“The entire affair is shrouded in mystery,” said D’Arnot.“I have it on the best of authority that neither the police nor thespecial agents of the general staff have the faintest conception of how it wasaccomplished. All they know, all that anyone knows, is that Nikolas Rokoff hasescaped.”
John Clayton, Lord Greystoke—he who had been “Tarzan of theApes”—sat in silence in the apartments of his friend, LieutenantPaul D’Arnot, in Paris, gazing meditatively at the toe of his immaculateboot.
His mind revolved many memories, recalled by the escape of his arch-enemy fromthe French military prison to which he had been sentenced for life upon thetestimony 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 asnothing by comparison with what he would wish and plot to do now that he wasagain free.
Tarzan had recently brought his wife and infant son to London to escape thediscomforts and dangers of the rainy season upon their vast estate inUziri—the land of the savage Waziri warriors whose broad African domainsthe ape-man had once ruled.
He had run across the Channel for a brief visit with his old friend, but thenews 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 animmediate return to London.
“It