“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 cafe 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 4
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 in
tended 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.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 31