The Return of Tarzan

The Return of Tarzan

Edgar Rice Burroughs

“Magnifique!” ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath.

“Eh?” questioned the count, turning toward his young wife. “What is it that is magnificent?” and the count bent his eyes in various directions in quest of the object of her admiration.

“Oh, nothing at all, my dear,” replied the countess, a slight flush

momentarily coloring her already pink cheek. “I was but recalling with

admiration those stupendous skyscrapers, as they call them, of New

York,” and the fair countess settled herself more comfortably in her

steamer chair, and resumed the magazine which “nothing at all” had

caused her to let fall upon her lap.

Her husband again buried himself in his book, but not without a mild

wonderment that three days out from New York his countess should

suddenly have realized an admiration for the very buildings she had but

recently characterized as horrid.

Presently the count put down his book. “It is very tiresome, Olga,” he

said. “I think that I shall hunt up some others who may be equally

bored, and see if we cannot find enough for a game of cards.”

“You are not very gallant, my husband,” replied the young woman,

smiling, “but as I am equally bored I can forgive you. Go and play at

your tiresome old cards, then, if you will.”

When he had gone she let her eyes wander slyly to the figure of a tall young man stretched lazily in a chair not far distant.

“_Magnifique!_” she breathed once more.

The Countess Olga de Coude was twenty. Her husband forty. She was a very faithful and loyal wife, but as she had had nothing whatever to do with the selection of a husband, it is not at all unlikely that she was not wildly and passionately in love with the one that fate and her titled Russian father had selected for her. However, simply because she was surprised into a tiny exclamation of approval at sight of a splendid young stranger it must not be inferred therefrom that her thoughts were in any way disloyal to her spouse. She merely admired, as she might have admired a particularly fine specimen of any species. Furthermore, the young man was unquestionably good to look at.

As her furtive glance rested upon his profile he rose to leave the

deck. The Countess de Coude beckoned to a passing steward. “Who is that

gentleman?” she asked.

“He is booked, madam, as Monsieur Tarzan, of Africa,” replied the steward.

“Rather a large estate,” thought the girl, but now her interest was still further aroused.

As Tarzan walked slowly toward the smoking-room he came unexpectedly upon two men whispering excitedly just without. He would have vouchsafed them not even a passing thought but for the strangely guilty glance that one of them shot in his direction. They reminded Tarzan of melodramatic villains he had seen at the theaters in Paris. Both were very dark, and this, in connection with the shrugs and stealthy glances that accompanied their palpable intriguing, lent still greater force to the similarity.

Tarzan entered the smoking-room, and sought a chair a little apart from the others who were there. He felt in no mood for conversation, and as he sipped his absinth he let his mind run rather sorrowfully over the past few weeks of his life. Time and again he had wondered if he had acted wisely in renouncing his birthright to a man to whom he owed nothing. It is true that he liked Clayton, but—ah, but that was not the question. It was not for William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, that he had denied his birth. It was for the woman whom both he and Clayton had loved, and whom a strange freak of fate had given to Clayton instead of to him.

That she loved him made the thing doubly difficult to bear, yet he knew

that he could have done nothing less than he did do that night within

“Monsieur Tarzan,” he said, “may indeed wish that he had never

befriended me, for I can assure him that he has won the enmity of two

of the most unmitigated scoundrels in all Europe. Avoid them, monsieur,

by all means.”

“I have had more awe-inspiring enemies, my dear count,” replied Tarzan

with a quiet smile, “yet I am still alive and unworried. I think that

neither of these two will ever find the means to harm me.”

“Let us hope not, monsieur,” said De Coude; “but yet it will do no harm

to be on the alert, and to know that you have made at least one enemy

today who never forgets and never forgives, and in whose malignant

brain there are always hatching new atrocities to perpetrate upon those

who have thwarted or offended him. To say that Nikolas Rokoff is a

devil would be to place a wanton affront upon his satanic majesty.”

That night as Tarzan entered his cabin he found a folded note upon the floor that had evidently been pushed beneath the door. He opened it and read: