Beasts of Tarzan | Page 6

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