"THE entire affair is shrouded in mystery," said D'Arnot.
"I have it on the best of authority that neither the police nor the
special agents of the general staff have the faintest conception of
how it was accomplished. All they know, all that anyone knows, is
that Nikolas Rokoff has escaped."
John Clayton, Lord Greystoke--he who had been "Tarzan of
the Apes"--sat in silence in the apartments of his friend,
Lieutenant Paul D'Arnot, in Paris, gazing meditatively at the toe
of his immaculate boot.
His mind revolved many memories, recalled by the escape of
his arch-enemy from the French military prison to which he had been
sentenced for life upon the testimony of the ape-man.
He thought of the lengths to which Rokoff had once gone to
compass his death, and he realized that what the man had already
done would doubtless be as nothing by comparison with what he would
wish and plot to do now that he was again free.
Tarzan had recently brought his wife and infant son to
London to escape the discomforts and dangers of the rainy season
upon their vast estate in Uziri-the land of the savage Waziri
warriors whose broad African domains the ape-man had once ruled.
He had run across the Channel for a brief visit with his
old friend, but the news of the Russian's escape had already cast a
shadow upon his outing, so that though he had but just arrived he
was already contemplating an immediate return to London.
"It is not that I fear for myself, Paul," he said at last.
"Many times in the past have I thwarted Rokoff's designs upon my
life; but now there are others to consider. Unless I misjudge the
man, he would more quickly strike at me through my wife or son than
directly at me, for he doubtless realizes that in no other way
could he inflict greater anguish upon me. I must go back to them at
once, and remain with them until Rokoff is recaptured-or dead."
As these two talked in Paris, two other men were talking
together in a little cottage upon the outskirts of London. Both
were dark, sinister-looking men.
One was bearded, but the other, whose face wore the pallor
of long confinement within doors, had but a few days' growth of
black beard upon his face. It was he who was speaking.
"You must needs shave off that beard of yours, Alexis," he
said to his companion. "With it he would recognize you on the
instant. We must separate here in the hour, and when we meet again
upon the deck of the Kincaid, let us hope that we shall have with
us two honoured guests who little anticipate the pleasant voyage we
have planned for them.
"In two hours I should be upon my way to Dover with one of
them, and by tomorrow night, if you follow my instructions
carefully, you should arrive with the other, provided, of course,
that he returns to London as quickly as I presume he will.
"There should be both profit and pleasure as well as other
good things to reward our efforts, my dear Alexis. Thanks to the
stupidity of the French, they have gone to such lengths to conceal
the fact of my escape for these many days that I have had ample
opportunity to work out every detail of our little adventure so
carefully that there is little chance of the slightest hitch
occurring to mar our prospects. And now good-bye, and good luck!"
Three hours later a messenger mounted the steps to the
apartment of Lieutenant D'Arnot.
"A telegram for Lord Greystoke," he said to the servant who
answered his summons. "Is he here?"
The man answered in the affirmative, and, signing for the
message, carried it within to Tarzan, who was already preparing to
depart for London.
Tarzan tore open the envelope, and as he read his face went
white.
"Read it, Paul," he said, handing the slip of paper to
D'Arnot. "It has come already."
The Frenchman took the telegram and read:
Jack stolen from the garden through complicity of new
servant. Come at once.
Jane.
As Tarzan leaped from the roadster that had met him at the
station and ran up the steps to his London town house he was met at
the door by a dry-eyed but almost frantic woman.
Quickly Jane Porter Clayton narrated all that she had been
able to learn of the theft of the boy.
The baby's nurse had been wheeling him in the sunshine on
the walk before the house when a closed taxicab drew up at the
corner of the street. The woman had paid but passing attention to
the vehicle, merely noting that it discharged no passenger, but
stood at the kerb with the motor running as though waiting for a
fare from the residence before which it had stopped.
Almost immediately the new houseman, Carl, had come running
from the Greystoke house, saying that the girl's mistress wished to
speak with her for a moment, and that she was to leave little Jack
in his care until she returned.
The woman said that she entertained not the slightest
suspicion of the man's motives until she had reached the doorway of
the house, when it occurred to her to warn him not to turn the
carriage so as to permit the sun to shine in the baby's eyes.
As she turned about to call this to him she was somewhat
surprised to see that he was wheeling the carriage rapidly toward
the corner, and at the same time she saw the door of the taxicab
open and a swarthy face framed for a moment in the aperture.
Intuitively, the danger to the child flashed upon her, and
with a shriek she dashed down the steps and up the walk toward the
taxicab, into which Carl was now handing the baby to the swarthy
one within.
Just before she reached the vehicle, Carl leaped in beside
his confederate, slamming the door behind him. At the same time the
chauffeur attempted to start his machine, but it was evident that
something had gone wrong, as though the gears refused to mesh, and
the delay caused by this, while he pushed the lever into reverse
and backed the car a few inches before again attempting to go
ahead, gave the nurse time to reach the side of the taxicab.
Leaping to the running-board, she had attempted to snatch
the baby from the arms of the stranger, and here, screaming and
fighting, she had clung to her position even after the taxicab had
got under way; nor was it until the machine had passed the
Greystoke residence at good speed that Carl, with a heavy blow to
her face, had succeeded in knocking her to the pavement.
Her screams had attracted servants and members of the
families from residences near by, as well as from the Greystoke
home. Lady Greystoke had witnessed the girl's brave battle, and had
herself tried to reach the rapidly passing vehicle, but had been
too late.
That was all that anyone knew, nor did Lady Greystoke dream
of the possible identity of the man at the bottom of the plot until
her husband told her of the escape of Nikolas Rokoff from the
French prison where they had hoped he was permanently confined.
As Tarzan and his wife stood planning the wisest course to
pursue, the telephone bell rang in the library at their right.
Tarzan quickly answered the call in person.
"Lord Greystoke?" asked a man's voice at the other end of
the line.
"Yes."
"Your son has been stolen," continued the voice, "and I
alone may help you to recover him. I am conversant with the plot of
those who took him. In fact, I was a party to it, and was to share
in the reward, but now they are trying to ditch me, and to be quits
with them I will aid you to recover him on condition that you will
not prosecute me for my part in the crime. What do you say?"
"If you lead me to where my son is hidden," replied the
ape-man, "you need fear nothing from me."
"Good," replied the other. "But you must come alone to meet
me, for it is enough that I must trust you. I cannot take the
chance of permitting others to learn my identity."
"Where and when may I meet you?" asked Tarzan.
The other gave the name and location of a public-house on
the water-front at Dover--a place frequented by sailors.
"Come," he concluded, "about ten o'clock tonight. It would
do no good to arrive earlier. Your son will be safe enough in the
meantime, and I can then lead you secretly to where he is hidden.
But be sure to come alone, and under no circumstances notify
Scotland Yard, for I know you well and shall be watching for you.
"Should any other accompany you, or should I see suspicious
characters who might be agents of the police, I shall not meet you,
and your last chance of recovering your son will be gone."
Without more words the man rang off.
Tarzan repeated the gist of the conversation to his wife.
She begged to be allowed to accompany him, but he insisted that it
might result in the man's carrying out his threat of refusing to
aid them if Tarzan did not come alone, and so they parted, he to
hasten to Dover, and she, ostensibly to wait at home until he
should notify her of the outcome of his mission.
Little did either dream of what both were destined to pass
through before they should meet again, or the far-distant--but why
anticipate?
For ten minutes after the ape-man had left her Jane Clayton
walked restlessly back and forth across the silken rugs of the
library. Her mother heart ached, bereft of its firstborn. Her mind
was in an anguish of hopes and fears.
Though her judgment told her that all would be well were
her Tarzan to go alone in accordance with the mysterious stranger's
summons, her intuition would not permit her to lay aside suspicion
of the gravest dangers to both her husband and her son.
The more she thought of the matter, the more convinced she
became that the recent telephone message might be but a ruse to
keep them inactive until the boy was safely hidden away or spirited
out of England. Or it might be that it had been simply a bait to
lure Tarzan into the hands of the implacable Rokoff.
With the lodgment of this thought she stopped in wide-eyed
terror. Instantly it became a conviction. She glanced at the great
clock ticking the minutes in the corner of the library.
It was too late to catch the Dover train that Tarzan was to
take. There was another, later, however, that would bring her to
the Channel port in time to reach the address the stranger had
given her husband before the appointed hour.
Summoning her maid and chauffeur, she issued instructions
rapidly. Ten minutes later she was being whisked through the
crowded streets toward the railway station.
It was nine-forty-five that night that Tarzan entered the
squalid "pub" on the water-front in Dover. As he passed into the
evil-smelling room a muffled figure brushed past him toward the
street.
"Come, my lord!" whispered the stranger.
The ape-man wheeled about and followed the other into the
ill-lit alley, which custom had dignified with the title of
thoroughfare. Once outside, the fellow led the way into the
darkness, nearer a wharf, where high-piled bales, boxes, and casks
cast dense shadows. Here he halted.
"Where is the boy?" asked Greystoke.
"On that small steamer whose lights you can just see
yonder," replied the other.
In the gloom Tarzan was trying to peer into the features of
his companion, but he did not recognize the man as one whom he had
ever before seen. Had he guessed that his guide was Alexis
Paulvitch he would have realized that naught but treachery lay in
the man's heart, and that danger lurked in the path of every move.
"He is unguarded now," continued the Russian. "Those who
took him feel perfectly safe from detection, and with the exception
of a couple of members of the crew, whom I have furnished with
enough gin to silence them effectually for hours, there is none
aboard the Kincaid. We can go aboard, get the child, and return
without the slightest fear."
Tarzan nodded.
"Let's be about it, then," he said.
His guide led him to a small boat moored alongside the
wharf. The two men entered, and Paulvitch pulled rapidly toward the
steamer. The black smoke issuing from her funnel did not at the
time make any suggestion to Tarzan's mind. All his thoughts were
occupied with the hope that in a few moments he would again have
his little son in his arms.
At the steamer's side they found a monkey-ladder dangling
close above them, and up this the two men crept stealthily. Once on
deck they hastened aft to where the Russian pointed to a hatch.
"The boy is hidden there," he said. "You had better go down
after him, as there is less chance that he will cry in fright than
should he find himself in the arms of a stranger. I will stand on
guard here."
So anxious was Tarzan to rescue the child that he gave not
the slightest thought to the strangeness of all the conditions
surrounding the Kincaid. That her deck was deserted, though she had
steam up, and from the volume of smoke pouring from her funnel was
all ready to get under way made no impression upon him.
With the thought that in another instant he would fold that
precious little bundle of humanity in his arms, the ape-man swung
down into the darkness below. Scarcely had he released his hold
upon the edge of the hatch than the heavy covering fell clattering
above him.
Instantly he knew that he was the victim of a plot, and
that far from rescuing his son he had himself fallen into the hands
of his enemies. Though he immediately endeavoured to reach the
hatch and lift the cover, he was unable to do so.
Striking a match, he explored his surroundings, finding
that a little compartment had been partitioned off from the main
hold, with the hatch above his head the only means of ingress or
egress. It was evident that the room had been prepared for the very
purpose of serving as a cell for himself.
There was nothing in the compartment, and no other
occupant. If the child was on board the Kincaid he was confined
elsewhere.
For over twenty years, from infancy to manhood, the ape-man
had roamed his savage jungle haunts without human companionship of
any nature. He had learned at the most impressionable period of his
life to take his pleasures and his sorrows as the beasts take
theirs.
So it was that he neither raved nor stormed against fate,
but instead waited patiently for what might next befall him, though
not by any means without an eye to doing the utmost to succour
himself. To this end he examined his prison carefully, tested the
heavy planking that formed its walls, and measured the distance of
the hatch above And while he was thus occupied there came suddenly
to him the vibration of machinery and the throbbing of the
propeller.
The ship was moving! Where to and to what fate was it
carrying him?
And even as these thoughts passed through his mind there
came to his ears above the din of the engines that which caused him
to go cold with apprehension.
Clear and shrill from the deck above him rang the scream of
a frightened woman.
