to die. It is the
only way in which I may atone for the wrong I have done a very good
woman. Take my pistol and do as I bid.”

“It would be murder,” replied De Coude. “But what wrong did you do my
wife? She swore to me that—”

“I do not mean that,” said Tarzan quickly. “You saw all the wrong that
passed between us. But that was enough to cast a shadow upon her name,
and to ruin the happiness of a man against whom I had no enmity. The
fault was all mine, and so I hoped to die for it this morning. I am
disappointed that monsieur is not so wonderful a marksman as I had been
led to believe.”

“You say that the fault was all yours?” asked De Coude eagerly.

“All mine, monsieur. Your wife is a very pure woman. She loves only
you. The fault that you saw was all mine. The thing that brought me
there was no fault of either the Countess de Coude or myself. Here is a
paper which will quite positively demonstrate that,” and Tarzan drew
from his pocket the statement Rokoff had written and signed.

De Coude took it and read. D’Arnot and Monsieur Flaubert had drawn
near. They were interested spectators of this strange ending of a
strange duel. None spoke until De Coude had quite finished, then he
looked up at Tarzan.

“You are a very brave and chivalrous gentleman,” he said. “I thank God
that I did not kill you.”

De Coude was a Frenchman. Frenchmen are impulsive. He threw his arms
about Tarzan and embraced him. Monsieur Flaubert embraced D’Arnot.
There was no one to embrace the doctor. So possibly it was pique which
prompted him to interfere, and demand that he be permitted to dress
Tarzan’s wounds.

“This gentleman was hit once at least,” he said. “Possibly thrice.”

“Twice,” said Tarzan. “Once in the left shoulder, and again in the left
side—both flesh wounds, I think.” But the doctor insisted upon
stretching him upon the sward, and tinkering with him until the wounds
were cleansed and the flow of blood checked.

One result of the duel was that they all rode back to Paris together in
D’Arnot’s car, the best of friends. De Coude was so relieved to have
had this double assurance of his wife’s loyalty that he felt no rancor
at all toward Tarzan. It is true that the latter had assumed much more
of the fault than was rightly his, but if he lied a little he may be
excused, for he lied in the service of a woman, and he lied like a
gentleman.

The ape-man was confined to his bed for several days. He felt that it
was foolish and unnecessary, but the doctor and D’Arnot took the matter
so to heart that he gave in to please them, though it made him laugh to
think of it.

“It is droll,” he said to D’Arnot. “To lie abed because of a pin prick!
Why, when Bolgani, the king gorilla, tore me almost to pieces, while I
was still but a little boy, did I have a nice soft bed to lie on? No,
only the damp, rotting vegetation of the jungle. Hidden beneath some
friendly bush I lay for days and weeks with only Kala to nurse me—poor,
faithful Kala, who kept the insects from my wounds and warned off the
beasts of prey.

“When I called for water she brought it to me in her own mouth—the only
way she knew to carry it. There was no sterilized gauze, there was no
antiseptic bandage—there was nothing that would not have driven our
dear doctor mad to have seen. Yet I recovered—recovered to lie in bed
because of a tiny scratch that one of the jungle folk would scarce
realize unless it were upon the end of his nose.”

But the time was soon over, and before he realized it Tarzan found
himself abroad again. Several times De Coude had called, and when he
found that Tarzan was anxious for employment of some nature he promised
to see what could be done to find a berth for him.

It was the first day that Tarzan was permitted to go out that he
received a message from De Coude requesting him to call at the count’s
office that afternoon.

He found De Coude awaiting him with a very pleasant welcome, and a
sincere congratulation that he was once more upon his feet. Neither had
ever mentioned the duel or the cause of it since that morning upon the
field of honor.

“I think that I have found just the thing for you, Monsieur Tarzan,”
said the count. “It is a position of much trust and responsibility,
which also requires considerably physical courage and prowess. I cannot
imagine a man better fitted than you, my dear Monsieur Tarzan, for this
very position. It will necessitate travel, and later it may lead to a
very much better post—possibly in the diplomatic service.

“At first, for a short time only, you will be a special agent in the
service of the ministry of war. Come, I will take you to the gentleman
who will be your chief. He can explain the duties better than I, and
then you will be in a position to judge if you wish to accept or no.”

De Coude himself escorted Tarzan to the office of General Rochere, the
chief of the bureau to which Tarzan would be attached if he accepted
the position. There the count left him, after a glowing description to
the general of the many attributes possessed by the ape-man which
should fit him for the work of the service.

A half hour later Tarzan walked out of the office the possessor of the
first position he had ever held. On the morrow he was to return for
further instructions, though General Rochere had made it quite plain
that Tarzan might prepare to leave Paris for an almost indefinite
period, possibly on the morrow.

It was with feelings of the keenest elation that he hastened home to
bear the good news to D’Arnot. At last he was to be of some value in
the world. He was to earn money, and, best of all, to travel and see
the world.

He could scarcely wait to get well inside D’Arnot’s sitting room before
he burst out with the glad tidings. D’Arnot was not so pleased.

“It seems to delight you to think that you are to leave Paris, and that
we shall not see each other for months, perhaps. Tarzan, you are a most
ungrateful beast!” and D’Arnot laughed.

“No, Paul; I am a little child. I have a new toy, and I am tickled to
death.”

And so it came that on the following day Tarzan left Paris en route for
Marseilles and Oran.




Chapter VII
The Dancing Girl of Sidi Aissa


Tarzan’s first mission did not bid fair to be either exciting or vastly
important. There was a certain lieutenant of _spahis_ whom the
government had reason to suspect of improper relations with a great
European power. This Lieutenant Gernois, who was at present stationed
at Sidi-bel-Abbes, had recently been attached to the general staff,
where certain information of great military value had come into his
possession in the ordinary routine of his duties. It was this
information which the government suspected the great power was
bartering for with the officer.

It was at most but a vague hint dropped by a certain notorious
Parisienne in a jealous mood that had caused suspicion to rest upon the
lieutenant. But general staffs are jealous of their secrets, and
treason so serious a thing that even a hint of it may not be safely
neglected. And so it was that Tarzan had come to Algeria in the guise
of an American hunter and traveler to keep a close eye upon Lieutenant
Gernois.

He had looked forward with keen delight to again seeing his beloved
Africa, but this northern aspect of it was so different from his
tropical jungle home that he might as well have been back in Paris for
all the heart thrills of homecoming that he experienced. At Oran he
spent a day wandering through the narrow, crooked alleys of the Arab
quarter enjoying the strange, new sights. The next day found him at
Sidi-bel-Abbes, where he presented his letters of introduction to both
civil and military authorities—letters which gave no clew to the real
significance of his mission.

Tarzan possessed a sufficient command of English to enable him to pass
among Arabs and Frenchmen as an American, and that was all that was
required of it. When he met an Englishman he spoke French in order that
he might not betray himself, but occasionally talked in English to
foreigners who understood that tongue, but could not note the slight
imperfections of accent and pronunciation that were his.

Here he became acquainted with many of the French officers, and soon
became a favorite among them. He met Gernois, whom he found to be a
taciturn, dyspeptic-looking man of about forty, having little or no
social intercourse with his fellows.

For a month nothing of moment occurred. Gernois apparently had no
visitors, nor did he on his occasional visits to the town hold
communication with any who might even by the wildest flight of
imagination be construed into secret agents of a foreign power. Tarzan
was beginning to hope that, after all, the rumor might have been false,
when suddenly Gernois was ordered to Bou Saada in the Petit Sahara far
to the south.

A company of _spahis_ and three officers were to relieve another
company already stationed there. Fortunately one of the officers,
Captain Gerard, had become an excellent friend of Tarzan’s, and so when
the ape-man suggested that he should embrace the opportunity of
accompanying him to Bou Saada, where he expected to find hunting, it
caused not the slightest suspicion.

At Bouira the detachment detrained, and the balance of the journey was
made in the saddle. As Tarzan was dickering at Bouira for a mount he
caught a brief glimpse of a man in European clothes eying him from the
doorway of a native coffeehouse, but as Tarzan looked the man turned
and entered the little, low-ceilinged mud hut, and but for a haunting
impression that there had been something familiar about the face or
figure of the fellow, Tarzan gave the matter no further thought.

The march to Aumale was fatiguing to Tarzan, whose equestrian
experiences hitherto had been confined to a course of riding lessons in
a Parisian academy, and so it was that he quickly sought the comforts
of a bed in the Hotel Grossat, while the officers and troops took up
their quarters at the military post.

Although Tarzan was called early the following morning, the company of
_spahis_ was on the march before he had finished his breakfast. He was
hurrying through his meal that the soldiers might not get too far in
advance of him when he glanced through the door connecting the dining
room with the bar.

To his surprise, he saw Gernois standing there in conversation with the
very stranger he had seen in the coffee-house at Bouira the day
previous. He could not be mistaken, for there was the same strangely
familiar attitude and figure, though the man’s back was toward him.

As his eyes lingered on the two, Gernois looked up and caught the
intent expression on Tarzan’s face. The stranger was talking in a low
whisper at the time, but the French officer immediately interrupted
him, and the two at once turned away and passed out of the range of
Tarzan’s vision.

This was the first suspicious occurrence that Tarzan had ever witnessed
in connection with Gernois’ actions, but he was positive that the men
had left the barroom solely because Gernois had caught Tarzan’s eyes
upon them; then there was the persistent impression of familiarity
about the stranger to further augment the ape-man’s belief that here at
length was something which would bear watching.

A moment later Tarzan entered the barroom, but the men had left, nor
did he see aught of them in the street beyond, though he found a
pretext to ride to various shops before he set out after the column
which had now considerable start of him. He did not overtake them until
he reached Sidi Aissa shortly after noon, where the soldiers had halted
for an hour’s rest. Here he found Gernois with the column, but there
was no sign of the stranger.

It was market day at Sidi Aissa, and the numberless caravans of camels
coming in from the desert, and the crowds of bickering Arabs in the
market place, filled Tarzan with a consuming desire to remain for a day
that he might see more of these sons of the desert. Thus it was that
the company of _spahis_ marched on that afternoon toward Bou Saada
without him. He spent the hours until dark wandering about the market
in company with a youthful Arab, one Abdul, who had been recommended to
him by the innkeeper as a trustworthy servant and interpreter.

Here Tarzan purchased a better mount than the one he had selected at
Bouira, and, entering into conversation with the stately Arab to whom
the animal had belonged, learned that the seller was Kadour ben Saden,
sheik of a desert tribe far south of Djelfa. Through Abdul, Tarzan
invited his new acquaintance to dine with him. As the three were making
their way through the crowds of marketers, camels, donkeys, and horses
that filled the market place with a confusing babel of sounds, Abdul
plucked at Tarzan’s sleeve.

“Look, master, behind us,” and he turned, pointing at a figure which
disappeared behind a camel as Tarzan turned. “He has been following us
about all afternoon,” continued Abdul.

“I caught only a glimpse of an Arab in a dark-blue burnoose and white
turban,” replied Tarzan. “Is it he you mean?”

“Yes. I suspected him because he seems a stranger here, without other
business than following us, which is not the way of the Arab who is
honest, and also because he keeps the lower part of his face hidden,
only his eyes showing. He must be a bad man, or he would have honest
business of his own to occupy his time.”

“He is on the wrong scent then, Abdul,” replied Tarzan, “for no one
here can have any grievance against me. This is my first visit to your
country, and none knows me. He will soon discover his error, and cease
to follow us.”

“Unless he be bent on robbery,” returned Abdul.

“Then all we can do is wait until he is ready to try his hand upon us,”
laughed Tarzan, “and I warrant that he will get his bellyful of robbing
now that we are prepared for him,” and so he dismissed the subject from
his mind, though he was destined to recall it before many hours through
a most unlooked-for occurrence.

Kadour ben Saden, having dined well, prepared to take leave of his
host. With dignified protestations of friendship, he invited Tarzan to
visit him in his wild domain, where the antelope, the stag, the boar,
the panther, and the lion might still be found in sufficient numbers to
tempt an ardent huntsman.

On his departure the ape-man, with Abdul, wandered again into the
streets of Sidi Aissa, where he was soon attracted by the wild din of
sound coming from the open doorway of one of the numerous _cafés
maures_. It was after eight, and the dancing was in full swing as
Tarzan entered. The room was filled to repletion with Arabs. All were
smoking, and drinking their thick, hot coffee.

Tarzan and Abdul found seats near the center of the room, though the
terrific noise produced by the musicians upon their Arab drums and
pipes would have rendered a seat farther from them more acceptable to
the quiet-loving ape-man. A rather good-looking Ouled-Nail was dancing,
and, perceiving Tarzan’s European clothes, and scenting a generous
gratuity, she threw her silken handkerchief upon his shoulder, to be
rewarded with a franc.

When her place upon the floor had been taken by another the bright-eyed
Abdul saw her in conversation with two Arabs at the far side of the
room, near a side door that let upon an inner court, around the gallery
of which were the rooms occupied by the girls who danced in this café.

At first he thought nothing of the matter, but presently he noticed
from the corner of his eye one of the men nod in their direction, and
the girl turn and shoot a furtive glance at Tarzan. Then the Arabs
melted through the doorway into the darkness of the court.

When it came again the girl’s turn to dance she hovered close to
Tarzan, and for the ape-man alone were her sweetest smiles. Many an
ugly scowl was cast upon the tall European by swarthy, dark-eyed sons
of the desert, but neither smiles nor scowls produced any outwardly
visible effect upon him. Again the girl cast her handkerchief upon his
shoulder, and again was she rewarded with a franc piece. As she was
sticking it upon her forehead, after the custom of her kind, she bent
low toward Tarzan, whispering a quick word in his ear.

“There are two without in the court,” she said quickly, in broken
French, “who would harm m’sieur. At first I promised to lure you to
them, but you have been kind, and I cannot do it. Go quickly, before
they find that I have failed them. I think that they are very bad men.”

Tarzan thanked the girl, assuring her that he would be careful, and,
having finished her dance, she crossed to the little doorway and went
out into the court. But Tarzan did not leave the café as she had urged.

For another half hour nothing unusual occurred, then a surly-looking
Arab entered the café from the street. He stood near Tarzan, where he
deliberately made insulting remarks about the European, but as they
were in his native tongue Tarzan was entirely innocent of their purport
until Abdul took it upon himself to enlighten him.

“This fellow is looking for trouble,” warned Abdul. “He is not alone.
In fact, in case of a disturbance, nearly every man here would be
against you. It would be better to leave quietly, master.”

“Ask the fellow what he wants,” commanded Tarzan.

“He says that ‘the dog of a Christian’ insulted the Ouled-Nail, who
belongs to him. He means trouble, m’sieur.”

“Tell him that I did not insult his or any other Ouled-Nail, that I
wish him to go away and leave me alone. That I have no quarrel with
him, nor has he any with me.”

“He says,” replied Abdul, after delivering this message to the Arab,
“that besides being a dog yourself that you are the son of one, and
that your grandmother was a hyena. Incidentally you are a liar.”

The attention of those near by had now been attracted by the
altercation, and the sneering laughs that followed this torrent of
invective easily indicated the trend of the sympathies of the majority
of the audience.

Tarzan did not like being laughed at, neither did he relish the terms
applied to him by the Arab, but he showed no sign of anger as he arose
from his seat upon the bench. A half smile played about his lips, but
of a sudden a mighty fist shot into the face of the scowling Arab, and
back of it were the terrible muscles of the ape-man.

At the instant that the man fell a half dozen fierce plainsmen sprang
into the room from where they had apparently been waiting for their cue
in the street before the café. With cries of “Kill the unbeliever!” and
“Down with the dog of a Christian!” they made straight for Tarzan. A
number of the younger Arabs in the audience sprang to their feet to
join in the assault upon the unarmed white man. Tarzan and Abdul were
rushed back toward the end of the room by the very force of numbers
opposing them. The young Arab remained loyal to his master, and with
drawn knife fought at his side.

With tremendous blows the ape-man felled all who came within reach of
his powerful hands. He fought quietly and without a word, upon his lips
the same half smile they had worn as he rose to strike down the man who
had insulted him. It seemed impossible that either he or Abdul could
survive the sea of wicked-looking swords and knives that surrounded
them, but the very numbers of their assailants proved the best bulwark
of their safety. So closely packed was the howling, cursing mob that no
weapon could be wielded to advantage, and none of the Arabs dared use a
firearm for fear of wounding one of his compatriots.

Finally Tarzan succeeded in seizing one of the most persistent of his
attackers. With a quick wrench he disarmed the fellow, and then,
holding him before them as a shield, he backed slowly beside Abdul
toward the little door which led into the inner courtyard. At the
threshold he paused for an instant, and, lifting the struggling Arab
above his head, hurled him, as though from a catapult, full in the
faces of his on-pressing fellows.

Then Tarzan and Abdul stepped into the semidarkness of the court. The
frightened Ouled-Nails were crouching at the tops of the stairs which
led to their respective rooms, the only light in the courtyard coming
from the sickly candles which each girl had stuck with its own grease
to the woodwork of her door-frame, the better to display her charms to
those who might happen to traverse the dark inclosure.

Scarcely had Tarzan and Abdul emerged from the room ere a revolver
spoke close at their backs from the shadows beneath one of the
stairways, and as they turned to meet this new antagonist, two muffled
figures sprang toward them, firing as they came. Tarzan leaped to meet
these two new assailants. The foremost lay, a second later, in the
trampled dirt of the court, disarmed and groaning from a broken wrist.
Abdul’s knife found the vitals of the second in the instant that the
fellow’s revolver missed fire as he held it to the faithful Arab’s
forehead.

The maddened horde within the café were now rushing out in pursuit of
their quarry. The Ouled-Nails had extinguished their candles at a cry
from one of their number, and the only light within the yard came
feebly from the open and half-blocked door of the café. Tarzan had
seized a sword from the man who had fallen before Abdul’s knife, and
now he stood waiting for the rush of men that was coming in search of
them through the darkness.

Suddenly he felt a light hand upon his shoulder from behind, and a
woman’s voice whispering, “Quick, m’sieur; this way. Follow me.”

“Come, Abdul,” said Tarzan, in a low tone, to the youth; “we can be no
worse off elsewhere than we are here.”

The woman turned and led them up the narrow stairway that ended at the
door of her quarters. Tarzan was close beside her. He saw the gold and
silver bracelets upon her bare arms, the strings of gold coin that
depended from her hair ornaments, and the gorgeous colors of her dress.
He saw that she was a Ouled-Nail, and instinctively he knew that she
was the same who had whispered the warning in his ear earlier in the
evening.

As they reached the top of the stairs they could hear the angry crowd
searching the yard beneath.

“Soon they will search here,” whispered the girl. “They must not find
you, for, though you fight with the strength of many men, they will
kill you in the end. Hasten; you can drop from the farther window of my
room to the street beyond. Before they discover that you are no longer
in the court of the buildings you will be safe within the hotel.”

But even as she spoke, several men had started up the stairway at the
head of which they stood. There was a sudden cry from one of the
searchers. They had been discovered. Quickly the crowd rushed for the
stairway. The foremost assailant leaped quickly upward, but at the top
he met the sudden sword that he had not expected—the quarry had been
unarmed before.

With a cry, the man toppled back upon those behind him. Like tenpins
they rolled down the stairs. The ancient and rickety structure could
not withstand the strain of this unwonted weight and jarring. With a
creaking and rending of breaking wood it collapsed beneath the Arabs,
leaving Tarzan, Abdul, and the girl alone upon the frail platform at
the top.

“Come!” cried the Ouled-Nail. “They will reach us from another stairway
through the room next to mine. We have not a moment to spare.”

Just as they were entering the room Abdul heard and translated a cry
from the yard below for several to hasten to the street and cut off
escape from that side.

“We are lost now,” said the girl simply.

“We?” questioned Tarzan.

“Yes, m’sieur,” she responded; “they will kill me as well. Have I not
aided you?”

This put a different aspect on the matter. Tarzan had rather been
enjoying the excitement and danger of the encounter. He had not for an
instant supposed that either Abdul or the girl could suffer except
through accident, and he had only retreated just enough to keep from
being killed himself. He had had no intention of running away until he
saw that he was hopelessly lost were he to remain.

Alone he could have sprung into the midst of that close-packed mob,
and, laying about him after the fashion of Numa, the lion, have struck
the Arabs with such consternation that escape would have been easy. Now
he must think entirely of these two faithful friends.

He crossed to the window which overlooked the street. In a minute there
would be enemies below. Already he could hear the mob clambering the
stairway to the next quarters—they would be at the door beside him in
another instant. He put a foot upon the sill and leaned out, but he did
not look down. Above him, within arm’s reach, was the low roof of the
building. He called to the girl. She came and stood beside him. He put
a great arm about her and lifted her across his shoulder.

“Wait here until I reach down for you from above,” he said to Abdul.
“In the meantime shove everything in the room against that door—it may
delay them long enough.” Then he stepped to the sill of the narrow
window with the girl upon his shoulders. “Hold tight,” he cautioned
her. A moment later he had clambered to the roof above with the ease
and dexterity of an ape. Setting the girl down, he leaned far over the
roof’s edge, calling softly to Abdul. The youth ran to the window.

“Your hand,” whispered Tarzan. The men in the room beyond were
battering at the door. With a sudden crash it fell splintering in, and
at the same instant Abdul felt himself lifted like a feather onto the
roof above. They were not a moment too soon, for as the men broke into
the room which they had just quitted a dozen more rounded the corner in
the street below and came running to a spot beneath the girl’s window.




Chapter VIII
The Fight in the Desert


As the three squatted upon the roof above the quarters of the
Ouled-Nails they heard the angry cursing of the Arabs in the room
beneath. Abdul translated from time to time to Tarzan.

“They are berating those in the street below now,” said Abdul, “for
permitting us to escape so easily. Those in the street say that we did
not come that way—that we are still within the building, and that those
above, being too cowardly to attack us, are attempting to deceive them
into believing that we have escaped. In a moment they will have
fighting of their own to attend to if they continue their brawling.”

Presently those in the building gave up the search, and returned to the
café. A few remained in the street below, smoking and talking.

Tarzan spoke to the girl, thanking her for the sacrifice she had made
for him, a total stranger.

“I liked you,” she said simply. “You were unlike the others who come to
the café. You did not speak coarsely to me—the manner in which you gave
me money was not an insult.”

“What shall you do after tonight?” he asked. “You cannot return to the
café. Can you even remain with safety in Sidi Aissa?”

“Tomorrow it will be forgotten,” she replied. “But I should be glad if
it might be that I need never return to this or another café. I have
not remained because I wished to; I have been a prisoner.”

“A prisoner!” ejaculated Tarzan incredulously.

“A slave would be the better word,” she answered. “I was stolen in the
night from my father’s _douar_ by a band of marauders. They brought me
here and sold me to the Arab who keeps this café. It has been nearly
two years now since I saw the last of mine own people. They are very
far to the south. They never come to Sidi Aissa.”

“You would like to return to your people?” asked Tarzan. “Then I shall
promise to see you safely so far as Bou Saada at least. There we can
doubtless arrange with the commandant to send you the rest of the way.”

“Oh, m’sieur,” she cried, “how can I ever repay you! You cannot really
mean that you will do so much for a poor Ouled-Nail. But my father can
reward you, and he will, for is he not a great sheik? He is Kadour ben
Saden.”

“Kadour ben Saden!” ejaculated Tarzan. “Why, Kadour ben Saden is in
Sidi Aissa this very night. He dined with me but a few hours since.”

“My father in Sidi Aissa?” cried the amazed girl. “Allah be praised
then, for I am indeed saved.”

“Hssh!” cautioned Abdul. “Listen.”

From below came the sound of voices, quite distinguishable upon the
still night air. Tarzan could not understand the words, but Abdul and
the girl translated.

“They have gone now,” said the latter. “It is you they want, m’sieur.
One of them said that the stranger who had offered money for your
slaying lay in the house of Akmed din Soulef with a broken wrist, but
that he had offered a still greater reward if some would lay in wait
for you upon the road to Bou Saada and kill you.”

“It is he who followed m’sieur about the market today,” exclaimed
Abdul. “I saw him again within the café—him and another; and the two
went out into the inner court after talking with this girl here. It was
they who attacked and fired upon us, as we came out of the café. Why do
they wish to kill you, m’sieur?”

“I do not know,” replied Tarzan, and then, after a pause: “Unless—” But
he did not finish, for the thought that had come to his mind, while it
seemed the only reasonable solution of the mystery, appeared at the
same time quite improbable. Presently the men in the street went away.
The courtyard and the café were deserted. Cautiously Tarzan lowered
himself to the sill of the girl’s window. The room was empty. He
returned to the roof and let Abdul down, then he lowered the girl to
the arms of the waiting Arab.

From the window Abdul dropped the short distance to the street below,
while Tarzan took the girl in his arms and leaped down as he had done
on so many other occasions in his own forest with a burden in his arms.
A little cry of alarm was startled from the girl’s lips, but Tarzan
landed in the street with but an imperceptible jar, and lowered her in
safety to her feet.

She clung to him for a moment.

“How strong m’sieur is, and how active,” she cried. “_El Adrea_, the
black lion, himself is not more so.”

“I should like to meet this _el Adrea_ of yours,” he said. “I have
heard much about him.”

“And you come to the _douar_ of my father you shall see him,” said the
girl. “He lives in a spur of the mountains north of us, and comes down
from his lair at night to rob my father’s _douar_. With a single blow
of his mighty paw he crushes the skull of a bull, and woe betide the
belated wayfarer who meets _el Adrea_ abroad at night.”

Without further mishap they reached the hotel. The sleepy landlord
objected strenuously to instituting a search for Kadour ben Saden until
the following morning, but a piece of gold put a different aspect on
the matter, so that a few moments later a servant had started to make
the rounds of the lesser native hostelries where it might be expected
that a desert sheik would find congenial associations. Tarzan had felt
it necessary to find the girl’s father that night, for fear he might
start on his homeward journey too early in the morning to be
intercepted.

They had waited perhaps half an hour when the messenger returned with
Kadour ben Saden. The old sheik entered the room with a questioning
expression upon his proud face.

“Monsieur has done me the honor to—” he commenced, and then his eyes
fell upon the girl. With outstretched arms he crossed the room to meet
her. “My daughter!” he cried. “Allah is merciful!” and tears dimmed the
martial eyes of the old warrior.

When the story of her abduction and her final rescue had been told to
Kadour ben Saden he extended his hand to Tarzan.

“All that is Kadour ben Saden’s is thine, my friend, even to his life,”
he said very simply, but Tarzan knew that those were no idle words.

It was decided that although three of them would have to ride after
practically no sleep, it would be best to make an early start in the
morning, and attempt to ride all the way to Bou Saada in one day. It
would have been comparatively easy for the men, but for the girl it was
sure to be a fatiguing journey.

She, however, was the most anxious to undertake it, for it seemed to
her that she could not quickly enough reach the family and friends from
whom she had been separated for two years.

It seemed to Tarzan that he had not closed his eyes before he was
awakened, and in another hour the party was on its way south toward Bou
Saada. For a few miles the road was good, and they made rapid progress,
but suddenly it became only a waste of sand, into which the horses sank
fetlock deep at nearly every step. In addition to Tarzan, Abdul, the
sheik, and his daughter were four of the wild plainsmen of the sheik’s
tribe who had accompanied him upon the trip to Sidi Aissa. Thus, seven
guns strong, they entertained little fear of attack by day, and if all
went well they should reach Bou Saada before nightfall.

A brisk wind enveloped them in the blowing sand of the desert, until
Tarzan’s lips were parched and cracked. What little he could see of the
surrounding country was far from alluring—a vast expanse of rough
country, rolling in little, barren hillocks, and tufted here and there
with clumps of dreary shrub. Far to the south rose the dim lines of the
Saharan Atlas range. How different, thought Tarzan, from the gorgeous
Africa of his boyhood!

Abdul, always on the alert, looked backward quite as often as he did
ahead. At the top of each hillock that they mounted he would draw in
his horse and, turning, scan the country to the rear with utmost care.
At last his scrutiny was rewarded.

“Look!” he cried. “There are six horsemen behind us.”

“Your friends of last evening, no doubt, monsieur,” remarked Kadour ben
Saden dryly to Tarzan.

“No doubt,” replied the ape-man. “I am sorry that my society should
endanger the safety of your journey. At the next village I shall remain
and question these gentlemen, while you ride on. There is no necessity
for my being at Bou Saada tonight, and less still why you should not
ride in peace.”

“If you stop we shall stop,” said Kadour ben Saden. “Until you are safe
with your friends, or the enemy has left your trail, we shall remain
with you. There is nothing more to say.”

Tarzan nodded his head. He was a man of few words, and possibly it was
for this reason as much as any that Kadour ben Saden had taken to him,
for if there be one thing that an Arab despises it is a talkative man.

All the balance of the day Abdul caught glimpses of the horsemen in
their rear. They remained always at about the same distance. During the
occasional halts for rest, and at the longer halt at noon, they
approached no closer.

“They are waiting for darkness,” said Kadour ben Saden.

And darkness came before they reached Bou Saada. The last glimpse that
Abdul had of the grim, white-robed figures that trailed them, just
before dusk made it impossible to distinguish them, had made it
apparent that they were rapidly closing up the distance that intervened
between them and their intended quarry. He whispered this fact to
Tarzan, for he did not wish to alarm the girl. The ape-man drew back
beside him.

“You will ride ahead with the others, Abdul,” said Tarzan. “This is my
quarrel. I shall wait at the next convenient spot, and interview these
fellows.”

“Then Abdul shall wait at thy side,” replied the young Arab, nor would
any threats or commands move him from his decision.

“Very well, then,” replied Tarzan. “Here is as good a place as we could
wish. Here are rocks at the top of this hillock. We shall remain hidden
here and give an account of ourselves to these gentlemen when they
appear.”

They drew in their horses and dismounted. The others riding ahead were
already out of sight in the darkness. Beyond them shone the lights of
Bou Saada. Tarzan removed his rifle from its boot and loosened his
revolver in its holster. He ordered Abdul to withdraw behind the rocks
with the horses, so that they should be shielded from the enemies’
bullets should they fire. The young Arab pretended to do as he was bid,
but when he had fastened the two animals securely to a low shrub he
crept back to lie on his belly a few paces behind Tarzan.

The ape-man stood erect in the middle of the road, waiting. Nor did he
have long to wait. The sound of galloping horses came suddenly out of
the darkness below him, and a moment later he discerned the moving
blotches of lighter color against the solid background of the night.

“Halt,” he cried, “or we fire!”

The white figures came to a sudden stop, and for a moment there was
silence. Then came the sound of a whispered council, and like ghosts
the phantom riders dispersed in all directions. Again the desert lay
still about him, yet it was an ominous stillness that foreboded evil.

Abdul raised himself to one knee. Tarzan cocked his jungle-trained
ears, and presently there came to him the sound of horses walking
quietly through the sand to the east of him, to the west, to the north,
and to the south. They had been surrounded. Then a shot came from the
direction in which he was looking, a bullet whirred through the air
above his head, and he fired at the flash of the enemy’s gun.

Instantly the soundless waste was torn with the quick staccato of guns
upon every hand. Abdul and Tarzan fired only at the flashes—they could
not yet see their foemen. Presently it became evident that the
attackers were circling their position, drawing closer and closer in as
they began to realize the paltry numbers of the party which opposed
them.

But one came too close, for Tarzan was accustomed to using his eyes in
the darkness of the jungle night, than which there is no more utter
darkness this side the grave, and with a cry of pain a saddle was
emptied.

“The odds are evening, Abdul,” said Tarzan, with a low laugh.

But they were still far too one-sided, and when the five remaining
horsemen whirled at a signal and charged full upon them it looked as if
there would be a sudden ending of the battle. Both Tarzan and Abdul
sprang to the shelter of the rocks, that they might keep the enemy in
front of them. There was a mad clatter of galloping hoofs, a volley of
shots from both sides, and the Arabs withdrew to repeat the maneuver;
but there were now only four against the two.

For a few moments there came no sound from out of the surrounding
blackness. Tarzan could not tell whether the Arabs, satisfied with
their losses, had given up the fight, or were waiting farther along the
road to waylay them as they proceeded on toward Bou Saada. But he was
not left long in doubt, for now all from one direction came the sound
of a new charge. But scarcely had the first gun spoken ere a dozen
shots rang out behind the Arabs. There came the wild shouts of a new
party to the controversy, and the pounding of the feet of many horses
from down the road to Bou Saada.

The Arabs did not wait to learn the identity of the oncomers. With a
parting volley as they dashed by the position which Tarzan and Abdul
were holding, they plunged off along the road toward Sidi Aissa. A
moment later Kadour ben Saden and his men dashed up.

The old sheik was much relieved to find that neither Tarzan nor Abdul
had received a scratch. Not even had their horses been wounded. They
sought out the two men who had fallen before Tarzan’s shots, and,
finding that both were dead, left them where they lay.

“Why did you not tell me that you contemplated ambushing those
fellows?” asked the sheik in a hurt tone. “We might have had them all
if the seven of us had stopped to meet them.”

“Then it would have been useless to stop at all,” replied Tarzan, “for
had we simply ridden on toward Bou Saada they would have been upon us
presently, and all could have been engaged. It was to prevent the
transfer of my own quarrel to another’s shoulders that Abdul and I
stopped off to question them. Then there is your daughter—I could not
be the cause of exposing her needlessly to the marksmanship of six
men.”

Kadour ben Saden shrugged his shoulders. He did not relish having been
cheated out of a fight.

The little battle so close to Bou Saada had drawn out a company of
soldiers. Tarzan and his party met them just outside the town. The
officer in charge halted them to learn the significance of the shots.

“A handful of marauders,” replied Kadour ben Saden. “They attacked two
of our number who had dropped behind, but when we returned to them the
fellows soon dispersed. They left two dead. None of my party was
injured.”

This seemed to satisfy the officer, and after taking the names of the
party he marched his men on toward the scene of the skirmish to bring
back the dead men for purposes of identification, if possible.

Two days later, Kadour ben Saden, with his daughter and followers, rode
south through the pass below Bou Saada, bound for their home in the far
wilderness. The sheik had urged Tarzan to accompany him, and the girl
had added her entreaties to those of her father; but, though he could
not explain it to them, Tarzan’s duties loomed particularly large after
the happenings of the past few days, so that he could not think of
leaving his post for an instant. But he promised to come later if it
lay within his power to do so, and they had to content themselves with
that assurance.

During these two days Tarzan had spent practically all his time with
Kadour ben Saden and his daughter. He was keenly interested in this
race of stern and dignified warriors, and embraced the opportunity
which their friendship offered to learn what he could of their lives
and customs. He even commenced to acquire the rudiments of their
language under the pleasant tutorage of the brown-eyed girl. It was
with real regret that he saw them depart, and he sat his horse at the
opening to the pass, as far as which he had accompanied them, gazing
after the little party as long as he could catch a glimpse of them.

Here were people after his own heart! Their wild, rough lives, filled
with danger and hardship, appealed to this half-savage man as nothing
had appealed to him in the midst of the effeminate civilization of the
great cities he had visited. Here was a life that excelled even that of
the jungle, for here he might have the society of men—real men whom he
could honor and respect, and yet be near to the wild nature that he
loved. In his head revolved an idea that when he had completed his
mission he would resign and return to live for the remainder of his
life with the tribe of Kadour ben Saden.

Then he turned his horse’s head and rode slowly back to Bou Saada.

The front of the Hotel du Petit Sahara, where Tarzan stopped in Bou
Saada, is taken up with the bar, two dining-rooms, and the kitchens.
Both of the dining-rooms open directly off the bar, and one of them is
reserved for the use of the officers of the garrison. As you stand in
the barroom you may look into either of the dining-rooms if you wish.

It was to the bar that Tarzan repaired after speeding Kadour ben Saden
and his party on their way. It was yet early in the morning, for Kadour
ben Saden had elected to ride far that day, so that it happened that
when Tarzan returned there were guests still at breakfast.

As his casual glance wandered into the officers’ dining-room, Tarzan
saw something which brought a look of interest to his eyes. Lieutenant
Gernois was sitting there, and as Tarzan looked a white-robed Arab
approached and, bending, whispered a few words into the lieutenant’s
ear. Then he passed on out of the building through another door.

In itself the thing was nothing, but as the man had stooped to speak to
the officer, Tarzan had caught sight of something which the accidental
parting of the man’s burnoose had revealed—he carried his left arm in a
sling.




Chapter IX
Numa “El Adrea”


On the same day that Kadour ben Saden rode south the diligence from the
north brought Tarzan a letter from D’Arnot which had been forwarded
from Sidi-bel-Abbes. It opened the old wound that Tarzan would have
been glad to have forgotten; yet he was not sorry that D’Arnot had
written, for one at least of his subjects could never cease to interest
the ape-man. Here is the letter:

MY DEAR JEAN:


Since last I wrote you I have been across to London on a matter of
business. I was there but three days. The very first day I came upon an
old friend of yours—quite unexpectedly—in Henrietta Street. Now you
never in the world would guess whom. None other than Mr. Samuel T.
Philander. But it is true. I can see your look of incredulity. Nor is
this all. He insisted that I return to the hotel with him, and there I
found the others—Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, Miss Porter, and that
enormous black woman, Miss Porter’s maid—Esmeralda, you will recall.
While I was there Clayton came in. They are to be married soon, or
rather sooner, for I rather suspect that we shall receive announcements
almost any day. On account of his father’s death it is to be a very
quiet affair—only blood relatives.

While I was alone with Mr. Philander the old fellow became rather
confidential. Said Miss Porter had already postponed the wedding on
three different occasions. He confided that it appeared to him that she
was not particularly anxious to marry Clayton at all; but this time it
seems that it is quite likely to go through.

Of course they all asked after you, but I respected your wishes in the
matter of your true origin, and only spoke to them of your present
affairs.

Miss Porter was especially interested in everything I had to say about
you, and asked many questions. I am afraid I took a rather unchivalrous
delight in picturing your desire and resolve to go back eventually to
your native jungle. I was sorry afterward, for it did seem to cause her
real anguish to contemplate the awful dangers to which you wished to
return. “And yet,” she said, “I do not know. There are more unhappy
fates than the grim and terrible jungle presents to Monsieur Tarzan. At
least his conscience will be free from remorse. And there are moments
of quiet and restfulness by day, and vistas of exquisite beauty. You
may find it strange that I should say it, who experienced such
terrifying experiences in that frightful forest, yet at times I long to
return, for I cannot but feel that the happiest moments of my life were
spent there.”

There was an expression of ineffable sadness on her face as she spoke,
and I could not but feel that she knew that I knew her secret, and that
this was her way of transmitting to you a last tender message from a
heart that might still enshrine your memory, though its possessor
belonged to another.

Clayton appeared nervous and ill at ease while you were the subject of
conversation. He wore a worried and harassed expression. Yet he was
very kindly in his expressions of interest in you. I wonder if he
suspects the truth about you?

Tennington came in with Clayton. They are great friends, you know. He
is about to set out upon one of his interminable cruises in that yacht
of his, and was urging the entire party to accompany him. Tried to
inveigle me into it, too. Is thinking of circumnavigating Africa this
time. I told him that his precious toy would take him and some of his
friends to the bottom of the ocean one of these days if he didn’t get
it out of his head that she was a liner or a battleship.

I returned to Paris day before yesterday, and yesterday I met the Count
and Countess de Coude at the races. They inquired after you. De Coude
really seems quite fond of you. Doesn’t appear to harbor the least ill
will. Olga is as beautiful as ever, but a trifle subdued. I imagine
that she learned a lesson through her acquaintance with you that will
serve her in good stead during the balance of her life. It is fortunate
for her, and for De Coude as well, that it was you and not another man
more sophisticated.

Had you really paid court to Olga’s heart I am afraid that there would
have been no hope for either of you.

She asked me to tell you that Nikolas had left France. She paid him
twenty thousand francs to go away, and stay. She is congratulating
herself that she got rid of him before he tried to carry out a threat
he recently made her that he should kill you at the first opportunity.
She said that she should hate to think that her brother’s blood was on
your hands, for she is very fond of you, and made no bones in saying so
before the count. It never for a moment seemed to occur to her that
there might be any possibility of any other outcome of a meeting
between you and Nikolas. The count quite agreed with her in that. He
added that it would take a regiment of Rokoffs to kill you. He has a
most healthy respect for your prowess.

Have been ordered back to my ship. She sails from Havre in two days
under sealed orders. If you will address me in her care, the letters
will find me eventually. I shall write you as soon as another
opportunity presents.

Your sincere friend,
PAUL D’ARNOT.


“I fear,” mused Tarzan, half aloud, “that Olga has thrown away her
twenty thousand francs.”

He read over that part of D’Arnot’s letter several times in which he
had quoted from his conversation with Jane Porter. Tarzan derived a
rather pathetic happiness from it, but it was better than no happiness
at all.

The following three weeks were quite uneventful. On several occasions
Tarzan saw the mysterious Arab, and once again he had been exchanging
words with Lieutenant Gernois; but no amount of espionage or shadowing
by Tarzan revealed the Arab’s lodgings, the location of which Tarzan
was anxious to ascertain.

Gernois, never cordial, had kept more than ever aloof from Tarzan since
the episode in the dining-room of the hotel at Aumale. His attitude on
the few occasions that they had been thrown together had been
distinctly hostile.

That he might keep up the appearance of the character he was playing,
Tarzan spent considerable time hunting in the vicinity of Bou Saada. He
would spend entire days in the foothills, ostensibly searching for
gazelle, but on the few occasions that he came close enough to any of
the beautiful little animals to harm them he invariably allowed them to
escape without so much as taking his rifle from its boot. The ape-man
could see no sport in slaughtering the most harmless and defenseless of
God’s creatures for the mere pleasure of killing.

In fact, Tarzan had never killed for “pleasure,” nor to him was there
pleasure in killing. It was the joy of righteous battle that he
loved—the ecstasy of victory. And the keen and successful hunt for food
in which he pitted his skill and craftiness against the skill and
craftiness of another; but to come out of a town filled with food to
shoot down a soft-eyed, pretty gazelle—ah, that was crueller than the
deliberate and cold-blooded murder of a fellow man. Tarzan would have
none of it, and so he hunted alone that none might discover the sham
that he was practicing.

And once, probably because of the fact that he rode alone, he was like
to have lost his life. He was riding slowly through a little ravine
when a shot sounded close behind him, and a bullet passed through the
cork helmet he wore. Although he turned at once and galloped rapidly to
the top of the ravine, there was no sign of any enemy, nor did he see
aught of another human being until he reached Bou Saada.

“Yes,” he soliloquized, in recalling the occurrence, “Olga has indeed
thrown away her twenty thousand francs.”

That night he was Captain Gerard’s guest at a little dinner.

“Your hunting has not been very fortunate?” questioned the officer.

“No,” replied Tarzan; “the game hereabout is timid, nor do I care
particularly about hunting game birds or antelope. I think I shall move
on farther south, and have a try at some of your Algerian lions.”

“Good!” exclaimed the captain. “We are marching toward Djelfa on the
morrow. You shall have company that far at least. Lieutenant Gernois
and I, with a hundred men, are ordered south to patrol a district in
which the marauders are giving considerable trouble. Possibly we may
have the pleasure of hunting the lion together—what say you?”

Tarzan was more than pleased, nor did he hesitate to say so; but the
captain would have been astonished had he known the real reason of
Tarzan’s pleasure. Gernois was sitting opposite the ape-man. He did not
seem so pleased with his captain’s invitation.

“You will find lion hunting more exciting than gazelle shooting,”
remarked Captain Gerard, “and more dangerous.”

“Even gazelle shooting has its dangers,” replied Tarzan. “Especially
when one goes alone. I found it so today. I also found that while the
gazelle is the most timid of animals, it is not the most cowardly.”

He let his glance rest only casually upon Gernois after he had spoken,
for he did not wish the man to know that he was under suspicion, or
surveillance, no matter what he might think. The effect of his remark
upon him, however, might tend to prove his connection with, or
knowledge of, certain recent happenings. Tarzan saw a dull red creep up
from beneath Gernois’ collar. He was satisfied, and quickly changed the
subject.

When the column rode south from Bou Saada the next morning there were
half a dozen Arabs bringing up the rear.

“They are not attached to the command,” replied Gerard in response to
Tarzan’s query. “They merely accompany us on the road for
companionship.”

Tarzan had learned enough about Arab character since he had been in
Algeria to know that this was no real motive, for the Arab is never
overfond of the companionship of strangers, and especially of French
soldiers. So his suspicions were aroused, and he decided to keep a
sharp eye on the little party that trailed behind the column at a
distance of about a quarter of a mile. But they did not come close
enough even during the halts to enable him to obtain a close scrutiny
of them.

He had long been convinced that there were hired assassins on his
trail, nor was he in great doubt but that Rokoff was at the bottom of
the plot. Whether it was to be revenge for the several occasions in the
past that Tarzan had defeated the Russian’s purposes and humiliated
him, or was in some way connected with his mission in the Gernois
affair, he could not determine. If the latter, and it seemed probable
since the evidence he had had that Gernois suspected him, then he had
two rather powerful enemies to contend with, for there would be many
opportunities in the wilds of Algeria, for which they were bound, to
dispatch a suspected enemy quietly and without attracting suspicion.

After camping at Djelfa for two days the column moved to the southwest,
from whence word had come that the marauders were operating against the
tribes whose _douars_ were situated at the foot of the mountains.

The little band of Arabs who had accompanied them from Bou Saada had
disappeared suddenly the very night that orders had been given to
prepare for the morrow’s march from Djelfa. Tarzan made casual
inquiries among the men, but none could tell him why they had left, or
in what direction they had gone. He did not like the looks of it,
especially in view of the fact that he had seen Gernois in conversation
with one of them some half hour after Captain Gerard had issued his
instructions relative to the new move. Only Gernois and Tarzan knew the
direction of the proposed march. All the soldiers knew was that they
were to be prepared to break camp early the next morning. Tarzan
wondered if Gernois could have revealed their destination to the Arabs.

Late that afternoon they went into camp at a little oasis in which was
the _douar_  of a sheik whose flocks were being stolen, and whose
herdsmen were being killed. The Arabs came out of their goatskin tents,
and surrounded the soldiers, asking many questions in the native
tongue, for the soldiers were themselves natives. Tarzan, who, by this
time, with the assistance of Abdul, had picked up quite a smattering of
Arab, questioned one of the younger men who had accompanied the sheik
while the latter paid his respects to Captain Gerard.

No, he had seen no party of six horsemen riding from the direction of
Djelfa. There were other oases scattered about—possibly they had been
journeying to one of these. Then there were the marauders in the
mountains above—they often rode north to Bou Saada in small parties,
and even as far as Aumale and Bouira. It might indeed have been a few
marauders returning to the band from a pleasure trip to one of these
cities.

Early the next morning Captain Gerard split his command in two, giving
Lieutenant Gernois command of one party, while he headed the other.
They were to scour the mountains upon opposite sides of the plain.

“And with which detachment will Monsieur Tarzan ride?” asked the
captain. “Or maybe it is that monsieur does not care to hunt
marauders?”

“Oh, I shall be delighted to go,” Tarzan hastened to explain. He was
wondering what excuse he could make to accompany Gernois. His
embarrassment was short-lived, and was relieved from a most unexpected
source. It was Gernois himself who spoke.

“If my captain will forego the pleasure of Monsieur Tarzan’s company
for this once, I shall esteem it an honor indeed to have monsieur ride
with me today,” he said, nor was his tone lacking in cordiality. In
fact, Tarzan imagined that he had overdone it a trifle, but, even so,
he was both astounded and pleased, hastening to express his delight at
the arrangement.

And so it was that Lieutenant Gernois and Tarzan rode off side by side
at the head of the little detachment of _spahis_. Gernois’ cordiality
was short-lived. No sooner had they ridden out of sight of Captain
Gerard and his men than he lapsed once more into his accustomed
taciturnity. As they advanced the ground became rougher. Steadily it
ascended toward the mountains, into which they filed through a narrow
cañon close to noon. By the side of a little rivulet Gernois called the
midday halt. Here the men prepared and ate their frugal meal, and
refilled their canteens.

After an hour’s rest they advanced again along the cañon, until they
presently came to a little valley, from which several rocky gorges
diverged. Here they halted, while Gernois minutely examined the
surrounding heights from the center of the depression.

“We shall separate here,” he said, “several riding into each of these
gorges,” and then he commenced to detail his various squads and issue
instructions to the non-commissioned officers who were to command them.
When he had done he turned to Tarzan. “Monsieur will be so good as to
remain here until we return.”

Tarzan demurred, but the officer cut him short. “There may be fighting
for one of these sections,” he said, “and troops cannot be embarrassed
by civilian noncombatants during action.”

“But, my dear lieutenant,” expostulated Tarzan, “I am most ready and
willing to place myself under command of yourself or any of your
sergeants or corporals, and to fight in the ranks as they direct. It is
what I came for.”

“I should be glad to think so,” retorted Gernois, with a sneer he made
no attempt to disguise. Then shortly: “You are under my orders, and
they are that you remain here until we return. Let that end the
matter,” and he turned and spurred away at the head of his men. A
moment later Tarzan found himself alone in the midst of a desolate
mountain fastness.

The sun was hot, so he sought the shelter of a nearby tree, where he
tethered his horse, and sat down upon the ground to smoke. Inwardly he
swore at Gernois for the trick he had played upon him. A mean little
revenge, thought Tarzan, and then suddenly it occurred to him that the
man would not be such a fool as to antagonize him through a trivial
annoyance of so petty a description. There must be something deeper
than this behind it. With the thought he arose and removed his rifle
from its boot. He looked to its loads and saw that the magazine was
full. Then he inspected his revolver. After this preliminary precaution
he scanned the surrounding heights and the mouths of the several
gorges—he was determined that he should not be caught napping.

The sun sank lower and lower, yet there was no sign of returning
SPAHIS. At last the valley was submerged in shadow Tarzan was too proud
to go back to camp until he had given the detachment ample time to
return to the valley, which he thought was to have been their
rendezvous. With the closing in of night he felt safer from attack, for
he was at home in the dark. He knew that none might approach him so
cautiously as to elude those alert and sensitive ears of his; then
there were his eyes, too, for he could see well at night; and his nose,
if they came toward him from up-wind, would apprise him of the approach
of an enemy while they were still a great way off.

So he felt that he was in little danger, and thus lulled to a sense of
security he fell asleep, with his back against the tree.

He must have slept for several hours, for when he was suddenly awakened
by the frightened snorting and plunging of his horse the moon was
shining full upon the little valley, and there, not ten paces before
him, stood the grim cause of the terror of his mount.

Superb, majestic, his graceful tail extended and quivering, and his two
eyes of fire riveted full upon his prey, stood Numa _el adrea_, the
black lion. A little thrill of joy tingled through Tarzan’s nerves. It
was like meeting an old friend after years of separation. For a moment
he sat rigid to enjoy the magnificent spectacle of this lord of the
wilderness.

But now Numa was crouching for the spring. Very slowly Tarzan raised
his gun to his shoulder. He had never killed a large animal with a gun
in all his life—heretofore he had depended upon his spear, his poisoned
arrows, his rope, his knife, or his bare hands. Instinctively he wished
that he had his arrows and his knife—he would have felt surer with
them.

Numa was lying quite flat upon the ground now, presenting only his
head. Tarzan would have preferred to fire a little from one side, for
he knew what terrific damage the lion could do if he lived two minutes,
or even a minute after he was hit. The horse stood trembling in terror
at Tarzan’s back. The ape-man took a cautious step to one side—Numa but
followed him with his eyes. Another step he took, and then another.
Numa had not moved. Now he could aim at a point between the eye and the
ear.

His finger tightened upon the trigger, and as he fired Numa sprang. At
the same instant the terrified horse made a last frantic effort to
escape—the tether parted, and he went careening down the cañon toward
the desert.

No ordinary man could have escaped those frightful claws when Numa
sprang from so short a distance, but Tarzan was no ordinary man. From
earliest childhood his muscles had been trained by the fierce
exigencies of his existence to act with the rapidity of thought. As
quick as was _el adrea_, Tarzan of the Apes was quicker, and so the
great beast crashed against a tree where he had expected to feel the
soft flesh of man, while Tarzan, a couple of paces to the right, pumped
another bullet into him that brought him clawing and roaring to his
side.

Twice more Tarzan fired in quick succession, and then _el adrea_ lay
still and roared no more. It was no longer Monsieur Jean Tarzan; it was
Tarzan of the Apes that put a savage foot upon the body of his savage
kill, and, raising his face to the full moon, lifted his mighty voice
in the weird and terrible challenge of his kind—a bull ape had made his
kill. And the wild things in the wild mountains stopped in their
hunting, and trembled at this new and awful voice, while down in the
desert the children of the wilderness came out of their goatskin tents
and looked toward the mountains, wondering what new and savage scourge
had come to devastate their flocks.

A half mile from the valley in which Tarzan stood, a score of
white-robed figures, bearing long, wicked-looking guns, halted at the
sound, and looked at one another with questioning eyes. But presently,
as it was not repeated, they took up their silent, stealthy way toward
the valley.

Tarzan was now confident that Gernois had no intention of returning for
him, but he could not fathom the object that had prompted the officer
to desert him, yet leave him free to return to camp. His horse gone, he
decided that it would be foolish to remain longer in the mountains, so
he set out toward the desert.

He had scarcely entered the confines of the cañon when the first of the
white-robed figures emerged into the valley upon the opposite side. For
a moment they scanned the little depression from behind sheltering
bowlders, but when they had satisfied themselves that it was empty they
advanced across it. Beneath the tree at one side they came upon the
body of _el adrea_. With muttered exclamations they crowded about it.
Then, a moment later, they hurried down the cañon which Tarzan was
threading a brief distance in advance of them. They moved cautiously
and in silence, taking advantage of shelter, as men do who are stalking
man.




Chapter X
Through the Valley of the Shadow


As Tarzan walked down the wild cañon beneath the brilliant African moon
the call of the jungle was strong upon him. The solitude and the savage
freedom filled his heart with life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of
the Apes—every sense alert against the chance of surprise by some
jungle enemy—yet treading lightly and with head erect, in proud
consciousness of his might.

The nocturnal sounds of the mountains were new to him, yet they fell
upon his ears like the soft voice of a half-forgotten love. Many he
intuitively sensed—ah, there was one that was familiar indeed; the
distant coughing of Sheeta, the leopard; but there was a strange note
in the final wail which made him doubt. It was a panther he heard.

Presently a new sound—a soft, stealthy sound—obtruded itself among the
others. No human ears other than the ape-man’s would have detected it.
At first he did not translate it, but finally he realized that it came
from the bare feet of a number of human beings. They were behind him,
and they were coming toward him quietly. He was being stalked.

In a flash he knew why he had been left in that little valley by
Gernois; but there had been a hitch in the arrangements—the men had
come too late. Closer and closer came the footsteps. Tarzan halted and
faced them, his rifle ready in his hand. Now he caught a fleeting
glimpse of a white burnoose. He called aloud in French, asking what
they would of him. His reply was the flash of a long gun, and with the
sound of the shot Tarzan of the Apes plunged forward upon his face.

The Arabs did not rush out immediately; instead, they waited to be sure
that their victim did not rise. Then they came rapidly from their
concealment, and bent over him. It was soon apparent that he was not
dead. One of the men put the muzzle of his gun to the back of Tarzan’s
head to finish him, but another waved him aside. “If we bring him alive
the reward is to be greater,” explained the latter. So they bound his
hands and feet, and, picking him up, placed him on the shoulders of
four of their number. Then the march was resumed toward the desert.
When they had come out of the mountains they turned toward the south,
and about daylight came to the spot where their horses stood in care of
two of their number.

From here on their progress was more rapid. Tarzan, who had regained
consciousness, was tied to a spare horse, which they evidently had
brought for the purpose. His wound was but a slight scratch, which had
furrowed the flesh across his temple. It had stopped bleeding, but the
dried and clotted blood smeared his face and clothing. He had said no
word since he had fallen into the hands of these Arabs, nor had they
addressed him other than to issue a few brief commands to him when the
horses had been reached.

For six hours they rode rapidly across the burning desert, avoiding the
oases near which their way led. About noon they came to a _douar_ of
about twenty tents. Here they halted, and as one of the Arabs was
releasing the alfa-grass ropes which bound him to his mount they were
surrounded by a mob of men, women, and children. Many of the tribe, and
more especially the women, appeared to take delight in heaping insults
upon the prisoner, and some had even gone so far as to throw stones at
him and strike him with sticks, when an old sheik appeared and drove
them away.

“Ali-ben-Ahmed tells me,” he said, “that this man sat alone in the
mountains and slew _el adrea_. What the business of the stranger who
sent us after him may be, I know not, and what he may do with this man
when we turn him over to him, I care not; but the prisoner is a brave
man, and while he is in our hands he shall be treated with the respect
that be due one who hunts _the lord with the large head_ alone and by
night—and slays him.”

Tarzan had heard of the respect in which Arabs held a lion-killer, and
he was not sorry that chance had played into his hands thus favorably
to relieve him of the petty tortures of the tribe. Shortly after this
he was taken to a goat-skin tent upon the upper side of the _douar_.
There he was fed, and then, securely bound, was left lying on a piece
of native carpet, alone in the tent.

He could see a guard sitting before the door of his frail prison, but
when he attempted to force the stout bonds that held him he realized
that any extra precaution on the part of his captors was quite
unnecessary; not even his giant muscles could part those numerous
strands.

Just before dusk several men approached the tent where he lay, and
entered it. All were in Arab dress, but presently one of the number
advanced to Tarzan’s side, and as he let the folds of cloth that had
hidden the lower half of his face fall away the ape-man saw the
malevolent features of Nikolas Rokoff. There was a nasty smile on the
bearded lips. “Ah, Monsieur Tarzan,” he said, “this is indeed a
pleasure. But why do you not rise and greet your guest?” Then, with an
ugly oath, “Get up, you dog!” and, drawing back his booted foot, he
kicked Tarzan heavily in the side. “And here is another, and another,
and another,” he continued, as he kicked Tarzan about the face and
side. “One for each of the injuries you have done me.”

The ape-man made no reply—he did not even deign to look upon the
Russian again after the first glance of recognition. Finally the sheik,
who had been standing a mute and frowning witness of the cowardly
attack, intervened.

“Stop!” he commanded. “Kill him if you will, but I will see no brave
man subjected to such indignities in my presence. I have half a mind to
turn him loose, that I may see how long you would kick him then.”

This threat put a sudden end to Rokoff’s brutality, for he had no
craving to see Tarzan loosed from his bonds while he was within reach
of those powerful hands.

“Very well,” he replied to the Arab; “I shall kill him presently.”

“Not within the precincts of my _douar_,” returned the sheik. “When he
leaves here he leaves alive. What you do with him in the desert is none
of my concern, but I shall not have the blood of a Frenchman on the
hands of my tribe on account of another man’s quarrel—they would send
soldiers here and kill many of my people, and burn our tents and drive
away our flocks.”

“As you say,” growled Rokoff. “I’ll take him out into the desert below
the _douar_, and dispatch him.”

“You will take him a day’s ride from my country,” said the sheik,
firmly, “and some of my children shall follow you to see that you do
not disobey me—otherwise there may be two dead Frenchmen in the
desert.”

Rokoff shrugged. “Then I shall have to wait until the morrow—it is
already dark.”

“As you will,” said the sheik. “But by an hour after dawn you must be
gone from my _douar_. I have little liking for unbelievers, and none at
all for a coward.”

Rokoff would have made some kind of retort, but he checked himself, for
he realized that it would require but little excuse for the old man to
turn upon him. Together they left the tent. At the door Rokoff could
not resist the temptation to turn and fling a parting taunt at Tarzan.
“Sleep well, monsieur,” he said, “and do not forget to pray well, for
when you die tomorrow it will be in such agony that you will be unable
to pray for blaspheming.”

No one had bothered to bring Tarzan either food or water since noon,
and consequently he suffered considerably from thirst. He wondered if
it would be worth while to ask his guard for water, but after making
two or three requests without receiving any response, he decided that
it would not.

Far up in the mountains he heard a lion roar. How much safer one was,
he soliloquized, in the haunts of wild beasts than in the haunts of
men. Never in all his jungle life had he been more relentlessly tracked
down than in the past few months of his experience among civilized men.
Never had he been any nearer death.

Again the lion roared. It sounded a little nearer. Tarzan felt the old,
wild impulse to reply with the challenge of his kind. His kind? He had
almost forgotten that he was a man and not an ape. He tugged at his
bonds. God, if he could but get them near those strong teeth of his. He
felt a wild wave of madness sweep over him as his efforts to regain his
liberty met with failure.

Numa was roaring almost continually now. It was quite evident that he
was coming down into the desert to hunt. It was the roar of a hungry
lion. Tarzan envied him, for he was free. No one would tie him with
ropes and slaughter him like a sheep. It was that which galled the
ape-man. He did not fear to die, no—it was the humiliation of defeat
before death, without even a chance to battle for his life.

It must be near midnight, thought Tarzan. He had several hours to live.
Possibly he would yet find a way to take Rokoff with him on the long
journey. He could hear the savage lord of the desert quite close by
now. Possibly he sought his meat from among the penned animals within
the _douar_.

For a long time silence reigned, then Tarzan’s trained ears caught the
sound of a stealthily moving body. It came from the side of the tent
nearest the mountains—the back. Nearer and nearer it came. He waited,
listening intently, for it to pass. For a time there was silence
without, such a terrible silence that Tarzan was surprised that he did
not hear the breathing of the animal he felt sure must be crouching
close to the back wall of his tent.

There! It is moving again. Closer it creeps. Tarzan turns his head in
the direction of the sound. It is very dark within the tent. Slowly the
back rises from the ground, forced up by the head and shoulders of a
body that looks all black in the semi-darkness. Beyond is a faint
glimpse of the dimly starlit desert. A grim smile plays about Tarzan’s
lips. At least Rokoff will be cheated. How mad he will be! And death
will be more merciful than he could have hoped for at the hands of the
Russian.

Now the back of the tent drops into place, and all is darkness
again—whatever it is is inside the tent with him. He hears it creeping
close to him—now it is beside him. He closes his eyes and waits for the
mighty paw. Upon his upturned face falls the gentle touch of a soft
hand groping in the dark, and then a girl’s voice in a scarcely audible
whisper pronounces his name.

“Yes, it is I,” he whispers in reply. “But in the name of Heaven who
are you?”

“The Ouled-Nail of Sisi Aissa,” came the answer. While she spoke Tarzan
could feel her working about his bonds. Occasionally the cold steel of
a knife touched his flesh. A moment later he was free.

“Come!” she whispered.

On hands and knees he followed her out of the tent by the way she had
come. She continued crawling thus flat to the ground until she reached
a little patch of shrub. There she halted until he gained her side. For
a moment he looked at her before he spoke.

“I cannot understand,” he said at last. “Why are you here? How did you
know that I was a prisoner in that tent? How does it happen that it is
you who have saved me?”

She smiled. “I have come a long way tonight,” she said, “and we have a
long way to go before we shall be out of danger. Come; I shall tell you
all about it as we go.”

Together they rose and set off across the desert in the direction of
the mountains.

“I was not quite sure that I should ever reach you,” she said at last.
“_El adrea_ is abroad tonight, and after I left the horses I think he
winded me and was following—I was terribly frightened.”

“What a brave girl,” he said. “And you ran all that risk for a
stranger—an alien—an unbeliever?”

She drew herself up very proudly.

“I am the daughter of the Sheik Kabour ben Saden,” she answered. “I
should be no fit daughter of his if I would not risk my life to save
that of the man who saved mine while he yet thought that I was but a
common Ouled-Nail.”

“Nevertheless,” he insisted, “you are a very brave girl. But how did
you know that I was a prisoner back there?”

“Achmet-din-Taieb, who is my cousin on my father’s side, was visiting
some friends who belong to the tribe that captured you. He was at the
_douar_ when you were brought in. When he reached home he was telling
us about the big Frenchman who had been captured by Ali-ben-Ahmed for
another Frenchman who wished to kill him. From the description I knew
that it must be you. My father was away. I tried to persuade some of
the men to come and save you, but they would not do it, saying: ‘Let
the unbelievers kill one another if they wish. It is none of our
affair, and if we go and interfere with Ali-ben-Ahmed’s plans we shall
only stir up a fight with our own people.’

“So when it was dark I came alone, riding one horse and leading another
for you. They are tethered not far from here. By morning we shall be
within my father’s _douar_. He should be there himself by now—then let
them come and try to take Kadour ben Saden’s friend.”

For a few moments they walked on in silence.

“We should be near the horses,” she said. “It is strange that I do not
see them here.”

Then a moment later she stopped, with a little cry of consternation.

“They are gone!” she exclaimed. “It is here that I tethered them.”

Tarzan stooped to examine the ground. He found that a large shrub had
been torn up by the roots. Then he found something else. There was a
wry smile on his face as he rose and turned toward the girl.

“_El adrea_ has been here. From the signs, though, I rather think that
his prey escaped him. With a little start they would be safe enough
from him in the open.”

There was nothing to do but continue on foot. The way led them across a
low spur of the mountains, but the girl knew the trail as well as she
did her mother’s face. They walked in easy, swinging strides, Tarzan
keeping a hand’s breadth behind the girl’s shoulder, that she might set
the pace, and thus be less fatigued. As they walked they talked,
occasionally stopping to listen for sounds of pursuit.

It was now a beautiful, moonlit night. The air was crisp and
invigorating. Behind them lay the interminable vista of the desert,
dotted here and there with an occasional oasis. The date palms of the
little fertile spot they had just left, and the circle of goatskin
tents, stood out in sharp relief against the yellow sand—a phantom
paradise upon a phantom sea. Before them rose the grim and silent
mountains. Tarzan’s blood leaped in his veins. This was life! He looked
down upon the girl beside him—a daughter of the desert walking across
the face of a dead world with a son of the jungle. He smiled at the
thought. He wished that he had had a sister, and that she had been like
this girl. What a bully chum she would have been!

They had entered the mountains now, and were progressing more slowly,
for the trail was steeper and very rocky.

For a few minutes they had been silent. The girl was wondering if they
would reach her father’s _douar_ before the pursuit had overtaken them.
Tarzan was wishing that they might walk on thus forever. If the girl
were only a man they might. He longed for a friend who loved the same
wild life that he loved. He had learned to crave companionship, but it
was his misfortune that most of the men he knew preferred immaculate
linen and their clubs to nakedness and the jungle. It was, of course,
difficult to understand, yet it was very evident that they did.

The two had just turned a projecting rock around which the trail ran
when they were brought to a sudden stop. There, before them, directly
in the middle of the path, stood Numa, _el adrea_, the black lion. His
green eyes looked very wicked, and he bared his teeth, and lashed his
bay-black sides with his angry tail. Then he roared—the fearsome,
terror-inspiring roar of the hungry lion which is also angry.

“Your knife,” said Tarzan to the girl, extending his hand. She slipped
the hilt of the weapon into his waiting palm. As his fingers closed
upon it he drew her back and pushed her behind him. “Walk back to the
desert as rapidly as you can. If you hear me call you will know that
all is well, and you may return.”

“It is useless,” she replied, resignedly. “This is the end.”

“Do as I tell you,” he commanded. “Quickly! He is about to charge.” The
girl dropped back a few paces, where she stood watching for the
terrible sight that she knew she should soon witness.

The lion was advancing slowly toward Tarzan, his nose to the ground,
like a challenging bull, his tail extended now and quivering as though
with intense excitement.

The ape-man stood, half crouching, the long Arab knife glistening in
the moonlight. Behind him the tense figure of the girl, motionless as a
carven statue. She leaned slightly forward, her lips parted, her eyes
wide. Her only conscious thought was wonder at the bravery of the man
who dared face with a puny knife the lord with the large head. A man of
her own blood would have knelt in prayer and gone down beneath those
awful fangs without resistance. In either case the result would be the
same—it was inevitable; but she could not repress a thrill of
admiration as her eyes rested upon the heroic figure before her. Not a
tremor in the whole giant frame—his attitude as menacing and defiant as
that of _el adrea_ himself.

The lion was quite close to him now—but a few paces intervened—he
crouched, and then, with a deafening roar, he sprang.




Chapter XI
John Caldwell, London


As Numa _el adrea_ launched himself with widespread paws and bared
fangs he looked to find this puny man as easy prey as the score who had
gone down beneath him in the past. To him man was a clumsy,
slow-moving, defenseless creature—he had little respect for him.

But this time he found that he was pitted against a creature as agile
and as quick as himself. When his mighty frame struck the spot where
the man had been he was no longer there.

The watching girl was transfixed by astonishment at the ease with which
the crouching man eluded the great paws. And now, O Allah! He had
rushed in behind _el adrea’s_ shoulder even before the beast could
turn, and had grasped him by the mane. The lion reared upon his hind
legs like a horse—Tarzan had known that he would do this, and he was
ready. A giant arm encircled the black-maned throat, and once, twice, a
dozen times a sharp blade darted in and out of the bay-black side
behind the left shoulder.

Frantic were the leaps of Numa—awful his roars of rage and pain; but
the giant upon his back could not be dislodged or brought within reach
of fangs or talons in the brief interval of life that remained to the
lord with the large head. He was quite dead when Tarzan of the Apes
released his hold and arose. Then the daughter of the desert witnessed
a thing that terrified her even more than had the presence of _el
adrea_. The man placed a foot upon the carcass of his kill, and, with
his handsome face raised toward the full moon, gave voice to the most
frightful cry that ever had smote upon her ears.

With a little cry of fear she shrank away from him—she thought that the
fearful strain of the encounter had driven him mad. As the last note of
that fiendish challenge died out in the diminishing echoes of the
distance the man dropped his eyes until they rested upon the girl.

Instantly his face was lighted by the kindly smile that was ample
assurance of his sanity, and the girl breathed freely once again,
smiling in response.

“What manner of man are you?” she asked. “The thing you have done is
unheard of. Even now I cannot believe that it is possible for a lone
man armed only with a knife to have fought hand to hand with _el adrea_
and conquered him, unscathed—to have conquered him at all. And that
cry—it was not human. Why did you do that?”

Tarzan flushed. “It is because I forget,” he said, “sometimes, that I
am a civilized man. When I kill it must be that I am another creature.”
He did not try to explain further, for it always seemed to him that a
woman must look with loathing upon one who was yet so nearly a beast.

Together they continued their journey. The sun was an hour high when
they came out into the desert again beyond the mountains. Beside a
little rivulet they found the girl’s horses grazing. They had come this
far on their way home, and with the cause of their fear no longer
present had stopped to feed.

With little trouble Tarzan and the girl caught them, and, mounting,
rode out into the desert toward the _douar_ of Sheik Kadour ben Saden.

No sign of pursuit developed, and they came in safety about nine
o’clock to their destination. The sheik had but just returned. He was
frantic with grief at the absence of his daughter, whom he thought had
been again abducted by the marauders. With fifty men he was already
mounted to go in search of her when the two rode into the _douar_.

His joy at the safe return of his daughter was only equaled by his
gratitude to Tarzan for bringing her safely to him through the dangers
of the night, and his thankfulness that she had been in time to save
the man who had once saved her.

No honor that Kadour ben Saden could heap upon the ape-man in
acknowledgment of his esteem and friendship was neglected. When the
girl had recited the story of the slaying of _el adrea_ Tarzan was
surrounded by a mob of worshiping Arabs—it was a sure road to their
admiration and respect.

The old sheik insisted that Tarzan remain indefinitely as his guest. He
even wished to adopt him as a member of the tribe, and there was for
some time a half-formed resolution in the ape-man’s mind to accept and
remain forever with these wild people, whom he understood and who
seemed to understand him. His friendship and liking for the girl were
potent factors in urging him toward an affirmative decision.

Had she been a man, he argued, he should not have hesitated, for it
would have meant a friend after his own heart, with whom he could ride
and hunt at will; but as it was they would be hedged by the
conventionalities that are even more strictly observed by the wild
nomads of the desert than by their more civilized brothers and sisters.
And in a little while she would be married to one of these swarthy
warriors, and there would be an end to their friendship. So he decided
against the sheik’s proposal, though he remained a week as his guest.

When he left, Kadour ben Saden and fifty white-robed warriors rode with
him to Bou Saada. While they were mounting in the _douar_ of Kadour ben
Saden the morning of their departure, the girl came to bid farewell to
Tarzan.

“I have prayed that you would remain with us,” she said simply, as he
leaned from his saddle to clasp her hand in farewell, “and now I shall
pray that you will return.” There was an expression of wistfulness in
her beautiful eyes, and a pathetic droop at the corners of her mouth.
Tarzan was touched.

“Who knows?” and then he turned and rode after the departing Arabs.

Outside Bou Saada he bade Kadour ben Saden and his men good-by, for
there were reasons which made him wish to make his entry into the town
as secret as possible, and when he had explained them to the sheik the
latter concurred in his decision. The Arabs were to enter Bou Saada
ahead of him, saying nothing as to his presence with them. Later Tarzan
would come in alone, and go directly to an obscure native inn.

Thus, making his entrance after dark, as he did, he was not seen by any
one who knew him, and reached the inn unobserved. After dining with
Kadour ben Saden as his guest, he went to his former hotel by a
roundabout way, and, coming in by a rear entrance, sought the
proprietor, who seemed much surprised to see him alive.

Yes, there was mail for monsieur; he would fetch it. No, he would
mention monsieur’s return to no one. Presently he returned with a
packet of letters. One was an order from his superior to lay off on his
present work, and hasten to Cape Town by the first steamer he could
get. His further instructions would be awaiting him there in the hands
of another agent whose name and address were given. That was all—brief
but explicit. Tarzan arranged to leave Bou Saada early the next
morning. Then he started for the garrison to see Captain Gerard, whom
the hotel man had told him had returned with his detachment the
previous day.

He found the officer in his quarters. He was filled with surprise and
pleasure at seeing Tarzan alive and well.

“When Lieutenant Gernois returned and reported that he had not found
you at the spot that you had chosen to remain while the detachment was
scouting, I was filled with alarm. We searched the mountain for days.
Then came word that you had been killed and eaten by a lion. As proof
your gun was brought to us. Your horse had returned to camp the second
day after your disappearance. We could not doubt. Lieutenant Gernois
was grief-stricken—he took all the blame upon himself. It was he who
insisted on carrying on the search himself. It was he who found the
Arab with your gun. He will be delighted to know that you are safe.”

“Doubtless,” said Tarzan, with a grim smile.

“He is down in the town now, or I should send for him,” continued
Captain Gerard. “I shall tell him as soon as he returns.”

Tarzan let the officer think that he had been lost, wandering finally
into the _douar_ of Kadour ben Saden, who had escorted him back to Bou
Saada. As soon as possible he bade the good officer adieu, and hastened
back into the town. At the native inn he had learned through Kadour ben
Saden a piece of interesting information. It told of a black-bearded
white man who went always disguised as an Arab. For a time he had
nursed a broken wrist. More recently he had been away from Bou Saada,
but now he was back, and Tarzan knew his place of concealment. It was
for there he headed.

Through narrow, stinking alleys, black as Erebus, he groped, and then
up a rickety stairway, at the end of which was a closed door and a
tiny, unglazed window. The window was high under the low eaves of the
mud building. Tarzan could just reach the sill. He raised himself
slowly until his eyes topped it. The room within was lighted, and at a
table sat Rokoff and Gernois. Gernois was speaking.

“Rokoff, you are a devil!” he was saying. “You have hounded me until I
have lost the last shred of my honor. You have driven me to murder, for
the blood of that man Tarzan is on my hands. If it were not that that
other devil’s spawn, Paulvitch, still knew my secret, I should kill you
here tonight with my bare hands.”

Rokoff laughed. “You would not do that, my dear lieutenant,” he said.
“The moment I am reported dead by assassination that dear Alexis will
forward to the minister of war full proof of the affair you so ardently
long to conceal; and, further, will charge you with my murder. Come, be
sensible. I am your best friend. Have I not protected your honor as
though it were my own?”

Gernois sneered, and spat out an oath.

“Just one more little payment,” continued Rokoff, “and the papers I
wish, and you have my word of honor that I shall never ask another cent
from you, or further inform

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/81