But Stade wasn’t interested in that, he said. He suddenly went coy on me — began to talk of the difficulties of establishing absolute scientific proof and all that rot. Suggested we’d better wait a while — allow our colossus to orient himself. He’d leave Jim in my care for a time, since important business was waiting for him in Chicago.
I shrugged and agreed.
We arrived in America shrouded in a pall of silence. As a matter of fact, we smuggled Jim into the old U.S.A., and after that we had to keep our mouths shut about him. What else could we have done? After all, there is no Pleistocene quota.
When we got home, I took him to my place in Beverly Hills; and told people he was an old friend — Jim Stone from Schenectady.
He had been greatly impressed by the large cities he had seen. He thought skyscrapers were mountains with caves in them. As intelligent as he was, he just couldn’t conceive that man had built anything so colossal.
It was a treat taking him around. The movies were as real to him as death and taxes. There was a caveman sequence in one we saw, and Jim really showed signs of life then. I knew he was having difficulty in restraining himself. He was just honing to crawl into one of those prop caves. When the heavy grabbed the leading lady by the hair and started to drag her across the scenery, Big Jim hoisted himself into the aisle and started for the screen. I grabbed him by the coat-tails, but it was a lap dissolve that saved the day.
Yep, Jim and I had fun....
One night I took him to the wrestling matches at the Olympic. We had ring- side seats. The Lone Wolf and Tiny Sawbuck (237 pounds) were committing mayhem on one another inside the ropes. It seemed to get Jim’s goat.
“Do you call those great warriors?” he inquired. Then, before I could do anything about it, he vaulted over the ropes and threw them both into the third row.
The Lone Wolf and Tiny Sawbuck were sore, but the audience and the promoter were one hundred percent plus for Jimber-Jaw. Before the evening was over, the latter had signed Jim up to meet the winner, and a week later our survivor of the Stone Age stepped into the ring with Tiny Sawbuck.
I’m still laughing. Tiny is famed as a bad hombre. He knows all the dirty tricks that the other wrestlers know and has invented quite a few of his own. But he didn’t have an opportunity to try any of them on Jim. The moment they met in the center of the ring, the man who lived in the day of the mammoths, picked him up, carried him to the ropes, and threw him into the fourth row. He did that three times, and the last time Tiny stayed there. You couldn’t have hired him to come back into that ring.
About the same thing happened in boxing. I had been giving Jim some preliminary instruction in the manly art of acquiring cauliflower ears. By this time he was well known as a wrestler. Every Wednesday he had gone to the Olympic and ruined a few cash customers by throwing opponents at them. That was all he ever did. He never wrestled, never made any faces, never gave the other fellow a chance. He just picked him up and threw him out of the ring, and kept on doing it until the other man decided to stay out.
The fight promoter approached me. “Can he box?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He can’t wrestle, but he always wins. Why don’t you find out? I have one thousand bucks that says he can put any of your white hopes to sleep.”
“You’re on,” opined the promoter.
The following Tuesday the fight came off. I cautioned Jim: “Don’t forget,” I admonished him, “that you’re supposed to box, not wrestle.”
“I hit?” Jim inquired.
“Yes, you hit — and sock him hard.”
“Okey-doke,” rejoined the man from the old Stone Age. “Bring ’em on!”
They shook hands and retired to their corners; then the bell rang. The white hope came charging out like the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and he got just about as far. Big Jim swung one terrific right that he must have learned from the cave-bear and the white hope was draped over the upper rope. That was the end of that fight. Others went similar ways: then the cinema moguls noticed Jimber-Jaw.
One night, while we were still negotiating for a movie contract, we went to see a preview. Lorna Downs was the star. The moment she came onto the screen, Jim sprang to his feet.
“Lilami!” he cried. “It is I, Kolani.”
The heavy was insulting Lorna at the time. Jim leaped toward the screen just as Lorna made her exit into the garden. Without a moment’s hesitation he tried to follow her.
It wasn’t so much the damage he did to the screen as the hurt to the theater manager’s pride. He made the mistake of trying to eject Jim by force. That was a mistake. After they had gathered the manager up from the sidewalk and carried him to his office, I managed to settle with him and keep Jim out of jail.
When we got home, I asked Jim what it was all about.
“It was Lilami,” he explained.
“It was not Lilami — it was Lorna Downs. And, what you saw was not Lorna herself — just a moving picture of her.”
“It was Lilami,” the big fellow said gravely. “I told you that I would find her.”
CHAPTER 5
Lorna Downs was in the east making a personal appearance tour in connection with her latest release. Jim wanted to go after her. I explained that he had entered into a contract to make pictures and that he would have to live up to his agreement. I also told him that Lorna would be back in Hollywood in a few weeks, so he reluctantly agreed to wait. Meanwhile we moved into movie circles, and thus came a new phase in Jim’s career. He suddenly became a social lion. Men liked him and women were crazy about him.
The first time he went to the Trocadero he turned to me and asked, “What kind of women are these?”
I told him that, measured by fame and wealth, they were the cream of the elect.
“They are without shame,” he said. “They go almost naked before men. In my country their men would drag them home by the hair and beat them.”
I had to admit that that was what some of our men would like to do.
“Of what good is a mate in your country?” he asked. “They are no different from men. The men smoke; the women smoke. The men drink; the women drink. The men swear; the women swear. They gamble — they tell dirty stories — they are out all night and cannot be fit to look after the caves and the children the next day. They are only good for one thing, otherwise they might as well be men. One does not need to take a mate for what they can give — not here. In my country such women are killed. No one would want children from them.”
The ethics, the standards, and the philosophy of the Stone Age did not fit Jim to enjoy modern society. He stopped going out evenings except to pictures and fights. He was waiting for Lilami to return.
“She is different,” he said.
I felt sorry for him. I didn’t know Lorna Downs, but I would have been willing to bet she was not so different.
At last Lorna came back. I was with Jim when they met. It was on a set at the studio. It was in the middle of a scene, but when he saw her he walked right off the set and up to her. Never before have I seen so much happiness and love reflected in a man’s face.
“Lilami!” he said in a voice tense with emotion, and reached for her.
She shrank back. “What’s the idea, big boy?” she demanded.
“Don’t you know me, Lilami? I’m Kolani. Now I have found you we can go away together. I have searched for you for a long time.”
She looked up at me. “Are you his keeper, mister?” she demanded. “If you are, you’d better take him back to the college and lock him up.”
I sent Jim away, and then I talked to her. I didn’t tell her everything, but enough so that she understood that Jim wasn’t crazy, that he was a good kid, and that he really believed that she was the girl he had known in another country.
He was standing a little way off, and she sat and looked at him for a few moments before she answered; then she said she’d be nice to him.
“It ought to be good fun,” she said.
Af
ter that they were together a great deal. It looked very much as though the movie belle were falling for the cave man. They went to shows together and dined in quiet places and took long drives.
Then, one afternoon she went to a cocktail party without him. She didn’t tell him she was going; but he found it out, and along about seven o’clock he walked into the place.
Lorna was sitting on some bird’s lap, and he had his arms around her and was kissing her. It didn’t mean a thing — not to them. A girl might kiss any one at a cocktail party — that is any one except her husband. But it meant a lot to Jimber-Jaw of 50,000 B.C.
He was across that room in two strides. He never said a word; he just grabbed Lorna by the hair and yanked her out of the man’s lap; then he picked the fellow up and threw him all the way across the room. He was the original cave man then, and no mistake.
Lorna struck down his hands and slapped his face. “Get out of here, you big boob,” she screamed. “You tank-town Romeo — get out and stay out. You’re washed up. I’m through with you.”
Jim’s fingers balled into a fist but he didn’t hit her. The repressed fury drained out of his face and his shoulders sagged. He turned without a word, stalked away. That was the last time any one ever saw him — until this morning.
Pat Morgan raised his hand, signal to the waiter for another pair of highballs. He stared across the table at me without expression, shrugging.
“That’s the story of Jimber-Jaw,” he said. “Take it or leave it.... I could see by your face when I was telling it that you were thinking what I used to think: That Stade took advantage of my grogginess — maybe even hypnotized me — to make me believe that I saw something in that Siberian hut which never happened.
“That’s possible. He might have picked up some wandering dumb Kulak, put the evil eye on him, drugged him up — yes, it could have happened that way. But I don’t believe it.”
He tapped the newspaper that told in screaming headlines of the discovery of the body of Jim Stone. The story told of Stone’s quick rise to fame, of his disappearance, of the finding of him that morning, an apparent suicide.
“But the whole story isn’t there,” Pat Morgan said. “The police called me in to identify the corpse, and it was Big Jim all right. They found him in the frozen-meat room of a cold storage warehouse — been there for weeks, apparently. He was resting on his side, face against his arm, and I’ve never seen a man, alive or dead, more peaceful.
“Pinned to the lapel of his coat was a scrawled note addressed to me. The police couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but as far as it was concerned it spoke volumes. It said:
“I go to find the real Lilami. And don’t thaw me out again.”
THE END
Contextual Pieces
Ventura Blvd, Encino, California, incorporating the settlement of Tarzana; the offices of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. were situated here and his final home was nearby.
Burroughs, c. 1932
LIST OF REVIEWS AND ARTICLES
CONTENTS
The Creator of Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs — The Book News Monthly, V. 36, No. 12, August 1918, p.429-431
“A Princess of Mars” — The Book News Monthly, V. 36, No. 4, December 1917, p.132
“Tarzan of the Apes” by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. — The Nation, V. 99, No. 2570, October 1, 1914, p.409
Popular Author Lives Here — Holly Leaves, V. VII, No. 33, February 22, 1919, p.3
Excerpted from “The Best-Seller Problem,” by A. Wyatt Tilby — The Edinburgh Review, V. 236, No. 481, July 1922, p.93-94
Excerpt from play review section by O.W. Firkins — The Weekly Review, V. 5, No. 123, September 17, 1921, p.256
“The Beasts of Tarzan” by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. — The Nation, V. 102, No. 2649, April 6, 1916, p.386
Mirilo Goes to the Movies — Theatre Magazine, V. XXVII, No. 205, March 1918, p.194
What the Boys in the Camps Are Reading And Some New Books That They Will Want — Publisher’s Weekly, V. 94, October 19, 1918, p.1308
“The Girl from Hollywood” — Vogue, V. 59, No. 12, June 15, 1922, p.16
“The Return of Tarzan” — Numa-Goldwyn — Photoplay Magazine, V. XVIII, No. 4, September 1920, p.74
Oak Park. — The Economist, V. LXI, No. 11, March 15, 1919, p.476
National Film Completes Year’s Task — The Moving Picture World, V.38, No. 2, October 12, 1918, p.238
“Tarzan” Fools the Wise Ones — Michigan Film Review, V. II, No. 44, September 3, 1918, p.10
“Tarzan of the Apes” — Michigan Film Review, V. II, No. 46, September 24, 1918, p.4
Many Requests for Second Tarzan Picture — Michigan Film Review, V. II, No. 46, September 24, 1918, p.12
Adams House Record Broken for Sunday — Michigan Film Review, V. 11, No. 51, October 15, 1918, p.14
Our Mister Joyce — Life, V. 78, No. 2032, October 13, 1921, p.10
Stepping-stones to Correct Taste — Addresses and Proceedings of the National Education Association of the United States, Fifty-Ninth Annual Meeting Held at Des Moines, Iowa July 3-8, 1921, V. LIX, p.496-501
Excerpted from: Three Novels, by Thomas R. Mather — Reedy’s Mirror, V.27, No. 11, March 15, 1918, p.151
“The Return of Tarzan” — The Living Age, V. LXVII, No. 3699, May 29, 1915, p.576
“Thuvia, Maid of Mars” — The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, V. LIII, No. 10, November 15, 1920, p.618
Edgar Rice Burroughs — The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, V. LII, No. 4, August 15, 1920, p.137-138
“The Return of Tarzan” — Topics, V. 1, No. 18, October 20, 1920, p.20
“Tarzan of the Apes” — Brentano’s Book Chat, New Series No. 82, July 1914, p.13
“Tarzan the Untamed” — The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, V. LII, No. 11, June 1, 1920, p.532-533
Burroughs to Found Artist Colony — Holly Leaves, V. XI, No. 40, October 13, 1922, p.28
The Creator of Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs — The Book News Monthly, V. 36, No. 12, August 1918, p.429-431
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, of John Carter, of Barney Custer, and a dozen others almost equally popular as the Ape-man, is not at all the sort of person you would take for a writer were you to judge solely by appearances.
Gone, of course, are the days of long hair and slovenly clothing for the successful author. Now the best of them might pass easily as prosperous business men, and in this respect Mr. Burroughs differs not at all from his fellows —— but his hands! The Lord never intended those hands to wield anything lighter than a sledge, or play upon a more delicate instrument than an anvil —— that the four-pound aluminum typewriter he uses in his work can withstand them is always a source of wonder to me.
When I asked Mr. Burroughs for a suggestion as to something humorous which I might incorporate in this article he replied that “the funniest thing about me is my hands.” And then he went on to tell of a rubber in a Turkish bath who, after looking at Mr. Burroughs’ hands for a moment remarked: “We get all kinds of people in here; but this is the first time I ever massaged a blacksmith.”
Nor are his hands the only things that would seem to belie his calling. There is nothing in his conversation that would lead one to suppose that he wrote stories for a living, or that his stories have in the course of two short years made his name familiar wherever the English language is spoken, for whatever else Edgar Rice Burroughs may be he is unquestionably the world’s poorest conversationalist, nor does that fact cause him the slightest concern. Unlike most people who cannot talk he is an equally poor listener. He believes that the average man or woman has little or nothing worth saying and that they spend so much of their waking lives in saying it that they have no time to think — they exercise their vocal organs while their brains atrophy.
His success as a writer is a never-ending source of wonderment to him, and he insists that it is “just luck.” That he has been marvelo
usly successful goes without saying. It is but little more than two years ago that his first story appeared in print — ~”Under the Moons of Mars.” It was the first story that he had ever written and it was the encouragement of the success of it that put him permanently into the writing game.
Prior to that time Mr. Burroughs had been and done a little of everything. Educated in private schools and by tutors in Chicago, at Andover, Massachusetts, and for four years at the then famous military academy at Orchard Lake, Michigan, he had his goal placed at Yale, where two of his older brothers had graduated; but toward the close of his senior year at Orchard Lake his oldest brother obtained for him an appointment to West Point.
In a class of some hundred and seventeen candidates fourteen passed successfully. Mr. Burroughs was not one of the fourteen.
The following fall he returned to Orchard Lake as assistant commandant, tactical officer and cavalry instructor, and in the spring of 1896 enlisted in the 7th United States Cavalry to try for a commission from the ranks. After a period of chasing the elusive Apache Kid and his band of renegades about southern Arizona, Mr. Burroughs’ father obtained his discharge and the future author returned to Chicago — from Nogales, Arizona, to Kansas City “on top of a cattle train.” It seems that the seven cars of cattle to which he was attached were separated from the caboose by eleven other cars belonging to another outfit, and that at each stop as it was necessary to prod up the cattle that were down to prevent their being trampled to death; the train was usually under way before this work could be accomplished. This necessitated climbing to the top of the cars while the train was in motion. Then there was a long journey back to the caboose over the swaying, bumping cattle cars in the teeth of a Kansas gale-a journey that consumed so much time that the train, more often than not, was slowing down for the next stop before the caboose was reached. Then it was clamber to the ground, run forward with the prod pole, and repeat.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 768