Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  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 first-born. 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 him.

  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 wa
s 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.

  Chapter 2

  Marooned

  As Tarzan and his guide had disappeared into the shadows upon the dark wharf the figure of a heavily veiled woman had hurried down the narrow alley to the entrance of the drinking-place the two men had just quitted.

  Here she paused and looked about, and then as though satisfied that she had at last reached the place she sought, she pushed bravely into the interior of the vile den.

  A score of half-drunken sailors and wharf-rats looked up at the unaccustomed sight of a richly gowned woman in their midst. Rapidly she approached the slovenly barmaid who stared half in envy, half in hate, at her more fortunate sister.

  “Have you seen a tall, well-dressed man here, but a minute since,” she asked, “who met another and went away with him?”

  The girl answered in the affirmative, but could not tell which way the two had gone. A sailor who had approached to listen to the conversation vouchsafed the information that a moment before as he had been about to enter the “pub” he had seen two men leaving it who walked toward the wharf.

  “Show me the direction they went,” cried the woman, slipping a coin into the man’s hand.

  The fellow led her from the place, and together they walked quickly toward the wharf and along it until across the water they saw a small boat just pulling into the shadows of a near-by steamer.

  “There they be,” whispered the man.

  “Ten pounds if you will find a boat and row me to that steamer,” cried the woman.

  “Quick, then,” he replied, “for we gotta go it if we’re goin’ to catch the Kincaid afore she sails. She’s had steam up for three hours an’ jest been a-waitin’ fer that one passenger. I was a-talkin’ to one of her crew ‘arf an hour ago.”

  As he spoke he led the way to the end of the wharf where he knew another boat lay moored, and, lowering the woman into it, he jumped in after and pushed off. The two were soon scudding over the water.

  At the steamer’s side the man demanded his pay and, without waiting to count out the exact amount, the woman thrust a handful of bank-notes into his outstretched hand. A single glance at them convinced the fellow that he had been more than well paid. Then he assisted her up the ladder, holding his skiff close to the ship’s side against the chance that this profitable passenger might wish to be taken ashore later.

  But presently the sound of the donkey engine and the rattle of a steel cable on the hoisting-drum proclaimed the fact that the Kincaid’s anchor was being raised, and a moment later the waiter heard the propellers revolving, and slowly the little steamer moved away from him out into the channel.

  As he turned to row back to shore he heard a woman’s shriek from the ship’s deck.

  “That’s wot I calls rotten luck,” he soliloquized. “I might jest as well of ‘ad the whole bloomin’ wad.”

  When Jane Clayton climbed to the deck of the Kincaid she found the ship apparently deserted. There was no sign of those she sought nor of any other aboard, and so she went about her search for her husband and the child she hoped against hope to find there without interruption.

  Quickly she hastened to the cabin, which was half above and half below deck. As she hurried down the short companion-ladder into the main cabin, on either side of which were the smaller rooms occupied by the officers, she failed to note the quick closing of one of the doors before her. She passed the full length of the main room, and then retracing her steps stopped before each door to listen, furtively trying each latch.

  All was silence, utter silence there, in which the throbbing of her own frightened heart seemed to her overwrought imagination to fill the ship with its thunderous alarm.

  One by one the doors opened before her touch, only to reveal empty interiors. In her absorption she did not note the sudden activity upon the vessel, the purring of the engines, the throbbing of the propeller. She had reached the last door upon the right now, and as she pushed it open she was seized from within by a powerful, dark-visaged man, and drawn hastily into the stuffy, ill-smelling interior.

  The sudden shock of fright which the unexpected attack had upon her drew a single piercing scream from her throat; then the man clapped a hand roughly over the mouth.

  “Not until we are farther from land, my dear,” he said. “Then you may yell your pretty head off.”

  Lady Greystoke turned to look into the leering, bearded face so close to hers. The man relaxed the pressure of his fingers upon her lips, and with a little moan of terror as she recognized him the girl shrank away from her captor.

  “Nikolas Rokoff! M. Thuran!” she exclaimed.

  “Your devoted admirer,” replied the Russian, with a low bow.

  “My little boy,” she said next, ignoring the terms of endearment— “where is he? Let me have him. How could you be so cruel — even as you — Nikolas Rokoff — cannot be entirely devoid of mercy and compassion? Tell me where he is. Is he aboard this ship? Oh, please, if such a thing as a heart beats within your breast, take me to my baby!”

  “If you do as you are bid no harm will befall him,” replied Rokoff. “But remember that it is your own fault that you are here. You came aboard voluntarily, and you may take the consequences. I little thought,” he added to himself, “that any such good luck as this would come to me.”

  He went on deck then, locking the cabin-door upon his prisoner, and for several days she did not see him. The truth of the matter being that Nikolas Rokoff was so poor a sailor that the heavy seas the Kincaid encountered from the very beginning of her voyage sent the Russian to his berth with a bad attack of sea-sickness.

  During this time her only visitor was an uncouth Swede, the Kincaid’s unsavoury cook, who brought her meals to her. His name was Sven Anderssen, his one pride being that his patronymic was spelt with a double “s.”

  The man was tall and raw-boned, with a long yellow moustache, an unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails. The very sight of him with one grimy thumb buried deep in the lukewarm stew, that seemed, from the frequency of its repetition, to constitute the pride of his culinary art, was sufficient to take away the girl’s appetite.

  His small, blue, close-set eyes never met hers squarely. There was a shiftiness of his whole appearance that even found expression in the cat-like manner of his gait, and to it all a sinister suggestion was added by the long slim knife that always rested at his waist, slipped through the greasy cord that supported his soiled apron. Ostensibly it was but an implement of his calling; but the girl could never free herself of the conviction that it would require less provocation to witness it put to other and less harmless uses.

  His manner toward her was surly, yet she never failed to meet him with a pleasant smile and a word of thanks when he brought her food to her, though more often than not she hurled the bulk of it through the tiny cabin port the moment that the door closed behind him.

  During the days of anguish that followed Jane Clayton’s imprisonment, but two questions were uppermost in her mind — the whereabouts of her husband and her son. She fully believed that the baby was aboard the Kincaid, provided that he still lived, but whether Tarzan had been permitted to live after having been lured aboard the evil craft she could not guess.

  She knew, of course, the deep hatred that the Russian felt for the Englishman, and she could think of but one reason for having him brought aboard the ship — to dispatch him in comparative safety in revenge for his having thwarted Rokoff’s pet schemes, and for having been at last the means of landing him in a French prison.

  Tarzan, on his part, lay in the darkness of his cell, ignorant of the fact that his wife was a prisoner in the cabin almost above his head.

  The same Swede that served Jane brought his meals to him, but, though on several occasion
s Tarzan had tried to draw the man into conversation, he had been unsuccessful. He had hoped to learn through this fellow whether his little son was aboard the Kincaid, but to every question upon this or kindred subjects the fellow returned but one reply, “Ay tank it blow purty soon purty hard.” So after several attempts Tarzan gave it up.

  For weeks that seemed months to the two prisoners the little steamer forged on they knew not where. Once the Kincaid stopped to coal, only immediately to take up the seemingly interminable voyage.

  Rokoff had visited Jane Clayton but once since he had locked her in the tiny cabin. He had come gaunt and hollow-eyed from a long siege of sea-sickness. The object of his visit was to obtain from her her personal cheque for a large sum in return for a guarantee of her personal safety and return to England.

  “When you set me down safely in any civilized port, together with my son and my husband,” she replied, “I will pay you in gold twice the amount you ask; but until then you shall not have a cent, nor the promise of a cent under any other conditions.”

  “You will give me the cheque I ask,” he replied with a snarl, “or neither you nor your child nor your husband will ever again set foot within any port, civilized or otherwise.”

  “I would not trust you,” she replied. “What guarantee have I that you would not take my money and then do as you pleased with me and mine regardless of your promise?”

  “I think you will do as I bid,” he said, turning to leave the cabin. “Remember that I have your son — if you chance to hear the agonized wail of a tortured child it may console you to reflect that it is because of your stubbornness that the baby suffers — and that it is your baby.”

  “You would not do it!” cried the girl. “You would not — could not be so fiendishly cruel!”

  “It is not I that am cruel, but you,” he returned, “for you permit a paltry sum of money to stand between your baby and immunity from suffering.”

  The end of it was that Jane Clayton wrote out a cheque of large denomination and handed it to Nikolas Rokoff, who left her cabin with a grin of satisfaction upon his lips.