The Return of Tarzan - Edgar Rice Burroughs (read e book TXT) 📗

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 café 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.”

IV 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 worthwhile 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