The Return of Tarzan, Page 3

  Chapter 3

  What Happened in the Rue Maule

  On his arrival in Paris, Tarzan had gone directly to the apartments ofhis old friend, D'Arnot, where the naval lieutenant had scored himroundly for his decision to renounce the title and estates that wererightly his from his father, John Clayton, the late Lord Greystoke.

  "You must be mad, my friend," said D'Arnot, "thus lightly to give upnot alone wealth and position, but an opportunity to prove beyond doubtto all the world that in your veins flows the noble blood of two ofEngland's most honored houses--instead of the blood of a savageshe-ape. It is incredible that they could have believed you--MissPorter least of all.

  "Why, I never did believe it, even back in the wilds of your Africanjungle, when you tore the raw meat of your kills with mighty jaws, likesome wild beast, and wiped your greasy hands upon your thighs. Eventhen, before there was the slightest proof to the contrary, I knew thatyou were mistaken in the belief that Kala was your mother.

  "And now, with your father's diary of the terrible life led by him andyour mother on that wild African shore; with the account of your birth,and, final and most convincing proof of all, your own baby fingerprints upon the pages of it, it seems incredible to me that you arewilling to remain a nameless, penniless vagabond."

  "I do not need any better name than Tarzan," replied the ape-man; "andas 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 beforced to put upon your unselfish friendship will be the finding ofemployment 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 yourfriendship, my Tarzan? Would it repay the services you did me inAfrica? I do not forget, my friend, that but for you and your wondrousbravery 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 factthat I recovered from the terrible wounds I received at their hands--Idiscovered later something of what it meant to you to remain with me inthe amphitheater of apes while your heart was urging you on to thecoast.

  "When we finally came there, and found that Miss Porter and her partyhad left, I commenced to realize something of what you had done for anutter stranger. Nor am I trying to repay you with money, Tarzan. Itis that just at present you need money; were it sacrifice that I mightoffer you it were the same--my friendship must always be yours, becauseour tastes are similar, and I admire you. That I cannot command, butthe money I can and shall."

  "Well," laughed Tarzan, "we shall not quarrel over the money. I mustlive, and so I must have it; but I shall be more contented withsomething to do. You cannot show me your friendship in a moreconvincing manner than to find employment for me--I shall die ofinactivity in a short while. As for my birthright--it is in goodhands. Clayton is not guilty of robbing me of it. He truly believesthat he is the real Lord Greystoke, and the chances are that he willmake a better English lord than a man who was born and raised in anAfrican jungle. You know that I am but half civilized even now. Letme see red in anger but for a moment, and all the instincts of thesavage beast that I really am, submerge what little I possess of themilder ways of culture and refinement.

  "And then again, had I declared myself I should have robbed the woman Ilove of the wealth and position that her marriage to Clayton will nowinsure 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 inman or beast that is not theirs by virtue of their own mental orphysical prowess. And so I am as happy to think of Kala as my motheras I would be to try to picture the poor, unhappy little English girlwho passed away a year after she bore me. Kala was always kind to mein her fierce and savage way. I must have nursed at her hairy breastfrom the time that my own mother died. She fought for me against thewild denizens of the forest, and against the savage members of ourtribe, with the ferocity of real mother love.

  "And I, on my part, loved her, Paul. I did not realize how much untilafter the cruel spear and the poisoned arrow of Mbonga's black warriorhad 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 achild might for his own mother. To you, my friend, she would haveappeared a hideous and ugly creature, but to me she was beautiful--sogloriously does love transfigure its object. And so I am perfectlycontent to remain forever the son of Kala, the she-ape."

  "I do not admire you the less for your loyalty," said D'Arnot, "but thetime will come when you will be glad to claim your own. Remember whatI say, and let us hope that it will be as easy then as it is now. Youmust bear in mind that Professor Porter and Mr. Philander are the onlypeople in the world who can swear that the little skeleton found in thecabin with those of your father and mother was that of an infantanthropoid ape, and not the offspring of Lord and Lady Greystoke. Thatevidence is most important. They are both old men. They may not livemany years longer. And then, did it not occur to you that once MissPorter knew the truth she would break her engagement with Clayton? Youmight 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 couldbind her closer to her bargain than some misfortune to Clayton. She isfrom an old southern family in America, and southerners pridethemselves upon their loyalty."

  Tarzan spent the two following weeks renewing his former briefacquaintance with Paris. In the daytime he haunted the libraries andpicture galleries. He had become an omnivorous reader, and the worldof possibilities that were opened to him in this seat of culture andlearning fairly appalled him when he contemplated the veryinfinitesimal crumb of the sum total of human knowledge that a singleindividual might hope to acquire even after a lifetime of study andresearch; but he learned what he could by day, and threw himself into asearch for relaxation and amusement at night. Nor did he find Paris awhit less fertile field for his nocturnal avocation.

  If he smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much absinth it wasbecause he took civilization as he found it, and did the things that hefound his civilized brothers doing. The life was a new and alluringone, and in addition he had a sorrow in his breast and a great longingwhich he knew could never be fulfilled, and so he sought in study andin dissipation--the two extremes--to forget the past and inhibitcontemplation of the future.

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

  Before he left the music hall the matter had been forgotten, nor did henotice the swarthy individual who stepped deeper into the shadows of anopposite doorway as Tarzan emerged from the brilliantly lightedamusement hall.

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

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

  Tarzan had been wont to traverse the Rue Maule on his way home atnight. Because it was very quiet and very dark it reminded him more ofhis beloved African jungle than did the noisy an
d garish streetssurrounding it. If you are familiar with your Paris you will recallthe narrow, forbidding precincts of the Rue Maule. If you are not, youneed but ask the police about it to learn that in all Paris there is nostreet to which you should give a wider berth after dark.

  On this night Tarzan had proceeded some two squares through the denseshadows of the squalid old tenements which line this dismal way when hewas attracted by screams and cries for help from the third floor of anopposite building. The voice was a woman's. Before the echoes of herfirst cries had died Tarzan was bounding up the stairs and through thedark corridors to her rescue.

  At the end of the corridor on the third landing a door stood slightlyajar, and from within Tarzan heard again the same appeal that had luredhim from the street. Another instant found him in the center of adimly-lighted room. An oil lamp burned upon a high, old-fashionedmantel, casting its dim rays over a dozen repulsive figures. All butone were men. The other was a woman of about thirty. Her face, markedby low passions and dissipation, might once have been lovely. Shestood 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 facesof habitual criminals. He wondered that they had made no effort toescape. A movement behind him caused him to turn. Two things his eyessaw, and one of them caused him considerable wonderment. A man wassneaking stealthily from the room, and in the brief glance that Tarzanhad of him he saw that it was Rokoff. But the other thing that he sawwas of more immediate interest. It was a great brute of a fellowtiptoeing upon him from behind with a huge bludgeon in his hand, andthen, as the man and his confederates saw that he was discovered, therewas a concerted rush upon Tarzan from all sides. Some of the men drewknives. Others picked up chairs, while the fellow with the bludgeonraised it high above his head in a mighty swing that would have crushedTarzan's head had it ever descended upon it.

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

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

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

  At the end of the corridor without stood Rokoff, waiting the outcome ofthe 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 roomwhen the murder occurred.

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

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

  "MON DIEU!" she cried; "he is a beast!" For the strong, white teeth ofthe ape-man had found the throat of one of his assailants, and Tarzanfought as he had learned to fight with the great bull apes of the tribeof Kerchak.

  He was in a dozen places at once, leaping hither and thither about theroom in sinuous bounds that reminded the woman of a panther she hadseen at the zoo. Now a wrist-bone snapped in his iron grip, now ashoulder was wrenched from its socket as he forced a victim's armbackward and upward.

  With shrieks of pain the men escaped into the hallway as quickly asthey could; but even before the first one staggered, bleeding andbroken, from the room, Rokoff had seen enough to convince him thatTarzan would not be the one to lie dead in that house this night, andso the Russian had hastened to a nearby den and telephoned the policethat 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, afrightened woman lying upon a filthy bed, her face buried in her arms,and what appeared to be a well-dressed young gentleman standing in thecenter of the room awaiting the reenforcements which he had thought thefootsteps of the officers hurrying up the stairway had announced--butthey were mistaken in the last; it was a wild beast that looked uponthem through those narrowed lids and steel-gray eyes. With the smellof blood the last vestige of civilization had deserted Tarzan, and nowhe stood at bay, like a lion surrounded by hunters, awaiting the nextovert 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 forconfirmation of his statement he was appalled by her reply.

  "He lies!" she screamed shrilly, addressing the policeman. "He came tomy room while I was alone, and for no good purpose. When I repulsedhim he would have killed me had not my screams attracted thesegentlemen, 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 andhis teeth."

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

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

  "I am guilty of no offense," he said quietly. "I have but sought todefend 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 roomin response to her cries for help had I seen her."

  "Come, come," said one of the officers; "there are judges to listen toall that," and he advanced to lay his hand upon Tarzan's shoulder. Aninstant later he lay crumpled in a corner of the room, and then, as hiscomrades rushed in upon the ape-man, they experienced a taste of whatthe apaches had but recently gone through. So quickly and so roughlydid he handle them that they had not even an opportunity to draw theirrevolvers.

  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. Asthe last officer went down, one of his fellows succeeded in drawing hisrevolver and, from where he lay on the floor, fired at Tarzan. Theshot missed, and before the man could fire again Tarzan had swept thelamp from the mantel and plunged the room into darkness.

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

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

  The officer who had remained in the street swore that no one had leapedfrom the window or left the building from the time they entered untilthey had come out. His comrades thought that he lied, but they couldnot prove it.

  When Tar
zan found himself clinging to the pole outside the window, hefollowed his jungle instinct and looked below for enemies before heventured 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 wasbut the work of an instant for the muscles that had for years sent himhurtling through the treetops of his primeval forest to carry himacross the little space between the pole and the roof. From onebuilding he went to another, and so on, with much climbing, until at across street he discovered another pole, down which he ran to theground.

  For a square or two he ran swiftly; then he turned into a littleall-night cafe and in the lavatory removed the evidences of hisover-roof promenade from hands and clothes. When he emerged a fewmoments later it was to saunter slowly on toward his apartments.

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

  "Rokoff and the Countess de Coude both in the same evening," hesoliloquized; "Paris is not so large, after all."