Chapter 1. Out of the Past

TRUTH IS STRANGER than fiction.

If this tale should seem in part incredible, please bear this axiom in mind. It had its beginning more than twenty years ago, unless one wishes to go further back to the first amoeba or even beyond that to the cosmos shattering clash of two forgotten suns; but we shall confine our story, other than by occasional reference, to the stage, the actors, and the business of the present time.

The searing sun rays scorch down upon a shriveled plain a scant five degrees north of the equator. A man, clothed in torn shirt and trousers upon which dried blood has caked and turned a rusty brown, staggers and falls to lie inert.

A great lion looks down upon the scene from the summit of a distant rocky ledge where a few tenacious bushes cling to give shade to the lair of the king; for this is Africa.

Ska, the vulture, wheels and circles in the blue, sky-writing anticipation far above the body of the fallen man.

Not far to the south, at the edge of the dry plain, another man swings easily toward the north. No sign of fatigue or exhaustion here. The bronze skin glows with health, full muscles glide beneath it. The free gait, the noiseless tread might be those of Sheeta, the panther; but there is no slinking here. It is the carriage of one who knows neither doubt nor fear, of a lord in his own domain.

He is encumbered by but a single garment, a loincloth of doe-skin. A coil of grass rope is looped over one shoulder, behind the other hangs a quiver of arrows; a scabbarded knife swings at his hip; a bow and a short spear complete his equipment. A shock of black hair falls in disorder above serene, grey eyes, eyes that can reflect the light of a summer sea or the flashing steel of a rapier.

The Lord of the Jungle is abroad.

He is far to the north of his ancient haunts, yet this is no unfamiliar terrain. He has been here many times before. He knows where water may be had for the digging. He knows where the nearest water hole lies where he can make a kill and fill his belly.

He has come north at the behest of an emperor to investigate a rumor that a European power is attempting to cause the defection of a native chief by means of bribery. War and rumors of war are in the air, but of this tale such things are not a part-we hope. However, we are no prophet. We are merely a chronicler of events as they transpire. We follow the activities of our characters to the bitter end, even to war; but we hope for the best. However, only time can tell.

As Tarzan swung with easy strides out across the plain, no sound escaped his keen ears; no moving thing, his eyes; no scent, borne upon the soft bosom of Usha the wind, went unidentified. Far in the distance he saw Numa the lion standing upon his rocky ledge; he saw Ska the vulture circling above something that Tarzan could not see. In all that he saw or heard or smelled he read a story; for to him this savage world was an open book, sometimes a thrilling, always an interesting narrative of love, of hate, of life, of death.

Where you or I might occasionally pick out a letter or a word, Tarzan of the Apes grasped the entire text and countless implications that we might never guess.

Presently, ahead of him, he saw something white shining in the sunlight-a human skull; and as he came closer his eyes picked out the skeleton of a man, the bones only slightly disarranged. From among them grew a low desert shrub proclaiming that the skeleton had lain there for a long time.

Tarzan paused to investigate, for to him in his world nothing is too trivial to pass by without question. He saw that the skeleton was that of a Negro and that it had lain, there for a long time, years probably; which was entirely possible in this hot, dry plain. He could not tell how the man had come to his death, but he guessed that it might have been from thirst.

Then he saw something lying by the bones of a hand, something half buried by shifting soil; and he stopped and picked it up, drawing it carefully out of the earth. It was a split stick of hardwood in the split end of which was wedged a thin parcel of oiled silk.

The silk was stained and brittle and dry. It seemed that it might crumble to his touch, but that was only the outer layer. As he carefully unwrapped it, he found the inner layers better preserved. Inside the silk wrapper he found what he had expected-a letter.

It was written in English in a small, extremely legible hand. Tarzan read it with interest, interest that was perhaps stimulated by the date at the top of the sheet. Twenty years had elapsed since that letter had been written. For twenty years it had lain here beside the skeleton of its bearer in mute testimony to the loneliness of this barren plain.

Tarzan read it:

To Whom This May Come: I am dispatching this without much hope that it will even get out of this damnable country, still less that it will reach any white man; but if it does, please contact the nearest Resident Commissioner or any other authority that can get help to us quickly.

My wife and I were exploring north of Lake Rudolph. We came too far. It was the old story. Our boys became frightened by rumors of a fierce tribe inhabiting the country in which we were. They deserted us.

Where the Mafa River empties into the Neubari we turned up the gorge of the former as though drawn by some supernatural power, and were captured by the wild women of Kaji, when we reached the plateau. A year later our daughter was born and my wife died-the she-devils of Kaji killed her because she did not bear a son. They want white men. That is why they have not killed me and a dozen other white men captives.

The Kaji country lies on a high plateau above the falls of the Mafa. It is almost inaccessible, but can be reached by following the gorge of the Mafa from the Neubari.

It will require a strong expedition of white men to rescue me and my little daughter, as I doubt that blacks can be induced to enter the country. These Kaji women fight like devils, and they have strange, occult powers of some nature. I have seen things here that-well, things that just can't be but are.

No native tribes will live near this mysterious, ill-omened country; so, little is known of the Kaji; but rumors of their terrifying practices have become part of the folklore of their nearest neighbors, and it is the hushed recital of these that frightens the bearers of any safari that comes within the sphere of their baneful influence.

The white men may never know the cause of it, for the blacks fear to tell them, thinking that the black magic of the Kaji will reach out and destroy them; but the result is always the same-if the safari approaches too close to Kaji, the blacks all desert.

Then that happens which happened to my wife and me-the whites are lured by some mysterious means to the plateau and made prisoners.

Perhaps even a large force might be overcome, for the whites would not be contending against natural forces; but if they succeeded, the reward might be very great. It is the hope of this reward that I hold out against the dangers involved.

The Kaji own an enormous diamond. Where it came from, where it was mined, I have been unable to ascertain; but I suspect that it came from the soil of their own country.

I have seen and handled the Cullinan diamond, which weighed over three thousand carats; and I am certain that the diamond of Kaji weighs fully six thousand. Just what its value may be I do not know, but using the value of the Brazilian stone, Star of the South, as a measure, it must be worth close to £2,000,000-a reward well worth some risk.

It is impossible for me to know whether I shall ever get this letter out of Kaji, but I have hopes of doing so by bribing one of their black slaves who occasionally leave the plateau to spy in the lowlands.

God grant this be delivered in time.

Mountford.

Tarzan of the Apes read the letter through twice. Mountford! Almost ever since he could remember, it seemed, the mysterious disappearance of Lord and Lady Mountford had been recalled to the minds of men by rumors that they still lived, until they had become a legend of the wilderness.

No one really believed that they lived, yet at intervals some wanderer from the interior would revive the rumor with more or less circumstantial evidence. He had had the story from the chieftain of a remote tribe, or perhaps from the lips of a dying white man; but there never came any definite clew as to the exact whereabouts of the Mountfords-they had been reported from a score of places all the way from the Soudan to Rhodesia.

And now at last the truth had come, but too late.. Lady Mountford had been dead for twenty years, and it was quite improbable that her husband still lived. The child must, of course, have died or been killed by the Kaji. It could scarcely have survived among those savage people through infancy.

To the jungle bred ape-man death was a commonplace phenomenon of existence and far less remarkable than many other manifestations of nature, for it came eventually to all living things; so the possibility of the death of the man and the child induced no reaction of sorrow or regret. It simply meant nothing to him whatsoever. He would deliver the letter to the English authorities at the first opportunity, and that would be all that there would be to it. Or so Tarzan thought. He continued his way, putting the matter from his mind. He was more interested in the maneuvers of Ska the vulture, for they indicated that Ska was circling about some creature not yet dead and which, because of its size or nature, he hesitated to attack.

As Tarzan approached the spot above which Ska wheeled on static wings he saw Numa the lion drop from the ledge upon which he had been standing and move cautiously toward the thing that had aroused the man's curiosity. Though the latter was in plain sight, Numa seemingly ignored his presence; nor did Tarzan alter his course because of the lion. If neither changed his pace or his direction they would meet close to the thing above which Ska hovered.

As the ape-man came nearer the object of his interest he saw the body of a man lying in a little natural depression of the ground-the body of a white man.

To the right of it, a hundred yards away, was Numa. Presently the man stirred. He was not dead. He raised his head and saw the lion; then he struggled to rise, but he was very weak and could only manage to raise himself to one knee. Behind him was Tarzan, whom he did not see.

As the man half rose, the lion growled. It was only a warning in which there was no immediate menace. Tarzan recognized it as such. He knew that Numa had been attracted by curiosity and not by hunger. His belly was full.

But the man did not know these things. He thought it was the end, for he was unarmed and helpless; and the great carnivore, the king of beasts, was almost upon him.

Then he heard another low growl behind him and, turning his eyes quickly in that direction, saw an almost naked man coming toward him. For an instant he did not understand, for he saw no other beast; then he heard the growl again and saw that it came from the throat of the bronzed giant approaching him.

Numa heard the growl too and paused. He shook his head and snarled. Tarzan did not pause; he continued on toward the man. There was no sanctuary should the lion attack no tree to offer the safety of its branches; there were only Tarzan's weapons and his great strength and his skill; but greatest of all was his conviction that Numa would not attack.

The Lord of the Jungle well knew the art of bluff and its value. Suddenly he raised his head and voiced the hideous warning-cry of the bull ape. The man shuddered as he heard the bestial cry issue from the lips of a human being. Numa, with a parting growl, turned and stalked away.

Tarzan came and stood over the man. "Are you hurt?" he demanded, "or weak from hunger and thirst?"

The voice of a beast coming from the lips of this strange white giant had been no more disconcerting to the man than now to hear him speak in English. He did not know whether to be afraid or not. He glanced hurriedly in the direction of the lion and saw it moving off in the direction from which it had come, and he was filled with a new awe of this creature who could frighten the king of beasts from its prey.

"Well," demanded the ape-man, "do you understand English?"

"Yes," replied the other; "I am an American. I am not hurt. I have been without food for several days. I have had no water today."

Tarzan stooped and lifted the man to a shoulder. "We will find water and food," he said, "and then you may tell me what you are doing alone in this country."
Chapter 2. A Strange Tale

AS TARZAN CARRIED the man toward safety, the limp, dead weight of his burden told him that his charge had lost consciousness. Occasionally he mumbled incoherently, but for the greater part of the journey he was as one dead.

When they came at last to water, Tarzan laid the man in the shade of a small tree; and, raising his head and shoulders, forced a few drops of the liquid between his lips. Presently he could take more, and with its revivifying effects he commenced to speak-broken, disjointed, sometimes incoherent snatches of sentences; as one speaks in delirium or when emerging from an anesthetic.

"She-devil," he mumbled. ". . . beautiful . . . God! how beautiful." Then he was silent for a while as Tarzan bathed his face and wrists with the cool water.

Presently he opened his eyes and looked at the ape-man, his brows wrinkled in questioning and puzzlement. "The diamond!" he demanded. "Did you get the diamond? Huge . . . she must have been sired by Satan . . . beautiful-enormous-big as . . . what? It can't be . . . but I saw it-with my own eyes-eyes! eyes! . . . what eyes! . . . but a fiend . . . ten million dollars . . . all of that . . . big . . . big as a woman's head."

"Be quiet," said the ape-man, "and rest. I will get food."

When he returned, the man was sleeping peacefully and night was falling. Tarzan built a fire and prepared a brace of quail and a hare that he had brought down with arrows from his bow. The quail he wrapped in wet clay and laid in the embers; the hare he jointed and grilled on sharpened sticks.

When he had done, he glanced at the man and saw that his eyes were open and upon him. The gaze was quite normal, but the expression was one of puzzlement.

"Who are you?" asked the man. "What happened? I do not seem to be able to recall."

"I found you out on the plain-exhausted," explained Tarzan.

"O-oh!" exclaimed the other. "You are the-the man the lion ran away from. Now I remember. And you brought me here and got food?-and there is water, too?"

"Yes; you have had some. You can have more now. There is a spring behind you. Are you strong enough to reach it?"

The man turned and saw the water; then he crawled to it. Some of his strength had returned.

"Don't drink too much at once," cautioned the ape-man.

After the man had drunk he turned again toward Tarzan. "Who are you?" he asked. "Why did you save me?"

"You will answer the questions," said the Lord of the Jungle. "Who are you? And what are you doing in this country alone? What are you doing here at all?"

The voice was low and deep. It questioned, but it also commanded. The stranger felt that. It was the well modulated, assured voice of a man who was always obeyed. He wondered who this almost naked white giant could be. A regular Tarzan, he thought. When he looked at the man he could almost believe that such a creature existed outside of story and legend and that this was, indeed, he.

"Perhaps you had better eat first," said the ape-man; "then you may answer my questions." He took a ball of hard baked clay from the fire, scraping it out with a stick; then with the hilt of his knife he broke it open, and the baked clay fell away from the body of the quail, taking the feathers with it. He impaled the bird on the stick and handed it to the man. "It is hot," he said.

It was, but the half-famished stranger risked burning for an initial morsel. Without seasoning, as it was, no food had ever tasted better. Only its high temperature restrained him from wolfing it. He ate one quail and half the rabbit before he lay back, at least partially satisfied.

"To answer your questions," he said, "my name is Wood. I am a writer-travel stuff. Thus I capitalize my natural worthlessness, which often finds its expression and its excuse in wanderlust. It has afforded me more than a competence; so that I am now able to undertake expeditions requiring more financing than a steamer ticket and a pair of stout boots.

"Because of this relative affluence you found me alone and on the point of death in an untracked wilderness; but though you found me deserted and destitute without even a crust of bread, I have here in my head material for such a travel book as has never been written by modern man. I have seen things of which civilization does not dream and will not believe; and I have seen, too, the largest diamond in the world. I have held it in my hands. I even had the temerity to believe that I could bring it away with me.

"I have seen the most beautiful woman in the world-and the cruelest; and I even had the temerity to believe that I could bring her away with me, too; for I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devastating emotions that control man, nations, life-so nearly one that they are separated only by a glance, a gesture, a syllable. I hate her with my mind; I love her with my body and my soul.

"Bear with me if I anticipate. For me she is the beginning and the end-the beginning and the end of everything; but I'll try to be more coherent and more chronological.

"To begin with: have you ever heard of the mysterious disappearance of Lord and Lady Mountford?"

Tarzan nodded. "Who has not?"

"And the persistent rumors of their survival even now, twenty years after they dropped from the sight and knowledge of civilized man?

"Well, their story held for me such a glamour of romance and mystery that for years I toyed with the idea of organizing an expedition that would track down every rumor until it had been proved false or true. I would find Lord and Lady Mountford or I would learn their fate.

"I had a very good friend, a young man of considerable inherited means, who had backed some of my earlier adventures-Robert van Eyk, of the old New York van Eyks. But of course that means nothing to you."

Tarzan did not comment. He merely listened-no shadow of interest or emotion crossed his face. He was not an easy man in whom to confide, but Stanley Wood was so full of pent emotion that he would have welcomed the insensate ears of a stone Buddah had there been no other ear to listen.

"Well, I gabbled so much about my plans to Bob van Eyk that he got all hepped up himself; and insisted on going along and sharing the expenses; which meant, of course, that we could equip much more elaborately than I had planned to and therefore more certainly ensure the success of our undertaking.

"We spent a whole year in research, both in England and Africa, with the result that we were pretty thoroughly convinced that Lord and Lady Mountford had disappeared from a point on the Neubari River somewhere northwest of Lake Rudolph. Everything seemed to point to that, although practically everything was based on rumor.

"We got together a peach of a safari and picked up a couple of white hunters who were pretty well familiar with everything African, although they had never been to this particular part of the country.

"Everything went well until we got a little way up the Neubari. The country was sparsely inhabited, and the farther we pushed in the fewer natives we saw. These were wild and fearful. We couldn't get a thing out of them about what lay ahead, but they talked to our boys. They put the fear o' God into 'em.

"Pretty soon we commenced to have desertions. We tried to get a line on the trouble from those who remained, but they wouldn't tell us a thing. They just froze up-scared stiff-didn't even admit that they were scared at first; but they kept on deserting.

"It got mighty serious. There we were in a country we didn't know the first thing about-a potentially hostile country-with a lot of equipment and provisions and scarcely enough men to carry on with.

"Finally one of the headmen told me what they were scared of. The natives they had talked with had told them that there was a tribe farther up the Neubari that killed or enslaved every black that came into their territory, a tribe with some mysterious kind of magic that held you-wouldn't let you escape, or, if you did escape, the magic followed you and killed you before you got back to your own country-maybe many marches away. They said you couldn't kill these people because they were not human-they were demons that had taken the form of women.

"Well, when I told Spike and Troll, the white hunters, what the trouble was, they pooh-poohed the whole business, of course. Said it was just an excuse to make us turn back because our carriers didn't like the idea of being so far from their own country and were getting homesick.

"So they got tough with the boys. Whaled hell out of 'em, and drove 'em on like slaves. As Spike said, 'Put the fear o' God into 'em', and the next night all the rest of 'em deserted-every last mother's son of 'em.

"When we woke up in the morning there were the four of us, Bob van Eyk, Spike, Troll, and myself, four white men all alone with loads for fifty porters; our personal boys, our gun bearers, our askaris all gone.

"Spike and Troll back-tracked to try to pick up some of the boys to take us out, for we knew we were licked; but they never found a one of them, though they were gone for two days.

"Bob and I were just about to pull out on our own when they got back; for, believe me, if we'd had plenty of it before they left we'd had a double dose while they were away.

"I can't tell you what it was, for we never saw anyone. Maybe we were just plain scared, but I don't think that could have been it. Van Eyk has plenty of nerve, and I have been in lots of tough places-lost and alone among the head-hunters of Equador, captured in the interior of New Guinea by cannibals, stood up in front of a firing squad during a Central American revolution-the kind of things, you know, that a travel writer gets mixed up in if he's really looking for thrills to write about and hasn't very good sense.

"No, this was different. It was just a feeling-a haunting sense of being watched by invisible eyes, day and night. And there were noises, too. I can't describe them-they weren't human noises, nor animal either. They were just noises that made your flesh creep and your scalp tingle.

"We had a council of war the night Spike and Troli got back. At first they laughed at us, but pretty soon they commenced to feel and hear things. After that they agreed with us that the best thing to do would be to beat it back.

"We decided to carry nothing but a revolver and rifle apiece, ammunition, and food, abandoning everything else. We were going to start early the following morning.

"When morning came we ate our breakfasts in silence, shouldered our packs, and without a word started out up the Neubari. We didn't even look at one another. I don't know about the rest of them, but I was ashamed to.

"There we were, doing just the opposite of the thing we had decided on-going deeper and deeper into trouble-and not knowing why we were doing it. I tried to exercise my will and force my feet in the opposite direction, but it was no go. A power far greater than my own will directed me. It was terrifying.

"We hadn't gone more than five miles before we came across a man lying in the trail-a white man. His hair and beard were white, but he didn't look so very old-well under fifty, I should have said. He seemed pretty well done in, notwithstanding the fact that he appeared in good physical condition-no indication of starvation; and he couldn't very well have been suffering from thirst, for the Neubari river was less than fifty yards from where he lay.

"When we stopped beside him, he opened his eyes and looked up at us.

" 'Go back!' he whispered. He seemed very weak, and it was obviously an effort for him to speak.

"I had a little flask of brandy that I carried for emergencies, and I made him drink a little. It seemed to revive him some.

" 'For God's sake turn back,' he said. 'There are not enough of you. They'll get you as they got me more than twenty years ago, and you can't get away-you can't escape. After all these years I thought I saw my chance; and I tried it. But you see! They've got me. I'm dying. His power! He sends it after you, and it gets you. Go back and get a big force of white men-blacks won't come into this country. Get a big force and get into the country of the Kaji. If you can kill him you'll be all right. He is the power, he alone.'

" 'Whom do you mean by "he"?' I asked.

" 'Mafka,' he replied.

" 'He's the chief?' I asked.

" 'No; I wouldn't know what to call him. He's not a chief, and yet he's all-powerful. He's more like a witch-doctor. In the dark ages he'd have been a magician. He does things that no ordinary witch-doctor ever dreamed of doing. He's a devil. Sometimes I have thought that he is the Devil. And he is training her-teaching her his hellish powers.'

" 'Who are you?'

" 'I'm Mountford,' he replied.

" 'Lord Mountford?' I exclaimed.

"He nodded."

"Did he tell you about the diamond?" asked Tarzan.

Wood looked at the ape-man in surprise. "How did you know about that?"

"You rambled a little while you were delirious, but I knew about it before. Is it really twice the size of the Cullinan?"

"I never saw the Cullinan, but the Kaji diamond is enormous. It must be worth ten million dollars at least, possibly more. Troll used to work at Kimerly. He said somewhere between ten and fifteen million. Yes, Mountford told us about it; and after that Troll and Spike were keen on getting into this Kaji country, hoping to steal the diamond. Nothing Mountford said could deter them. But after all it made no difference. We couldn't have turned back if we'd wanted to."

"And Mountford?" asked Tarzan. "What became of him?"

"He was trying to tell us something about a girl. He rambled a little, and we couldn't quite make out what he was driving at. His last words were, 'Save her . . . kill Mafka.' Then he died.

"We never did find out whom he meant even after we got into the Kaji country. We never saw any woman captive. If they had one they kept her hidden. But then, we never saw Mafka either. He lives in a regular castle that must have been built centuries ago, possibly by the Portuguese, though it may have antedated their excursion into Abyssinia. Van Eyk thought it may have been built during the Crusades, though what the Crusaders were doing in this neck of the woods he couldn't explain. At any rate, the Kaji never built it; though they had done considerable toward restoring and preserving it.

"The diamond is kept in this castle and is guarded along with Mafka and the queen by Kaji warriors who are constantly on guard at the only entrance.

"The Kaji attribute all their powers and the power of Mafka to the diamond; so naturally they guard it very carefully. For the stone itself they show no particular reverence. They handle it and allow others to handle it as though it were quite an ordinary stone. It is for the queen that they reserve their reverence.

"I am not certain that I correctly fathomed the connection between the queen and the diamond; but I think that they consider her the personification of the stone, into whose body has entered the spirit and the flame of the brilliant.

"She is a gorgeous creature, quite the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I do not hesitate to say that she is the most beautiful woman in the world; but a creature of such radical contradictions as to cast a doubt upon her sanity. One moment she is all womanly compassion and sweetness, the next she is a she-devil. They call her Gonfala, and the diamond Gonfal.

"It was during a moment of her femininity that she helped me to escape; but she must have repented it, for it could have been only Mafka's power that reached out and dragged me down. Only she knew that I had gone; so she must have told him."

"What became of the other three men?" asked Tarzan.

"They are still prisoners of the Kaji. When Gonfala helped me to escape, I planned to come back with a force of whites large enough to rescue them," Wood explained.

"Will they be alive?"

"Yes; the Kaji will protect them and marry them. The Kaji are all women. Originally they were blacks who wished to turn white; so they married only white men. It became a part of their religion. That is why they lure white men to Kaji-and frighten away the blacks.

"This must have been going on for generations, as there is not an unmixed black among them. They range in color all the way from brown to white. Gonfala is a blond. Apparently there is not a trace of Negro blood in her veins.

"If a baby is born black it is destroyed, and all male babies are destroyed. They believe that the color of the skin is inherited from the father."

"If they kill all the males, where do they get their warriors?"

"The women are the warriors. I have never seen them fight; but from what I heard I imagine they are mighty ferocious. You see, we walked right into their country like long-lost friends, for we didn't want to fight 'em. All two of us wanted was their diamond, Bob van Eyk wanted adventure, and I wanted material for another book. If we could make friends, so much the better.

"That was six months ago. Bob has had adventure and I have material for a book, though much good it will ever do me. Spike and Troll haven't the diamond, but they each have seven Kaji wives-all properly married, too, by Gonfala in the presence of the great diamond.

"You see, Gonfala, as queen, selects the wives for all captured whites; but she herself is not allowed to marry.

"This allotting of the whites is more or less of a racket. The women make offerings to Gonfala, and the ones who make the most valuable offerings get the husbands.

"Well, we saw a lot of Gonfala. She seemed to take a liking to Bob and me, and I sure took a liking to her. In fact, I fell in love with her, and even after I guessed the truth I didn't care.

"She liked to hear about the outside world, and she'd listen to us by the hour. You know how people are. Seeing so much of her and being near her broke down my revulsion for her cruelties; so that I was always mentally making excuses for her. And all the time I kept on loving her more and more, until finally I told her.

"She looked at me for a long time without saying a word. I didn't know whether she was sore or not. If you knew what a big shot the queen of the Kaji is, you'd realize how presumptuous I was in declaring my love. She's more than a queen; she's a sort of deity that they worship-all mixed up with their worship of the diamond.

" 'Love,' she said in a little, low voice. 'Love! So that is what it is!'

"Then she straightened up and became suddenly very regal. 'Do you know what you have done?' she demanded.

" 'I have fallen in love with you,' I said. 'That is about all I know or care.'

"She stamped her foot. 'Don't say it,' she commanded. 'Don't ever say it again. I should have you killed; that is the penalty for daring to aspire to the love of Gonfala. She may not love; she may never marry. Do you not understand that I am a goddess as well as a queen?'

"I can't help that,' I replied. 'And I can't help loving you any more than you can help loving me!'

"She gave a little gasp of astonishment and horror. There was a new expression in her eyes; it was not anger; it was fear. I had voiced a suspicion that I had had for some time, and I had hit the nail on the head-Gonfala was in love with me. She hadn't realized it herself until that very moment-she hadn't known what was the matter with her. But, now she did, and she was afraid.

"She didn't deny it; but she told me that we would both be killed, and killed horribly, if Mafka suspected the truth. And what she was afraid of was that Mafka would know because of his uncanny powers of magic.

"It was then that she decided to help me escape. To her it seemed the only way to insure our safety; to me it presented an opportunity to effect the rescue of my friends with the possibility of persuading Gonfala to come away with me if I were successful.

"With her help, I got away. The rest you know."
Chapter 3. The Power of Mafka

THP APE-MAN HAD listened patiently to Stanley Wood's recital. How much he could believe of it, he did not know; for he did not know the man, and he had learned to suspect that every civilized man was a liar and a cheat until he had proved himself otherwise.

Yet he was favorably impressed by the man's personality, and he had something of the wild beast's instinctive knowledge of basic character-if it may be called that. Perhaps it is more an intuitive feeling of trust for some and distrust of others. That it is not infallible, Tarzan well knew; so he was cautious, always. And in that again the beast showed in him.

"And what do you propose doing now?" he asked.

Wood scratched his head in perplexity. "To be perfectly frank, I don't know. I am confident that Mafka found out that I had escaped and that it was his magic that followed and brought me down. Perhaps Gonfala told him. She is a Jekyll and Hyde sort of person. In one personality she is all sweetness and tenderness, in another she is a fiend.

"As far as my future actions are concerned, I have a very definite premonition that I am not a free agent."

"What do you mean?" demanded the ape-man.

"Since it commenced to get dark haven't you felt an invisible presence near us, haven't you sensed unseen eyes upon us, and heard things, and almost seen things? These are the manifestations of Mafka. We are in his power. Where he wills us to go, we'll go; and you can lay to that."

A shadow of a smile moved the lips of the Lord of the Jungle. "I have seen and heard and sensed many things since we stopped here, but none of them was Mafka. I have identified them all either through my ears or my nose. There is nothing to fear."

"You do not know Mafka," said Wood.

"I know Africa, and I know myself," replied the ape-man, simply. There was no bravado in his tone, but absolute assurance. It impressed the American.

"You are a regular Tarzan," he said.

The other shot a quick glance at him, appraising. He saw that the man spoke without knowledge of his identity, and he was satisfied. His mission required that he remain unknown, if possible. Otherwise, he might never gain the information he sought. He had felt safe from recognition, for he was unknown in this district.

"By the way," continued Wood. "You have not told me your name. I have seen so many unbelievable things since I came into this country that not even the sight of an evidently highly civilized man wandering almost naked and alone in a wilderness surprised me as much as it otherwise might have. Of course, I don't want to pry into your affairs, but naturally my curiosity is aroused. I wonder who you are and what you are doing here." He stopped suddenly and looked intently at Tarzan. His eyes registered suspicion and a shadow of fear. "Say!" he exclaimed. "Did Mafka send you? Are you one of his-his creatures?"

The ape-man shook his head. "You are in a most unfortunate situation," he said. "If I were not one of Mafka's creatures, or if I were, my answer, quite conceivably, might be the same -I should deny it; so why answer you? You will have to find out for yourself, and in the meantime you will have to trust me or distrust me as seems wisest to you."

Wood grinned. "I am up against it, ain't I?" He shrugged. "Well, we're both in the same boat. At least you don't know any more about me than I do about you. I may have been giving you a cock-and-bull story. I admit it must sound fishy. But at least I told you my name. You haven't told me that much about yourself yet. I don't know what to call you."

"My name is Clayton," said the ape-man. He might also have said, John Clayton Lord Greystoke-Tarzan of the Apes; but he didn't.

"I suppose you want to get out of this country," said Tarzan, "and get help for your friends."

"Yes, of course, but there isn't a chance now."

"Why not?"

"Mafka-Mafka and Gonfala."

"I can't take you out at present," said the ape-man, ignoring the implied obstacle. "You may come along to the Lake Tana country with me if you wish to. You'll get a story there-a story that you must never write. You'll have to give me your word as to that. My only alternative is to leave you here. You will have to decide."

"I'll come with you," said Wood, "but neither of us will ever reach Lake Tana." He paused and strained his eyes into the lowering dusk of the brief twilight. "There!" he said in a whisper. "It's back; it's watching us. Don't you hear it? Can't you feel it?" His voice was tense, his eyes slightly dilated.

"There is nothing," said Tarzan. "Your nerves are upset."

"You mean to tell me you don't hear it-the moaning, the sighing?"

"I hear the wind, and I hear Sheeta the panther a long way off," replied the ape-man.

"Yes, I hear those, too; but I hear something else. You must be deaf."

Tarzan smiled. "Perhaps," he said. "But go to sleep; you need rest. Tomorrow you will not hear things."

"I tell you I hear it. I almost see it. Look! There, among those trees-just a shadow of something that has no substance."

Tarzan shook his head. "Try to sleep," he said. "I will watch."

Wood closed his eyes. The presence of this quiet stranger gave him a feeling of security despite his conviction that something weird and horrible hovered there in the darkness -watching, always watching. With the dismal keening still ringing in his ears, he fell asleep.

For a long time Tarzan sat in thought. He heard nothing other than the usual night noises of the wilderness, yet he was sufficiently conversant with the mystery and the magic of black Africa to realize that Wood had heard something that he could not hear. The American was intelligent, sane, experienced. He did not seem the type to be carried away by imaginings or hysteria. It was just possible that he was under the spell of hypnotic suggestion-that Mafka could project his powers to great distances. This was rather borne out by the evidence that Tarzan had had presented to him within the past few hours: the death of Mountford's messenger twenty years before, the striking down of Wood within a short distance of the same spot, the death of Mountford for no apparent good reason upon the very threshold of escape.

Mafka's was indeed a sinister power, but it was a power that the ape-man did not fear. All too often had he been the object of the malign necromancy of potent witch-doctors to fear their magic. Like the beasts of the jungle, he was immune. For what reason he did not know. Perhaps it was because he was without fear; perhaps his psychology was more that of the beast than of man.

Dismissing the matter from his mind, he stretched and fell asleep.

The sun was half a hand-breadth above the horizon when Wood awoke. He was alone. The strange white man had disappeared.

Wood was not greatly surprised. There was no reason why this stranger should wait and be burdened by a man he did not know, but he felt that he might at least have waited until he was awake before deserting him and leaving him prey for the first lion or leopard that might chance to pick up his scent.

And then there was Mafka. The thought aroused questions in the mind of the American. Might not this fellow who called himself Clayton be a tool of the magician of the Kaji? The very fact that he denied that he had heard any strange sounds or sensed any unusual presence lent color to this suspicion. He must have heard; he must have sensed. Then why did he deny it?

But perhaps he was not Mafka's spy. Perhaps he had fallen a victim to the sorcery of the old Devil. How easy it would have been for Mafka to lure him away. Everything seemed easy for Mafka. He could have lured him away to captivity or destruction, leaving Wood to die as Mafka intended-alone by starvation.

Wood had never seen Mafka. To him he should have been no more than a name; yet he was very real. The man even conjured an image of him that was as real and tangible as flesh and blood. He saw him as a very old and hideous black man, bent and wrinkled. He had filed, yellow teeth, and his eyes were close-set and blood-shot.

There! What was that? A noise in the trees! The thing was coming again!

Wood was a brave man, but things like these can get on the nerves of the bravest. It is one thing to face a known danger, another to be constantly haunted by an unseen thing -a horrible, invisible menace that one can't grapple with.

The American leaped to his feet, facing the direction of the rustling among the foliage. "Come down!" he cried, "Come down, damn you, and fight like a man!"

From the concealing foliage a figure swung lightly to the ground. It was Tarzan. Across one shoulder he carried the carcass of a small buck.

He looked quickly about. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "I don't see anyone"; then a faint smile touched his lips. "Hearing things again?" he asked.

Wood grinned foolishly. "I guess it's sort of got me," he said.

"Well, forget it for a while," counseled the ape-man. "We'll eat presently; then you'll feel better."

"You killed that buck?" demanded Wood.

Tarzan looked surprised. "Why, yes."

"You must have killed it with an arrow. That would take an ordinary man hours-stalk an antelope and get close enough to kill it with an arrow."

"I didn't use an arrow," replied the ape-man.

"Then how did you kill him?"

"I killed him with my knife-less danger of losing an arrow."

"And you brought him back through the trees on your shoulder! Say, that bird Tarzan has nothing on you. How did you ever come to live this way, Clayton? How did you learn to do these things?"

"That is a long story," said Tarzan. "Our business now is to grill some of this meat and get on our way."

After they had eaten, Tarzan told the other to carry some of the meat in his pockets. "You may need food before I can make another kill," he said. "We'll leave the rest for Dango and Ungo."

"Dango and Ungo? Who are they?"

"The hyena and the jackal."

"What language is that? I never heard them called that before, and I am a little bit familiar with a number of native dialects."

"No natives speak that language," replied the ape-man. "It is not spoken by men."

"Who does speak it, then?" demanded Wood; but he got no reply, and he did not insist. There was something mysterious about him, and that in his mien and his manner of speech that discouraged inquisitiveness. Wood wondered if the man were not a little mad. He had heard of white men going primitive, living solitary lives like wild animals; and they were always a little bit demented. Yet his companion seemed sane enough. No, it was not that; yet undeniably the man was different from other men. He reminded Wood of a lion. Yes, that was it-he was the personification of the strength and majesty and the ferocity of the lion. It was controlled ferocity; but it was there--Wood felt it. And that, perhaps, was why he was a little afraid of him.

He followed in silence behind the bronzed white savage back up the valley of the Neubari, and as they drew closer to the country of the Kaji he felt the power of Mafka increasing, drawing him back into the coils of intrigue and sorcery that made life hideous in the land of the women who would be white. He wondered if Clayton felt it too.

They came at length to the junction of the Mafa and the Neubari. It was here, where the smaller stream emptied into the larger, that the trail to the Kaji country followed up the gorge of the Mafa. It was here that they would have to turn up the Mafa.

Tarzan was a few yards in advance of Wood. The latter watched him intently as he came to the well-marked forking of the trail to the right leading to the crossing of the Neubari and up the Mafa. Here, regardless of his previous intentions, he would have to turn toward Kaji. The power of Mafka would bend his will to that of the malign magician; but Tarzan did not turn--he continued upon his way, unperturbed, up the Neubari.

Could it be that Mafka was ignorant of their coming? Wood felt a sudden sense of elation. If one of them could pass, they could both pass. There was an excellent chance that they might elude Mafka entirely. If he could only get by-if he could get away somewhere and organize a large expedition, he might return and rescue Van Eyk, Spike, and Troll.

But could he get by? He thought of the invisible presence that seemed to have him under constant surveillance. Had that been only the fruit of an overwrought imagination, as Clayton had suggested?

He came then to the forking of the trails. He focused all his power of will upon his determination to follow Clayton up the Neubari-and his feet turned to the right toward the crossing that led up the Mafa.

He called to Clayton, a note of hopelessness in his voice. "It's no go, old man," he said. "I've got to go up the Mafa-Mafka's got me. You go on-if you can."

Tarzan turned back. "You really want to go with me?" he asked.

"Of course, but I can't. I tried to pass this damnable trail, but I couldn't. My feet just followed it."

"Mafka makes strong medicine," said the ape-man, "but I think we can beat him."

"No," said Wood, "you can't beat him. No one can."

"We'll see," said Tarzan, and lifting Wood from the ground he threw him across a broad shoulder and turned back to the Neubari trail.

"You don't feel it?" demanded Wood. "You don't feel any urge to go up the Mafa?"

"Only a strong curiosity to see these people-especially Mafka," replied the ape-man.

"You'd never see him-no one does. They're afraid someone will kill him, and so is he. He's pretty well guarded all the time. If one of us could have killed him, most of the Kaji's power would be gone. We'd all have had a chance to escape. There are about fifty white prisoners there. Some of them have been there a long time. We could have fought our way out, if it hadn't been for Mafka; and some of us would have come through alive."

But Tarzan did not yield to his curiosity. He moved on toward the North with an easy grace that belied the weight of the burden across his shoulder. He went in silence, his mind occupied by the strange story that the American had told him. How much of it he might believe, he did not know; but he was inclined to credit the American with believing it, thus admitting his own belief in the mysterious force that enslaved the other mentally as well as physically; for the man seemed straightforward and honest, impressing Tarzan with his dependability.

There was one phase of the story that seemed to lack any confirmation-the vaunted fighting ability of the Amazonian Kaji. Wood admitted that he had never seen them fight and that they captured their prisoners by the wiles of Mafka's malign power. How, then, did he know that they were such redoubtable warriors? He put the question to the American.

Whom did they fight?

"There is another tribe farther to the East," explained Wood, "across the divide beyond the headwaters of the Mafa. They are called Zuli. Once the Kaji and the Zuli were one tribe with two medicine-men, or witch-doctors, or whatever you might call them. One was Mafka, the other was a chap called Woora.

"Jealousy arose between the two, causing a schism. Members of the tribe took sides, and there was a battle. During the fracas, Woora swiped one of the holy fetishes and beat it, telling some of his followers where he was going and to join him when the fight was over. You see, like the people who cause civilized wars, he was not taking part in it personally.

"Well, it seems that this other fetish that he lifts is the complement of the great diamond, the Gonfal, of the Kaji. United, their power is supreme; but separated, that of each is greatly reduced. So the Kaji and the Zuli are often battling, each seeking to obtain possession of the fetish of the other.

"It was the stories of the raids and skirmishes and battles for these prizes, as told me by Gonfala and others of the Kaji, that gave me the hunch that these ladies are pretty mean warriors. Some of the yarns I've heard were sure tall; but the scars of old wounds on most of them sort of bear them out, as do the grisly trophies that hang from the outer walls of Gonfala's palace-the shriveled heads of women, suspended by their long hair.

"An interesting feature of the story is the description of the fetish of the Zuli-a green stone as large as the Gonfal and as brilliant. It glistens like an emerald; but, holy cats! Think of an emerald weighing six thousand carats! That would be something worth battling for, and they don't know the value of it."

"Do you?" asked Tarzan

"Well, no, not exactly-perhaps twenty million dollars at a rough guess."

"What would that mean to you-luxuries and power? The Kaji probably know little of luxuries; but, from what you have told me, power is everything to them; and they believe that this other fetish would give them unlimited power, just as you think that twenty million dollars would give you happiness.

"Probably you are both wrong; but the fact remains that they know quite as well the value of it as you, and at least it does less harm here than it would out in the world among men who would steal the pennies from the eyes of the dead!"

Wood smiled. This was the longest speech that his strange companion had vouchsafed. It suggested a philosophy of life that might make an uninhabited wilderness preferable to contacts of civilization in the eyes of this man.

For an hour Tarzan carried the American; then he lowered him to his feet. "Perhaps you can go it on your own now," he said.

"I'll try. Come on!"

Tarzan started again along the trail toward the North. Wood hesitated. In his eyes and the strained expression of his face was reflected the stupendous effort of his will. With a groan of anguish he turned and started briskly toward the South.

The ape-man wheeled and hastened after him. Wood glanced back and broke into a run. For an instant Tarzan hesitated. The fellow meant nothing to him; he was a burden. Why not let him go and be relieved of him? Then he recalled the terror in the man's face and realized, also, the challenge that Mafka was hurling at the Lord of the Jungle.

Perhaps it was the latter that motivated him more strongly than aught else when he started in pursuit of the fleeing American.

Mafka's power might be unquestionably great, but it could not lend sufficient speed to the feet of Stanley Wood to permit him to outdistance the ape-man. In a few moments Tarzan overhauled and seized him. Wood struggled weakly to escape at the same time that he was thanking Tarzan for saving him.

"It's awful," he groaned. "Don't you suppose I can ever escape from the will of that old devil?"

Tarzan shrugged. "Perhaps not," he said. "I have known ordinary witch-doctors to kill men after a period of many years at distances of hundreds of miles, and this Mafka is evidently no ordinary witch-doctor."

That night they camped beside the Neubari, and in the morning when the ape-man awoke Stanley Wood had disappeared.
Chapter 4. Sentenced to Death

WITH THE REALIZATION that the American had gone there came to Tarzan a fuller realization of the potency of Mafka's necromancy; for he did not for a moment doubt that it was the influence of the Kaji magician that had forced the desertion of the unwilling Wood.

The ape-man conceded admiration to the cunning and the power that had stolen the man from him, for he had taken particular pains to circumvent just such a possibility. When they had lain down to sleep, Tarzan had fastened one end of his grass rope securely to an ankle of the man he had taken under his protection and the other end to one of his own wrists; but that upon which he had depended most was his own preternatural keenness of sense which ordinarily functioned only a little less actively when he slept than when he was awake.

That Wood had been able to free himself and escape could have been due to no powers of his own; but must have been attributable solely to the supernatural machinations of Mafka, constituting in the eyes of the ape-man a direct challenge to his own prowess.

Perhaps this motivated him in part, but it was also a desire to save the young American from an unknown fate that prompted him to turn back in pursuit.

He did not follow the back trail to the Mafa River, but struck out in a south-easterly direction into the mountainous country that forms an almost impregnable protection for the stronghold of the Kaji.

Deep gorges and precipitous cliffs retarded the progress of the ape-man; so that it was over three days before he reached his objective: a point near the headwaters of the Mafa a full day's march to the east of the City of Kaji.

He had foreseen that Mafka might expect him to follow Wood, which would offer the magician an opportunity to have Tarzan waylaid and destroyed at some point upon the trail where he would be helpless against the onslaught of a well-placed detachment of Kaji warrior-women; and so he had elected to come upon Kaji from an unexpected direction and depend upon his animal cunning and his great strength and agility to carry him into the very presence of the malign power the destruction of which appeared to be the only means whereby Wood and his companions might be set at liberty permanently.

But above all, his success depended upon the verity of his conviction that he was immune to the supernatural powers of Mafka; though upon this point there was one thing that troubled him; it seemed to him that Mafka must have known of his befriending of Wood. The very fact that he had taken Wood from him suggested that. Yet this might have been accomplished by means of spies, which the American had specifically stated were employed by the Kaji. There was also the possibility that Mafka's power over his victims was so great that he could read their minds even at great distances and thus see through their eyes the things that they saw; so that while Tarzan had been in the company of the American, Mafka had been as well aware of him and his activities as though he had been present in person; but when Wood was no longer with him, the magician could not exercise his telepathic surveillance over him. This was the premise upon which the ape-man based his strategy.

It was late in the afternoon of the third day after Wood's disappearance that Tarzan paused upon a lofty mountain ridge and surveyed the country about him. In a canyon below and to the south of him raced a turbulent mountain stream. With his eyes he followed its meanderings toward the west where, in the dim and hazy distance, he saw a cleft in the serried range that he knew must be the gorge of the Mafa leading down to its confluence with the Neubari.

He stood, then, near the headwaters of the former stream between the countries of the Kaji and the Zuli.

A west wind blew gently from the lower country toward the summit of the range, carrying to the nostrils of the apeman evidence of things unseen-of Tongani the baboon, Sheeta the leopard, of the red wolf, and the buffalo; but of the east he had no knowledge except that which his eyes and his ears furnished; and so, facing the west, he was unaware of the eyes that watched him from behind the summit of the ridge above him, eyes that disappeared when the ape-man turned in their direction.

There were a dozen pairs of them, and their owners formed a motley crew of unkempt, savage warriors. Of them, seven were bearded white men and five were blacks. All were similarly garbed in well worn loin-cloths of the skins of wild beasts. They carried bows and arrows and short, heavy spears; and all the blacks and some of the whites wore barbaric ornaments-necklaces of the teeth of animals and armlets and anklets. Upon their backs were small shields of the hide of the buffalo.

They watched Tarzan as he descended into the gorge of the Mafa and slaked his thirst. They saw him take a piece of meat from his quiver and eat, and every move that he made they watched. Sometimes they spoke together in low whispers that could not carry against the wind to the ears of the apeman.

One, who seemed to be the leader, spoke most often. He was a white man whose brown hair had greyed at the temples and whose beard was streaked with grey. He was well built, with the hard leanness of the athlete. His forehead and his eyes denoted intelligence. His companions called him Lord.

Tarzan was tired. For three days he had scaled cliffs and crags, descended into abysses, and clambered to lofty summits; and the previous night his rest had been broken by hunting leopards that had caught his scent and stalked him. He had killed one that had attacked him; but others had kept him constantly on the alert, precluding the possibility of continued rest.

The sun was still an hour high when he lay down to sleep behind a bush on the slope above the Mafa. That he was dog-tired must account for that which followed, for ordinarily nothing could have approached without arousing him.

When he did awaken, it was still daylight; and a dozen warriors formed a close circle about him, the points of their spears directed at his unprotected body. He looked up into the savage, unfriendly eyes of a black man; then he glanced quickly around the circle and noted the composition of the group. He did not speak. He saw that he was outnumbered and a captive. Under the circumstances there was nothing that he could say that would serve him any purpose.

His silence and his composure set his captors aback. They had expected him to show fear and excitement. He did neither. He just lay there and appraised them through steady, grey eyes.

"Well, Kaji," said Lord at last, "we've got you."

The truth of the statement was too obvious to require comment; so Tarzan remained silent. He was interested less in what the man said than in the language in which he said it. The fellow appeared definitely Anglo-Saxon, yet he spoke a bastard tongue the base of which was Galla but so intermixed with other tongues that it would have been unintelligible to one less versed in African dialect and European languages than Tarzan. In his brief speech, that could be translated into six English words, he had used as many tongues.

Lord shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Well, Kaji," he said after a brief silence, "what have you got to say?"

"Nothing," replied the ape-man.

"Get up!" directed Lord.

Tarzan arose and stretched with the easy indifference of a lion in its own lair.

"Take his weapons," snapped Lord; and then, half to himself and in English: "By Jove, but he's a rum 'un."

Then, indeed, was Tarzan interested. Here was an Englishman. There might be some reason to speak now-to ask questions.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "What makes you think that I'm a Kaji?"

"For the same reason that you know that we are Zuli," replied Lord. "Because there are no other people in these mountains." Then he turned to one of his fellows. "Tie his hands behind his back."

They led him then across the ridge and down the other side of the divide; but it was dark now, and Tarzan saw nothing of the country through which they passed. He knew that they followed a well worn trail that often dropped precipitously down the side of a rocky gorge until it reached a gentler descent and wound tortuously as though following the meanderings of the stream that splashed or purled or gurgled at their right.

It was very dark in the gorge; but at length they came out into open, level country; and there it was lighter; though still no landmarks were visible to give the ape-man a suggestion of the terrain of this unfamiliar land.

A dim, flickering light showed far ahead. For half an hour they approached it before its closer aspect explained it. Then Tarzan saw that it was from an open fire burning behind the stockade of a village.

As they approached the gates, Lord halloed; and when he had identified himself they were admitted, and Tarzan found himself in a village of stone huts thatched with grass. The light from the fire burning in the center of the main street revealed only a portion of the village, which evidently was of considerable size; the rest was lost in the shadows beyond the limit of the firelight.

Before him, built directly across the principal avenue, loomed a large two-storied stone building. At the village gate were several women garbed and armed similarly to his captors. In the none-too-brilliant light of the fire they appeared to be white women; and there were others, like them, lounging in the doorways of huts or about the fire. Among them were a number of white men; and all of them, but especially the women, evinced considerable interest in Tarzan as Lord led him through the village.

"Ai, Kaji!" they yelled at him. "You will soon be dead, Kaji."

"It is too bad he is a Kaji," shouted one woman. "He would make a fine husband."

"Perhaps Woora will give him to you," bantered another, "when he gets through with him."

"He will be no good for a husband then. I do not want lion meat for a husband."

"I hope Woora feeds him to the lions alive. We have had no good sport since before the last rains."

"He will not turn this one to the lions. The fellow has too good a head. He looks as though he might have brains, and Woora never wastes good brains on the lions."

Through this barrage of comment, Lord led his captive to the entrance to the big building that dominated the village. At its portals were a dozen warrior-women, barring entrance. One of them advanced to meet Lord, the point of her spear dropped to the level of the man's abdomen.

Lord halted. "Tell Woora that we bring a Kaji prisoner," he said.

The woman turned to one of her warriors. "Tell Woora that Lord brings a Kaji prisoner," she directed; then her eyes travelled over the ape-man appraisingly.

"A good specimen, eh?" said Lord. "What a fine mate he'd make for you, Lorro."

The woman spat reflectively. "M-m-m, yes," she agreed; "he has good conformation, but he is a little too dark. Now, if one were sure he had nothing but white blood, he'd be well worth fighting for. Do you suppose he's all white? But what's the difference? He's a Kaji, and that's the end of him."

Since his capture Tarzan had spoken only a few words, and these in the Gallic dialect. He had not denied that he was a Kaji for the same reason that he had made no effort to escape: curiosity prompted him to learn more of the Zuli-curiosity and the hope that he might learn something of advantage from these enemies of the Kaji that would aid him in freeing the two Americans and their companions from captivity and releasing them permanently from the malign power of Mafka.

As he waited before the entrance to the palace of Woora he decided that he was rather enjoying the adventure. The frank appraisal of Lorro amused him. The idea of a woman fighting for possession of him appealed to his sense of humor. At the time he did not know exactly what the woman's words connoted, but he made a shrewd guess based on what Wood had told him of the customs of the Kaji.

Indifferently he appraised the woman. She might have been an octoroon, or she might have been a white woman with a coat of tan. Her features were not Negroid. Except for her dark hair she might have passed easily for a Scandinavian. She was a well-formed woman of about thirty, clean limbed and with the muscular contours of an athlete rendered graceful by femininity. Her features were good, and by any civilized standards she would have been accounted a handsome woman.

The ape-man's reflections upon the subject were interrupted by the return of the warrior Lorro had sent to advise Woora of Lord's return with a prisoner.

"Lord is to take the Kaji to Woora," she announced. "See that the prisoner bears no weapons, that his hands are tied behind him, and that a strong guard accompanies him and Lord-a guard of women."

With six of her warriors, Lorro escorted Lord and his prisoner into the palace, a palace only by virtue of its being occupied by a ruler-a palace by courtesy, one might say.

They entered a gloomy hall lighted dimly by a burning wick in a shallow pottery dish, a primitive cresset that gave forth more soot than light. Upon either side of the corridor were doorways, across most of which were drawn hangings fashioned from the pelts of animals, mostly buffaloes.

One uncovered doorway revealed a chamber in which a number of warrior-women were congregated. Some lay on low, skin-covered cots; others squatted in a circle upon the floor intent upon some game they were playing. The walls of the room were hung with spears and shields and bows and arrows. It was evidently a guard-room. Just beyond it, the corridor ended before a massive door guarded by two warriors.

It was evident that the guards were expecting the party and had received their instructions, for as they approached the doors were swung open for them to enter.

Tarzan saw before him a large room at the far end of which a figure was seated upon a dais. Two score or more of smoking cressets lighted the interior, revealing walls hung with a strange array of skins, weapons, rugs, silks, calicoes -a veritable museum, Tarzan conjectured, of the loot of many a safari; but by far the most outstanding and impressive feature of the decorations was the frieze of human heads that encircled the chamber-the mummified heads of women, hanging by their long hair, while from the smoke-darkened beams of the ceiling depended a hundred more.

These things the eyes of the ape-man took in in a sweeping glance; then they returned to the dais and the figure upon it. A score of women warriors flanked the dais where the lone figure sat upon a huge throne chair.

At first glance Tarzan saw only an enormous head thatched with scraggly grey hair; and then, below the head, a shrivelled body that was mostly abdomen-a hideously repulsive figure, naked but for a loin cloth. The skin of the face and head were drawn like yellow parchment over the bones of the skull-a living death's head in which were set two deep, glowing eyes that smouldered and burned as twin pits of Hell. And Tarzan knew that he was in the presence of Woora.

On a table directly in front of the magician rested an enormous emerald that reflected the lights from the nearer cressets and shot them back in scintillant rays that filled the apartment with their uncanny light.

But it was the man rather than the emerald that interested Tarzan. Woora was no black man, yet it was difficult to determine to what race he might belong. His skin was yellow, yet his features were not those of a Chinese. He might have been almost anything.

For several minutes he sat staring at Tarzan after the latter was halted before the dais. Gradually an expression of puzzlement and frustration overspread his face; then he spoke.

"How is my brother?" he demanded, the words squeaking like a rusty hinge.

The expression on Tarzan's face revealed no emotion, though inwardly he was greatly puzzled by the question.

"I do not know your brother," he replied.

"What?" demanded Woora. "You mean to tell me, Kaji, that you do not know that prince of liars, that thief, that murderer, that ingrate, my brother?"

The ape-man shook his head. "I do not know him," he repeated, "and I am no Kaji."

"What!" screamed Woora, glaring at Lord. "This is no Kaji? Didn't you tell me you were bringing a Kaji?"

"We captured him near the headwaters of the Mafa, O Woora; and what other kind of man would be there but a Kaji?"

"He is no Kaji, fool," said Woora. "I guessed as much the moment I looked into his eyes. He is not as other men. My putrid brother could have no power over this one. You are a fool, Lord; and I have no wish to breed more fools among the Zuli-there are enough already. You will be destroyed. Take his weapons from him, Lorro. He is a prisoner."

Then he turned to the ape-man. "What were you doing in the country of the Zuli?" he demanded.

"Searching for one of my people who is lost."

"You expected to find him here?"

"No, I was not coming here. I was going into the country of the Kaji."

"You are lying," snapped Woora. "You could not come to the headwaters of the Mafa without coming through the country of the Kaji; there is no other way."

"I came another way," replied Tarzan.

"No man could cross the mountains and gorges that surround Kaji and Zuli; there is no trail except that up the Mafa River," insisted Woora.

"I crossed the mountains and the gorges," said Tarzan.

"I see it all!" exclaimed Woora. "You are no Kaji; but you are in the service of my loathsome brother, Mafka. He has sent you here to murder me."

"Well," he laughed mockingly, "we shall see who is more powerful, Mafka or I. We shall see if he can save his servant from the wrath of Woora. And we'll give him time." He turned to Lorro. "Take him away with the other prisoner," he directed, "and see that neither of them escapes-especially this one; he is a dangerous man. But he will die even as Lord will."
Chapter 5. The Black Panther

TARZAN AND LORD were confined in a room on the second floor of the palace of Woora. It was a small room with a single window heavily barred with wooden bars. The door was thick and solid, and secured upon the outside with heavy bars.

When the guard had closed and bolted the door and departed, Tarzan walked to the window and looked out. The moon had risen and the light clouds that had overcast the sky earlier in the night had disappeared.

In the soft glow of the night light, the ape-man saw a walled compound directly beneath the window; and in the shadow of the wall something that was unrecognizable by sight, yet Tarzan knew what it was from the scent that rose to his nostrils. He took hold of the bars and tested them; then he turned back and faced Lord.

"If you had asked me," he said, "I should have told you that I was not a Kaji; then you wouldn't have been in this mess."

Lord shook his head. "It was only an excuse to kill me," he said. "Woora has been waiting for one. He is afraid of me. The men are more important here than they are in the Kaji country. We are allowed to bear arms and be warriors. That is because Woora knows that we cannot escape, as the only route to the outer world lies through the country of the Kaji. They would make slaves of us or kill us.

"Woora has heard that some of the men have banded together for the purpose of escaping. The plan included assassinating Woora and stealing the great emerald, which is supposed to be the source of his magic power. With this emerald, which Mafka craves more than anything in the world, we hoped to bribe our way through and out of the Kaji country.

"Woora believes that I am the instigator of the plot, and so he wants to destroy me. Of course, he could do that at any time he wishes, but he is a wily old devil and is trying to hide the fact that he has any suspicions. In this way he hopes to trap all of the plotters eventually, killing them one by one on one pretext or another."

"How can you know so much of his plans?" demanded the ape-man.

"Even in this land of horror and iniquity there is sometimes love," replied Lord, "and there is always lust. A woman close to Woora is honestly in love with one of us. Woora has talked too much to her-that is all. He is supposed to be above temptations of the flesh, but he is not.

"But now everything is spoiled. The others will be afraid. They will stay on until they die."

"You are an Englishman, aren't you?" asked Tarzan.

Lord nodded. "Yes," he said; "I was an Englishman, but God only knows what I am now. I've been here twenty years -here and in Kaji. The Kaji caught me originally; then the Zuli got me in one of their raids."

"I thought Woora killed the Kaji he caught," said the apeman. "He was going to have me killed because he thought I was a Kaji, or at least I assumed he was from what I heard after we reached the city."

"Yes, he kills them all now because we have all the men we need; but in those days there were not enough men. We can only support a limited number of people. There's plenty of meat, for game is plentiful; but fruits and vegetables are scarce. As it is, we breed more than enough to keep up the population-in fact, too many. Most of the babies are killed. Then, too, the women are pretty white. That is what they have been breeding for for God knows how many generations; so there isn't much need for new white blood. It's very rare now that a baby is born with Negroid characteristics, but of course occasionally there is a throwback."

"Why do they want to be white?" asked Tarzan.

"The Lord only knows. They never see anyone but themselves and never will. The original reason is lost in the past -dead with those who conceived it. Unless, perhaps, Woora and Mafka know. It is said they have been here forever-that they are deathless; but of course that is not true.

"I have a theory about them that is based upon various snatches of information that I have picked up during the past twenty years. They are identical twins who came from Columbia many years ago bringing with them the great emerald, which they probably stole. How they came into possession of the Gonfal of the Kaji, I don't know. Doubtless they murdered someone who was trying to get out of the country with it.

"That they have uncanny occult powers there is no doubt, and the very fact that they believe these dependent upon the great diamond of the Kaji and the emerald of the Zuli may very probably have caused this to be true; so if either Mafka or Woora were deprived of his stone his power would be lost. But killing them would make it surer. We were taking no chances; we were going to kill Woora. But now, as far as I am concerned, the dream is over. I'll go to the lions; you'll be tortured to death."

"Why the difference?" asked Tarzan.

"I'll furnish sport for Woora in the lion yard, but he won't risk you. They might tear you to pieces, head and all; and Woora wants your brain. I'm sure of that."

"Why does he want it?"

"You had him guessing; I could see that, and he figures that any one who can do that must have a pretty good brain; so he wants it."

"But why?" insisted the ape-man.

"To eat."

"Oh, I see," said Tarzan. "He believes that if one eats the part in which another excels one acquires a measure of this excellence. I have seen it before, often. A warrior eats the heart of a brave enemy to increase his own courage, or the soles of the feet of a swift runner to accelerate his own speed, or the palms of the hands of a clever artisan."

"It is all rot," said Lord.

"I do not know," admitted Tarzan. "I have lived in Africa all my life, and there are many things that I have learned not to deny simply because I do not understand them. But there is one thing that I guess."

"What is that?"

"That Woora will not eat my brain; nor will you go to the lions if you care to escape."

"Escape!" scoffed Lord. "There is no escape."

"Perhaps not," admitted the ape-man. "I said only that I guessed; I did not say that I knew."

"How can we escape?" demanded Lord. "Look at that door; see the bars on that window, and below the window

"The panther," Tarzan concluded for him.

"How did you know a panther was there?" Lord's tone bespoke incredulity.

"The scent of Sheeta is strong," replied the ape-man. "I noticed it the instant I came into this room, and when I went to the window I knew that he was in the compound beneath-a male panther."

Lord shook his head. "Well, I don't know how you did it; but you're right."

Tarzan walked to the window and examined the bars and the casing in which they were set.

"Stupid," he said.

"What is stupid?" asked Lord.

"Whoever designed this. Look." He seized two of the bars close to the sill and surged backward with all his strength and all his weight. There was a rending of wood as the entire window frame was torn from its seat; then he laid the frame with all its bars upon the floor of the room.

Lord whistled. "Man!" he exclaimed. "You're strong as a bull; but don't forget the panther, and the noise'll probably bring the guard."

"We'll be ready for them," Tarzan assured him. He had seized the window frame again, and a moment later he had torn it apart. The bars fell from their sockets. Tarzan picked up two of them and handed one to Lord. "These will make fair weapons," he said.

They waited in silence for a while, but no guard came. Apparently only the panther had been disturbed. He was growling now; and when they went to the window, they saw him standing in the center of the compound looking up at them. He was a large beast and coal black.

Tarzan turned to his companion. "Could you get away if we got outside the city?" he asked. "Or has Woora the same power to direct the movements of his victims at a distance that Mafka has?"

"There's the rub," admitted Lord. "That's the reason we'd planned on killing him."

"How does he stand with the Zuli? Are they loyal to him?"

"The only hold he has upon them is based on terror. They fear and hate him."

"The women, too?"

"Yes, every one."

"What would happen here if he were dead?" asked Tarzan.

"The blacks and whites who are prisoners and slaves would combine with the women in an attempt to fight our way out into the outer world. The blacks and whites (they are all men) want to get back to their own homes. The women, the true Zuli, have heard so much about the world they have never seen that they want to get out, too. They know from what the whites have told them that they would be rich from the proceeds of the sale of the great emerald; and while they have no first-hand knowledge of money, they have learned enough from the white men here to understand that it will get them everything their hearts desire-especially more white men. Here, each of the whites is married to anywhere from seven to a dozen Zuli women because there are so few of us; so the height of the ambition of every Zuli is to have a husband of her own."

"Why don't they kill Woora themselves, then?"

"Fear of his supernatural powers. Not only would they not kill him themselves, they would protect his life from others; but when he was once dead, then it would be different."

"Where is he?" asked Tarzan. "Where does he sleep?"

"In a room directly behind his throne," replied Lord. "But why? Why do you ask? You're not-?"

"I am going to kill him. There is no other way."

Lord shook his head. "It can't be done. Man, he is almost as powerful as God and almost as omniscient. But anyway, why are you doing it?"

"One of my countrymen is a prisoner among the Kaji. With the help of the Zuli, I can set him free with all the rest of the Kaji prisoners. I am not so sure that I could do it alone. It would be difficult to get into Mafka's presence. He is more afraid and more careful than Woora."

"You haven't got into Woora's presence yet, except with your hands tied behind you," Lord reminded him.

"Is there any way to get into his room except from the throne-room?"

"There is a way, but you can't get in. Woora's room has a window looking onto this compound below us. The panther is there to guard Woora as well as to keep prisoners from escaping. You would have to pass through the compound to get to the window."

"That is not so good," mused the ape-man. "I'd have to make too much noise. I'd certainly arouse Woora by breaking the bars at his window."

"There are no bars there."

"But the panther! What's to keep him from entering and killing Woora?"

"Woora has even greater power over the panther than he has over us humans. He can control the beast's every act."

"You are sure there are no bars at the window?" demanded Tarzan.

"Absolutely sure, and the window is always open so that Woora can call the panther to him if he is ever in danger of attack."

"Excellent! I'll go in by the window."

"You insist on forgetting the panther."

"I have not forgotten him. Tell me something of Woora's habits. Who is with him? When does he arise? Where does he eat? When does he first go into the throne-room?"

"No one is with him in his sleeping room, ever. No one, as far as we know, has ever been in it, other than himself. His breakfast is handed in to him through a small opening near the floor on the side of the room opposite the throne-room. He gets up shortly after sunrise and eats immediately thereafter. He has a suite of three rooms. What he does there, only the Devil knows. Sometimes he has one of the women warriors come into one of his rooms. They never tell what they see there, or what happens. They are too terrified. What would be perhaps an hour after his breakfast, he comes into the throne-room. By this time many of the Zuli have congregated there. Charges are heard, punishments are meted out, the business of the day is attended to. That is, hunting parties and raiding parties are sent out; directions are given for the planting, cultivation, or harvesting of crops. Reports and complaints are listened to by Woora. Then he goes back to his apartments and remains there until the evening meal which he takes in the throne-room. That is his day, unless something unforeseen occurs such as the examination of a captive brought in unexpectedly, as you were."

"Good!" exclaimed the ape-man. "Everything can be made to conform to my plan."

"Except the panther," said Lord.

"Perhaps you are right," conceded Tarzan; "we'll see." He stepped to the window. The panther had quieted down and was lying once more in the shade of the compound wall. Tarzan listened. Presently he turned to his companion. "He is asleep," he said; then he threw a leg over the sill.

"You are not going down there!" Lord exclaimed.

"Why not? It is the only avenue to Woora, and the panther sleeps."

"He will not be asleep for long."

"I do not expect him to be. I only ask him to stay asleep until I am squarely on my feet below there."

"It is suicide," said Lord, "and nothing to be gained by it."

"Maybe, but let's wait and see." He threw the other leg over the sill; then he turned upon his belly. In his right hand was one of the heavy bars he had taken from the window. Cautiously, silently, he slipped down until he hung from the sill by one hand.

Lord watched him, breathless. He saw the fingers slip gradually from their hold on the sill; then he looked out. The man had alighted erect and then turned like lightning to face the panther, but the beast had not moved. It still slept.

Tarzan crept toward it, silent as the shadow of Usha the wind. The ape-man had covered half the distance to the panther when the beast awoke; then, before it could gather its wits the man leaped toward it.

In the window above, Lord held his breath. He could not but admire the courage of his fellow prisoner, but he thought him foolhardy. Just then the panther charged.
Chapter 6. Trapped

OF ALL THE cats none bears so evil a reputation as the panther. His ferocity is proverbial, his wiliness uncanny, the force and fury of his attack demoniacal. But all these things the ape-man knew and was prepared for. He had weighed his chances with the panther against his chances with Woora, and he had chosen the lesser of two evils first in the belief that thus he might rid himself of both. And now in a few seconds his judgment would be vindicated, or he would be dead.

The black beast charged with all the fury of its kind, and it charged in silence. No growls disturbed the deathly still ness of the night. A serene moon looked down upon the village of the Zuli, and beyond the confines of the compound there was no warning of death.

Lord looked down upon the swift tragedy with something of contempt for the stupidity that would permit a man to throw his life away uselessly, and from another window two deep-set, glowing eyes watched above snarling lips-watched from the window of the room that was Woora's.

Grasping the hardwood rod in both hands, Tarzan swung it above his head in a great circle that started low at his right side, timing it to the fraction of a second so that it met the panther with its full momentum, backed by the strength of the ape-man's giant thews, at the height of the beast's speed.

Full upon the fierce, flat skull it fell before the protracted talons or bared fangs could reach the flesh of the panther's intended prey. There was the sound of splintering wood and bone, the thud of the heavy body upon the hard ground, then silence.

Lord drew in his breath in a quick gasp. Although he had seen the thing with his own eyes, he could scarcely believe. The eyes at Woora's window were filled with a sudden fear -with fear and cunning. They watched intently to see what the next move of the strange prisoner would be.

Tarzan placed a foot upon the carcass of his kill and raised his face to Goro the Moon. Just for an instant he stood thus, but no victory cry of the bull ape shocked the silence of the night to warn his enemies that he was abroad. Then he moved in the direction of the window that opened into the room of Woora, the magician; and as he did so, the eyes receded into the darkness of the interior.

The ape-man paused at the open window while his ears and his nostrils searched the dark chamber. His ears heard a faint rustling sound as of the scuffing of sandaled feet upon a floor and the almost silent closing of a door. His nostrils caught clearly the scent of Woora.

Placing a hand upon the sill, Tarzan vaulted silently into the room. He stood in silence, listening, in one hand the splintered remains of the hardwood rod. He heard no sound, not even the faintest sound of breathing that his ears would have detected had there been another in the room. He concluded, then, that Woora had seen him coming and that the slight noises he had heard had been caused by the magician's departure. Now he must be doubly on his guard.

Lord had told him that there were three rooms in Woora's suite. There was also the throne-room adjoining. To which room had the man fled? Had he gone to summon help? This was probable, yet Tarzan heard no sound to indicate that anyone was coming.

The faint moonlight dissipated but slightly the darkness of the room, yet it was enough for the keen eyes of the ape-man as they became accustomed to the gloom. He advanced noiselessly into the apartment, and presently he saw a door in the wall before him and another at his right. The latter, he judged, must lead into the throne-room. He approached the other and found the latch.

Noiselessly he pulled the door toward him, keeping partially behind it to shield himself from a surprise blow or a missile. The room was dark as a pocket. He listened intently but heard nothing. His nostrils told him that Woora had been there recently, but his ears assured him that he had gone -probably into the farthest apartment.

He stepped into the room, bent upon searching the next and last. He knew that Woora had come this way and that he would find him beyond the next door. He felt something beneath his feet that felt like cords laid upon the floor. Instantly he was suspicious-the suspicion of the wild animal that senses a trap.

He started to retreat to the room he had just quitted-but too late. Cords sprang up around him. They pulled at him and tripped him, so that he fell. Then he felt them closing and tightening about him. He struggled to escape them, but they were everywhere. He was entangled in a mesh of cords.

The door of the third room opened letting in light. In the doorway stood Woora, a cresset in his hand. His death's head face was contorted in a snarling grin. Behind the magician, Tarzan caught a glimpse of a room that might have been the laboratory of a medieval alchemist but for the grisly array of human heads that depended from the beams of the ceiling.

The apartment was lighted by several cressets, and upon a table in the center lay the great emerald of the Zuli, radiating its weird and baleful light, so that the entire chamber was filled with a seemingly palpable essence that was, in some way, mysteriously malign.

"You court an earlier and more horrible death than we had planned for you," squeaked Woora.

The ape-man made no reply. He was examining the trap that had caught him. It was a heavy net of rawhide the mouth of which could be pulled from the floor and closed by a cord that ran through a block depending from a ceiling beam and thence through a hole near the ceiling into the room where Woora had waited to snare his prey. It was plain to Tarzan that this room was devoted solely to the purposes of the net, forming the magician's final protection against an assassin who sought his life.

In this he was only partially right, as previously all of its victims had been invited to his innermost sanctum by the magician and, rendered helpless in the net, easily murdered. Tonight it served a new purpose.

Satisfied with the success of his strategy in luring the stranger to this room, Woora was in a pleasant frame of mind. The fear and the anger had left his eyes. He surveyed the ape-man with interest.

"You intrigue me," he said. "I shall keep you here for a while to examine you. Perhaps you will get hungry and thirsty, but one who is shortly to die has no need of food or drink. But you shall watch me eat and drink, and you shall meditate upon the various slow and torturing deaths that man may die. I promise you that I shall select something novel and protracted for you, if only to avenge the killing of my pet-the one creature in all the world that I really loved. You shall die many deaths for that and not a few for seeking to destroy me or steal the great emerald. I do not know which you planned doing, nor do I care. Either warrants the direst punishment of which I can conceive.

"In the meantime, I shall show you that Woora can be kind even to an enemy. It is well for you that I am neither cruel nor vindictive. I would save you from unnecessary suffering, from mental anguish induced by the sight of horrible or suggestive objects. Watch me closely."

As he ceased speaking he stepped into the adjoining room where he busied himself lighting the charcoal in a brazier. It took some time to produce a hot fire; but when this was accomplished, he fetched a long metal rod with a sharpened point and a wooden handle. The point he inserted among the hot coals; then he turned his attention once more to the apeman.

"The human heads upon the walls of my apartment, the paraphernalia of my profession, the preparations that I must make for your torture and death; the sight of these things would prove most depressing to you and add unnecessarily to your suffering; therefore I am going to burn out your eyes so that you cannot see them!"

And yet the ape-man did not speak. His level gaze remained fixed upon the repulsive figure of the old magician and the weird setting in which he wrought his villainies, all bathed in the unholy green light of the great emerald. What his thoughts were only he knew, but it is safe to assume that they were not of death-not of his own death. Probably they were of escape. He tested the strength of the rawhide net. It gave, but it did not break.

Woora saw him and laughed. "A bull elephant could not break that," he said. With his grotesque head cocked upon one side he stared intently at his victim. The laugh died on his lips, leaving a snarl. He was angry because the ape-man showed no fear. He looked to the iron, muttering and mumbling to himself. It had grown hot; the point glowed.

"Take a last look, my guest," cackled Woora, "for after a moment you will never again see anything." He withdrew the iron from the coals and approached his prisoner.

The strands of the net closed snugly about the ape-man, confining his arms; so that though he could move them, he could move them neither quickly nor far. He would have difficulty in defending himself against the glowing point of the iron rod.

Woora came close and raised the red-hot iron to the level of Tarzan's eyes; then he jabbed suddenly at one of them. The victim warded off the searing point from its intended target. Only his hand was burned. Again and again Woora jabbed; but always Tarzan succeeded in saving his eyes, yet at the expense of his hands and forearms.

At his repeated failures to blind his victim, Woora became convulsed with rage. He screamed and cursed as he danced about, foaming at the mouth; then, quite suddenly, he gained control of himself. He carried the iron back to the brazier and inserted it among the coals; then he stepped to another part of the room that was not in line with the doorway, and therefore outside the range of Tarzan's vision. He was gone for but a moment, and when he returned he carried a rope in his hand.

He was chuckling again as he approached Tarzan. "The iron will be hotter this time," he said, "and this time it will reach your eyes."

He passed the rope around the net and Tarzan and made a slip noose and drew it tight; then he walked around and around the ape-man, binding his hands and his arms with many coils of rope until Tarzan had no use of them for protection.

Now he went to the brazier and withdrew the iron. It glowed strangely red in the weird green light of the chamber. With it, Woora crept slowly toward his victim as though he were trying to prolong the agony of suspense; but Tarzan gave no evidence of fear. He knew that he was helpless, and he awaited the inevitable with stoic indifference.

Suddenly Woora was seized by another spasm of fury. "You pretend that you are not afraid," he screamed, "but I'll make you shriek for mercy yet. First the right eye!" And he came forward again, holding the red point on a level with the ape-man's eyes.

Tarzan heard the door behind him open. He saw Woora shrink back, a new expression of fury writ upon his face; then a man leaped past him carrying a stout wooden bar in his hand. It was Lord.

Woora turned to flee into the next apartment, but Lord overtook him, striking him a glancing blow on the head with the rod. The magician turned then and sought to defend himself with the hot iron. He screamed for mercy and for help; but there was no mercy in Lord's attack, and no help came.

Wielding the rod in both hands, the Englishman struck the iron from Woora's hand, breaking the arm at the wrist; then he swung it again furiously, crashing full on the grotesque skull; and with a splintering and crushing of bone Woora sank to the floor, dead.

Lord turned to Tarzan. "A close call," be said.

"Yes, a very close call. I shall not forget it."

"I saw you kill the panther," continued Lord. "My word! I'd never have thought it possible. Then I waited. I didn't know just what to do. Presently I commenced to worry; I knew what a wily old devil Woora was; so I followed you, and it was a good thing that I did."

While he talked, the Englishman found a knife and cut the bonds and the net that held the ape-man; then the two men examined the contents of the inner room. There was a small furnace in one corner, several retorts and test tubes on a long table, shelves with bottles and vials stored upon them, a small library of occultism, black magic, voodooism. In a little niche, before which stood a chair, there was a crystal sphere. But, dominating all, the center of everything, was the great emerald.

Lord looked at it, spellbound, fascinated. "It is worth over two million pounds sterling," he said, "and it is ours for the taking! There are still several hours of darkness; and it may be hours more, perhaps days, before anyone discovers that Woora is dead and the emerald gone. They could never overtake us."

"You forget your friends here," Tarzan reminded him.

"Any one of them would do the same if he had the chance," argued Lord. "They will have their freedom. We have given them that. The emerald should be ours."

"You have also forgotten the Kaji. How will you pass through their country?"

Lord gestured his disgust. "There is always something; but you're right-we can't escape except with a large force."

"There is a question whether you can escape Mafka even then," said Tarzan. "I've seen some evidence of his power. By comparison, Woora's didn't amount to much."

"Well, then, what?"

"I'll go ahead and try to dispose of Mafka," said Tarzan.

"Good! I'll go with you."

The ape-man shook his head. "I must go alone. Mafka's occult powers are such that he can control the actions of his victims even at great distances, but for some reason he has no power over me. He might have over you. That is the reason I must go alone; he might sense the presence of another with me and through him learn my plans-his powers are most uncanny."

As he ceased speaking, Tarzan picked up the great emerald, and wrapped it in a bit of cloth he had torn from a banging on the wall.

Lord's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing that for?" he demanded.

"I'm taking the emerald with me. It will insure my getting an audience with Mafka."

Lord gave a short, ugly laugh. "And you think you can get away with that?" he demanded. "What do you take me for-a fool?"

Tarzan knew the greed of men. That was one of the reasons he liked beasts so well. "If you try to interfere," he said, "I'll know that you are a fool-you saw what I did to the panther and how easily."

"What do you want with two million pounds? Maybe three million-God alone knows what it's worth. There's plenty for both of us."

"I don't want any of it," replied the ape-man. "I have all the wealth I need. I'm going to use it to get some of my people away from Mafka. When that is done, I won't care what becomes of it."

He tied two cords to the package holding the emerald. One he looped over his head, the other he tied around his waist holding the package close to his body. He picked up the knife that Lord had laid on the table and stuck it in his own scabbard; then he found a long piece of rope which he coiled and slung across a shoulder.

Lord watched him sullenly. He remembered the panther and knew that he was helpless to prevent the stranger taking the emerald.

"I'm going now," said Tarzan. "Wait a day, and then follow with all those who want to get out. No matter whether I'm successful or not you may have to fight your way through the Kaji, but with Mafka out of the way you'll stand a much better chance. If I get through, I'll cache the emerald on the Neubari near the mouth of the Mafa and go on about my business. In about three weeks I shall be back again; then I'll turn the emerald over to the Zuli."

"To the Zuli!" exclaimed Lord. "Where do I come in? The emerald belongs to me, and you're trying to cheat me out of it. Is this what I get for saving your life?"

Tarzan shrugged. "It is none of my business," he said. "I do not care who gets the emerald. You told me there was a plan afoot to take it and with the proceeds finance all the Zuli in their desire to go and live in civilization. I did not know that you planned to betray your comrades."

Lord's eyes could not meet those of the ape-man, and he flushed as he replied. "I'll see that they get theirs," he said, "but I want to control it. What do they know about business? They'd be cheated out of everything in a month."

"On the Neubari in three weeks, then," said the ape-man, as he turned and quit the apartment.

As Tarzan vaulted the sill of the window in the outer room and started across the compound where lay the dead body of the black panther, Lord opened the door leading to the throne-room and hastened at a run to the guard-room, his mind busy with a plan based on the belief that the stranger intended to make off with the great emerald and keep it for himself.
Chapter 7. Green Magic

THE GUARDS IN the corridor outside the throne-room were so surprised to see anyone coming from the throneroom at that time in the night that Lord was past them before they recovered their wits. They pursued him, shouting commands to halt, to the doorway of the guard-room where, by this time, all the women warriors were aroused and leaping to arms.

Lorro was the first to recognize the Englishman. "What is it, Lord?" she demanded. "What are you doing here? How did you get out of the cell? What has happened?"

"The great emerald!" cried Lord. "The Kaji has killed Woora and stolen the great emerald."

"Killed Woora!" exclaimed half a dozen of the women in unison. "You mean that Woora is dead?"

"Yes, yes," replied Lord impatiently. "But the emerald's stolen. Can't you understand that?"

"Woora is dead!" screamed the women; as with one accord they rushed for the village street to spread the happy tidings.

Out in the night, a short distance beyond the village, Tarzan heard the commotion, followed by the hoarse notes of a primitive trumpet. He recognized the call to arms to which now was added the throbbing of the war drums, and guessed that Lord had spread the alarm and was organizing a pursuit.

The ape-man increased his speed, moving unerringly along the trail that he had passed over but once before, and that at night; and behind him came the entire tribe of Zuli warrior women with their white men and their black slaves.

Lord had at last succeeded in impressing on the minds of the Zuli that the death of Woora was an empty beneficence without possession of the emerald that was to have given them wealth and independence in the outer world; so that it was an angry, blood-thirsty mob that pursued the Lord of the Jungle through the soft African night.

Plain to the ears of the ape-man came the sounds of the pursuit, and he guessed the temper of the pursuers. If they overtook him, he could hope for neither victory nor quarter. There were too many of them for the one, and they were too angry and too savage to accord the other. Only the cunning of the wild beast that environment and training had implanted within him could avail him against such odds.

As he trotted along the winding trail that led up the course of the rivulet toward the divide he became acutely aware of a presence that he could not see. His acute senses told him that he was alone, yet the feeling persisted that he was not alone. Something moved with him, clinging as closely as his shadow. He stopped to listen. The thing seemed so near that he should have heard it breathe, but there was no sound. His keen nostrils sought a clew-there was none.

As he trotted on he sought to reason out the mystery. He even tried to convince himself that he was the victim of a delusion; but Tarzan had never had a delusion-he had only heard that others sometimes had them. And always the presence was with him, haunting him like a ghost.

He smiled. Perhaps that was it-the ghost of Woora. And then, quite suddenly the truth dawned upon him. It was the great emerald!

It seemed impossible, yet it could be nothing else. The mysterious stone had some quality in common with life-an aura that was, perhaps, mesmeric. It was conceivable that it was this very thing that had imparted to Woora the occult powers that had made him so feared, so powerful. This would account in part for the care with which the stone had been guarded.

If this were true, then the same conditions might obtain with the Gonfal, the great diamond of the Kaji. Without it, the power of Mafka would be gone. The ape-man wondered. He also wondered if Mafka's power would be doubled if he possessed both the diamond and the emerald.

How would these stones affect the power of others? Did the mere possession of one of them impart to any mortal such powers as those wielded by Woora and Mafka? The idea intrigued Tarzan. He let his mind play with it for a while as he trotted up toward the divide; then he reached a decision.

Turning abruptly to the right, he left the trail and sought a place of concealment. Presently he found a great boulder at the foot of the canyon wall. Behind it he would be hidden from the view of anyone passing along the trail. Always cautious, he looked about for an avenue of retreat, if one became necessary and saw that he could scale the canyon side easily; then he placed himself behind the boulder and waited.

He heard the Zuli coming up the trail. They were making no effort to conceal their presence. It was evident that they were quite sure that the fugitive could not escape them.

Now the head of the column came into view. It was led by Lord. There were over fifty men, mostly white, and three or four hundred warrior-women. Tarzan concentrated his efforts on the latter.

"Turn back! Turn back!" he willed. "Go back to the village and stay there."

The women kept on along the trail, apparently unaffected; yet Tarzan felt the presence of the emerald more strongly than ever. He raised it from his side and tore away the skin in which he had wrapped it. Its polished surface, reflecting the moonlight, gave forth rays that enveloped the ape-man in an unearthly glow.

As his bare hands touched the stone he felt a tingling in his arms, his body, as though a mild electric current were passing through him. He felt a surge of new power-a strange, uncanny power that had never before been his. Again he willed the women to turn back, and now he knew that they would turn, now he knew his own power without question, without a doubt.

The women stopped and turned about.

"What's the matter?" demanded one of the men.

"I am going back," replied a woman.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I only know that I have to go back. I do not believe that Woora is dead. He is calling me back. He is calling us all back."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Lord. "Woora is dead. I saw him killed. His skull was crushed to a pulp."

"Nevertheless he is calling us back."

The women were already starting back along the trail. The men stood undecided.

Presently Lord said in a low tone, "Let them go," and they all stood watching until after the women had disappeared beyond a turn in the trail.

"There are over fifty of us," said Lord then, "and we do not need the women. There will be fewer to divide with when we get out with the emerald."

"We haven't got it yet," another reminded him.

"It is as good as ours if we overtake the Kaji before he gets back to his own village. He's a tough customer, but fifty of us can kill him."

Tarzan, behind the boulder, heard and smiled-just the shadow of a smile; a grim shadow.

"Come on!" said Lord. "Let's be going," but he did not move. No one moved.

"Well, why don't you start?" demanded one of the others.

Lord paled. He looked frightened. "Why don't you?" he asked.

"I can't," said the man, "and neither can you. You know it. It's the power of Woora. The woman was right-he is not dead. God! How we'll be punished!"

"I tell you he is dead," growled Lord, "dead as a doornail."

"Then it's his ghost," suggested a man. His voice trembled.

"Look!" cried one and pointed.

With one accord they all looked in the direction their companion indicated. One who had been a Catholic crossed himself. Another prayed beneath his breath. Lord cursed.

From behind a large boulder set well back from the trail spread a greenish luminosity, faint, shimmering, sending out tenuous rays of emerald light, challenging the soft brilliance of the moon.

The men stood spellbound, their eyes fixed upon the miracle. Then a man stepped from behind the boulder-a bronzed giant clothed only in a loin-cloth.

"The Kaji!" exclaimed Lord.

"And the great emerald," said another. "Now is our chance." But no one drew a weapon; no one advanced upon the stranger. They could only wish; their wills could not command disobedience to him who possessed the mysterious power of the emerald.

Tarzan came down to them. He stopped and looked them over appraisingly. "There are over fifty of you," he said. "You will come with me to the village of the Kaji. Some of my people are prisoners there. We will free them; then we will all go out of the Kaji country and go our ways."

He did not ask them; he told them; for he and they both knew that while he possessed the great emerald he did not have to ask.

"But the emerald," said Lord; "you promised to divide that with me."

"When, a few minutes ago, you planned to kill me," replied the ape-man, "you forfeited your right to hold me to that promise. Also, since then, I have discovered the power of the emerald. The stone is dangerous. In the hands of a man such as you, it could do untold harm. When I am through with it, it will go into the Neubari where no man shall ever find it."

Lord gasped. "God, man!" he cried. "You wouldn't do that! You couldn't throw away a fortune of two or three million pounds! No, you're just saying that. You don't want to divide it-that's it. You want to keep it all for yourself."

Tarzan shrugged. "Think what you please," he said; "it makes no difference. Now you will follow me," and thus they started once more along the trail that led across the divide and down into the country of the Kaji.

It was dusk of the following day when, from a slight eminence, Tarzan saw for the first time the city of Kaji and the stronghold of Mafka. It was built at the side of a valley close to the face of a perpendicular limestone cliff. It appeared to be a place considerably larger than the Zuli village from which he had just escaped. He stood gazing at it for a few moments; then he turned to the men grouped behind him.

"We have travelled far and eaten little," he said. "Many of you are tired. It will not be well to approach the city until well after dark; therefore we will rest." He took a spear from one of the men and drew a long line upon the ground with the sharp point. "You cannot cross this line," he said, "not one of you"; then he handed the spear back to its owner, walked a short distance away from the line that he had drawn between them, and lay down. One hand rested upon the gleaming surface of the emerald; thus he slept.

The others glad of an opportunity to rest, lay down immediately; and soon all were asleep. No, not all. Lord remained awake, his fascinated eyes held by the faint radiance of the jewel that conjured in his mind the fleshpots of civilization its wealth might purchase.

Dusk passed quickly, and night came. The moon had not yet risen, and it was very dark. Only the green luminosity surrounding the ape-man relieved the Stygian blackness. In its weird radiance Lord could see the man he called the Kaji. He watched the hand resting upon the emerald-watched and waited; for Lord knew much of the power of the great stone and the manner in which it was conferred upon its possessor.

He made plans; some he discarded. He waited. Tarzan moved in his sleep; his hand slipped from the face of the emerald; then Lord arose. He gripped his spear firmly and crept cautiously toward the sleeping man. Tarzan had not slept for two days, and he was sunk in the slumber of exhaustion.

At the line Tarzan had drawn upon the ground Lord hesitated a moment; then he stepped across and knew that the power of the emerald had passed from the stranger as his hand had slipped from the stone. For many years Lord had watched Woora, and he knew that always when he would force his will upon another some part of his body was in contact with the emerald; but he breathed a sigh of relief with the confirmation of his hope.

Now he approached the sleeping ape-man, his spear ready in his hand. He came close and stood silently for an instant above the unconscious sleeper; then he stooped and gathered up the emerald.

The plan to kill Tarzan was one of those he had discarded. He feared the man might make an outcry before he died and arouse the others; and this did not fit in with Lord's plan, which was to possess the emerald for himself alone.

Creeping stealthily away, Lord disappeared in the night.
Chapter 8. The Leopard Pit

THE APE-MAN AWOKE with a start. The moon was shining full upon his face. Instantly he knew that he had slept too long. He sensed that something was amiss. He felt for the emerald; and when he did not feel it, he looked for it. It was gone. He leaped to his feet and approached the sleeping men. A quick glance confirmed his first suspicion-Lord was gone!

He considered the men. There were fifty of them. Without the emerald he had no power over them; he could not control them. They would be enemies. He turned away and circled the camp until he picked up the scent-spoor of the thief. It was where he had expected to find it-leading down the valley of the Mafa toward the valley of the Neubari.

He did not know how much start Lord had. It might be as much as two hours; but had it been two weeks, it would have been the same. No man could escape the Lord of the Jungle.

Through the night he followed, the scent-spoor strong in his nostrils. The trail gave the city of the Kaji a wide berth. The terrain was open and sloped gently, the moon was bright. Tarzan moved swiftly, far more swiftly than Lord.

He had been following the Englishman for perhaps an hour when he discerned far ahead a faint, greenish light. It was moving a little to the right of a direct line; and Tarzan knew that, having passed the city of the Kaji, Lord was swinging back onto the direct trail. By cutting straight across, the ape-man would gain considerable distance. As he did so, he increased his speed, moving swiftly, with long, easy strides.

He was gaining rapidly when suddenly the ground gave way beneath his feet and he was precipitated into a black hole. He fell on loose earth and slender branches that formed a cushion, breaking the fall; so that he was not injured.

When he regained his feet he found that it was difficult to move about among the branches that gave when he stepped on them or entangled his feet if he endeavored to avoid them. Looking up, he saw the mouth of the pit out of reach above him. He guessed its purpose. It was probably a leopard pit, used by the Kaji to capture the fierce cats alive. And he realized, too, the purpose of the loose earth and branches that had broken his fall; they gave no firm footing from which a leopard could spring to freedom. He looked up again at the pit's rim. It was far above his head. He doubted that a cat could have leaped out of it if there had been no branches on the floor; he was sure that he could not.

There was nothing to do but wait. If this were a new pit, and it looked new, the Kaji would be along within a day or so; then he would be killed or captured. This was about all he had to expect. No leopard would fall in upon him now that the mouth of the pit was no longer concealed by the covering he had broken through.

He thought of Lord and of the harm he could do were he to reach the outside world in possession of the great emerald of the Zuli, but he did not concern himself greatly on account of his failure to overtake the Englishman. What was, was. He had done his best. He never repined; he never worried. He merely awaited the next event in life, composed in the knowledge that whatever it was he would meet it with natural resources beyond those of ordinary men. He was not egotistical; he was merely quite sure of himself.

The night wore on, and he took advantage of it to add to his sleep. His nerves, uncontaminated by dissipation, were not even slightly unstrung by his predicament or by the imminence of capture or death. He slept.

The sun was high in the heavens when he awoke. He listened intently for the sound that had awakened him. It was the sound of footfalls carried to him from a distance through the medium of the earth. They came closer. He heard voices. So, they were coming! They would be surprised when they saw the leopard they had trapped.

They came closer, and he heard them exclaim with satisfaction when they discovered that the covering of the pit had been broken through; then they were at the pit's edge looking down at him. He saw the faces of several warrior women and some men. They were filled with astonishment.

"A fine leopard!" exclaimed one.

"Mafka will be glad to have another recruit."

"But how did he get here? How could he pass the guards at the entrance to the valley?"

"Let's get him up here. Hey, you! Catch this rope and tie it around under your arms." A rope was tossed down to him.

"Hold it," said the ape-man, "and I'll climb out." He had long since decided to go into captivity without a struggle for two reasons. One was that resistance would doubtless mean certain death; the other, that captivity would bring him closer to Mafka, possibly simplify the rescue of Wood and his friends. It did not occur to Tarzan to take into consideration the fact that he might not be able to affect his own escape. He was not wont to consider any proposition from a premise of failure. Perhaps this in itself accounted to some extent for the fact that he seldom failed in what he attempted.

Those above held the rope while the ape-man swarmed up it with the agility of a monkey. When he stood upon solid ground, he was faced with several spear-points. There were eight women and four men. All were white. The women were armed; the men carried a heavy net.

The women appraised him boldly. "Who are you?" demanded one of them.

"A hunter," replied Tarzan.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was on my way down in search of the Neubari when I fell into your pit."

"You were going out?"

"Yes."

"But how did you get in? There is only one entrance to the country of the Kaji, and that is guarded. How did you get past our warriors?"

Tarzan shrugged. "Evidently I did not come in that way," he said.

"There is no other way, I tell you," insisted the warrior.

"But I came in another way. I entered the mountains several marches from here to hunt; that is the reason I came down from the east. I hunted in the back country, coming down from the north. The going was rough. I was looking for an easier way to the Neubari. Now that I am out of the pit, I'll go on my way."

"Not so fast," said the woman who had first addressed him and who had done most of the talking since. "You are coming with us. You are a prisoner."

"All right," conceded the ape-man. "Have it your own way -you are eight spears, and I am only one knife."

Presently, Tarzan was not even a knife; for they took it away from him. They did not bind his hands behind him, evidencing their contempt for the prowess of men. Some of them marched ahead, some behind Tarzan and the four other men, as they started back toward the city that could be seen in the near distance. At any time the ape-man could have made a break for escape had he wished to, and with the chances greatly in his favor because of his great speed; but it pleased him to go to the city of the Kaji.

His captors talked incessantly among themselves. They discussed other women who were not with them, always disparagingly; they complained of the difficulties they experienced in the dressing of their hair; they compared the cut and fit and quality of the pelts that formed their loincloths; and each of them expatiated upon the merits of some exceptionally rare skin she hoped to acquire in the future.

The four men marching with Tarzan sought to engage him in conversation. One was a Swede, one a Pole, one a German, and one an Englishman. All spoke the strange tongue of the Kaji-a mixture of many tongues. Tarzan could understand them, but he had difficulty in making them understand him unless he spoke in the native tongue of the one he chanced to be talking to or spoke in French, which he had learned from d'Arnot before he acquired a knowledge of English. The Swede alone understood no French, but he spoke broken English, a language the German understood but not the Pole. Thus a general conversation was rendered difficult. He found it easier to talk to the Englishman, whose French was sketchy, in their common language.

He heard this man addressed as Troll, and recalled that Stanley Wood had told him that this was the name of one of their white hunters. The man was short and stalky, with heavy, stooped shoulders and long arms that gave him a gorillaesque appearance. He was powerfully muscled. Tarzan moved closer to him.

"You were with Wood and van Eyk?" he asked.

The man looked up at Tarzan in surprise. "You know them?" he asked.

"I know Wood. They recaptured him?"

Troll nodded. "You can't get away from this damned place. Mafka always drags you back, if he doesn't kill you. Wood nearly got away. A fellow-" He paused. "Say, are you Clayton?"

"Yes."

"Wood told me about you. I ought to have known you right away from his description of you."

"Is he still alive?"

"Yes. Mafka hasn't killed him yet, but he's mighty sore. No one ever came so near escaping before. I guess it made the old duffer shake in his pants-only he don't wear pants. A big expedition of whites could make it hot for him-say a battalion of Tommies. God-almighty! How I'd like to see 'em come marchin' in."

"How about the Gonfal?" inquired Tarzan. "Couldn't he stop them, just as he does others, with the power of the great diamond?"

"No one knows, but we think not. Because if he could, why is he so scared of one of us escaping?"

"Do you think Mafka intends to kill Wood?"

"We're pretty sure of it. He's not only sore about his almost getting away, but he's sorer still because Wood has a crush on Gonfala, the Queen; and it looks like Gonfala was sort of soft on Wood. That'd be too bad, too; because she's a Negress."

"Wood told me she was white."

"She's whiter than you, but look at these dames here. Ain't they white? They look white, but they all got Negro blood in 'em. But don't never remind 'em of it. You remember Kipling's, 'She knifed me one night 'cause I wished she was white'? Well that's it; that's the answer. They want to be white. God only knows why; nobody ever sees 'em but us; and we don't care what color they are. They could be green as far as I'm concerned. I'm married to six of 'em. They make me do all the work while they sit around an' gabble about hair and loincloths. God almighty! I hate the sight of hair an' loincloths. When they ain't doin' that they're knockin' hell out o' some dame that ain't there.

"I got an old woman back in England. I thought she was bad. I run away from her, an' look what I go into! Six of em."

Troll kept up a running fire of conversation all the way to the city. He had more troubles than the exchange desk in a department store.

The city of Kaji was walled with blocks of limestone quarried from the cliff against which it was built. The buildings within the enclosure were of limestone also. They were of one and two stories, except the palace of Mafka, which rose against the cliff to a height of four stories.

The palace and the city gave evidence of having been long in the building, some parts of the palace and some of the buildings below it being far more weather-worn than others. There were black men and white and warrior women in the streets. A few children, all girls, played in the sunshine; milch goats were everywhere under foot. These things and many others the ape-man observed as he was conducted along the main street toward the palace of Mafka.

He heard the women discussing him and appraising him as farmers might discuss a prize bull. One of them remarked that he should bring a good price. But he moved on, apparently totally oblivious of them all.

The interior of the palace reminded him of that of Woora, except that there was more and richer stuff here. Mafka was nearer the source of supply. Here was the loot of many safaris. Tarzan wondered how Woora had obtained anything.

The four men had been dismissed within the city; only the eight women accompanied Tarzan into the palace. They had been halted at the heavily guarded entrance and had waited there while word was carried into the interior; then with a number of the guard as escort, they had been led into the palace.

Down a long corridor to another guarded doorway they proceeded; then they were ushered into a large chamber. At the far end, a figure crouched upon a throne. At sight of him, Tarzan was almost surprised into a show of emotion-it was Woora!

Beside him, on another throne-chair, sat a beautiful girl. Tarzan assumed that this must be Gonfala, the Queen. But Woora! He had seen the man killed before his own eyes. Did magic go as far as this, that it could resurrect the dead?

As he was led forward and halted before the thrones he waited for Woora to recognize him, to show the resentment he must feel because he had been thwarted and the great emerald stolen from him; but the man gave no indication that he ever had seen Tarzan before.

He listened to the report of the leader of the party that had captured the ape-man, but all the time his eyes were upon the prisoner. They seemed to be boring through him, yet there was no sign of recognition. When the report had been completed, the magician shook his head impatiently. He appeared baffled and troubled.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"I am an Englishman. I was hunting."

"For what?"

"Food."

While the magician questioned Tarzan he kept a hand upon an immense diamond that rested on a stand beside him. It was the Gonfal, the great diamond of the Kaji, that endowed its possessor with the same mysterious powers that were inherent in the great emerald of the Zuli.

The girl upon the second throne-chair sat silent and sullen, her eyes always on the ape-man. She wore breastplates of virgin gold and a stomacher covered with gold sequins. Her skirt was of the skins of unborn leopards, soft and clinging. Dainty sandals shod her, and upon her upper arms and her wrists and her ankles were many bands of copper and gold. A light crown rested upon her blond head. She was the symbol of power; but Tarzan knew that the real power lay in the grotesque and hideous figure at her side, clothed only in an old and dirty loincloth.

Finally the man motioned impatiently. "Take him away," he commanded.

"Am I not to choose wives for him?" demanded Gonfala. "The women would pay well for this one."

"Not yet," replied her companion. "There are reasons why I should observe him for a while. It will probably be better to destroy him than give him to the women. Take him away!"

The guard took the ape-man to an upper floor and put him in a large chamber. There they left him alone, bolting the door behind them as they departed. The apartment was absolutely bare except for two benches. Several small windows in the wall overlooking the city gave light and ventilation. In the opposite wall was an enormous fireplace in which, apparently, no fire had ever been built.

Tarzan investigated his prison. He found the windows too high above the ground to offer an avenue of escape without the aid of a rope, and he had no rope. The fireplace was the only other feature of the apartment that might arouse any interest whatsoever. It was unusually large, so deep that it resembled a cave; and when he stepped into it he did not have to stoop. He wondered why such an enormous fireplace should be built and then never used.

Entering it, he looked up the flue, thinking that here he might find a way out if the flue were built in size proportionate to the fire chamber. However, he was doomed to disappointment; not the faintest glimmer of light shone down to indicate an opening that led to the outside.

Could it be possible that the fireplace had been built merely as an architectural adornment to the chamber-that it was false? This seemed highly improbable, since the room had no other embellishment; nor was the fireplace itself of any architectural beauty, being nothing more than an opening in the wall.

What then could its purpose have been? The question intrigued the active imagination of the Lord of the Jungle. It was, of course, possible that there was a flue but that it had been closed; and this would have been the obvious explanation had the fireplace shown any indication of ever having been used. However, it did not; there was not the slightest discoloration of the interior-no fire had ever burned within it.

Tarzan reached upward as far as he could but felt no ceiling; then he ran his fingers up the rear wall of the fire chamber. Just at his finger tips he felt a ledge. Raising himself on his toes, he gripped the ledge firmly with the fingers of both hands; then he raised himself slowly upward. Even when his arms were straight and he had raised himself as far as he could his head touched no ceiling. He inclined his body slowly forward until at length he lay prone upon the ledge. The recess, then, was at least several feet deep.

He drew his legs up and then rose slowly to his feet. He raised a hand above his head, and a foot above he felt the stone of a ceiling-there was plenty of headroom. Laterally, the opening was about three feet wide.

He reached ahead to discover its depth, but his hand touched nothing; then he moved forward slowly a few steps -still nothing. Moving cautiously, he groped his way forward. Soon he was convinced of what he had suspected-he was in a corridor, and the secret of the "fireplace" was partially revealed. But where did the corridor lead?

It was very dark. He might be on the verge of a pitfall without suspecting it. If there were branching corridors he might become hopelessly lost in a minute or two; so he kept his left hand constantly in contact with the wall on that side; he moved slowly, feeling forward with each foot before he threw his weight upon it, and his right hand was always extended before him.

Thus he moved along for a considerable distance, the corridor turning gradually to the left until he was moving at right angles to his original course. Presently he saw a faint light ahead, coming apparently from the floor of the corridor. When he approached it more closely, he saw that it came from an opening in the floor. He stopped at the brink of the opening and looked down. Some seven feet below he saw stone flagging-it was the floor of a fireplace. Evidently this secret passage led from one false fireplace to another.

He listened intently but could hear nothing other than what might have been very soft breathing-almost too faint a sound to register even upon the keen ears of the ape-man; but his nostrils caught the faint aroma of a woman.

For a moment Tarzan hesitated; then he dropped softly to the floor of the fireplace. He made no sound. Before him lay a chamber of barbarous luxury. At a window in the opposite wall, looking down upon the city, stood a golden-haired girl, her back toward the fireplace.

Tarzan did not have to see her face to know that it was Gonfala.
Chapter 9. The End of the Corridor

NOISELESSLY HE STEPPED into the chamber and moved toward the end of the room, nearer to the doorway. He sought to reach the door before she discovered him. He would rather that she did not know how he gained entrance to the room. A heavy wooden bolt fastened the door from the inside. He reached the door without attracting the girl's attention and laid a hand upon the bolt.

He slipped it back quietly; then he moved away from the door toward the window where the girl still stood absorbed in her daydream. He could see her profile. She no longer looked sullen but, rather, ineffably sad.

The man was quite close to her before she became aware of his presence. She had not heard him. She was just conscious, suddenly, that she was not alone; and she turned slowly from the window. Only a slight widening of the eyes and a little intake of her breath revealed her surprise. She did not scream; she did not exclaim.

"Don't be afraid," he said; "I'm not here to harm you."

"I am not afraid," she replied; "I have many warriors within call. But how did you get here?" She glanced at the door and saw that the bolt was not shot. "I must have forgotten to bolt the door, but I can't understand how you got by the guard. It is still there, isn't it?"

Tarzan did not answer. He stood looking at her, marvelling at the subtle change that had taken place in her since he had seen her in the throne room just a short time before. She was no longer the queen, but a girl, soft and sweet, appealing.

"Where is Stanley Wood?" he asked.

"What do you know of Stanley Wood?" she demanded.

"I am his friend. Where is he? What are they going to do with him?"

"You are his friend?" she asked, wonderingly, her eyes wide. "But no, it can make no difference-no matter how many friends he has, nothing can save him."

"You would like to see him saved?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you help me? You have the power."

"No, I can't. You don't understand. I am queen. It is I who must sentence him to death."

"You helped him escape once," Tarzan reminded her.

"Hush! Not so loud," she cautioned. "Mafka suspects that already. If he knew, I don't know what he would do to him and to me. But I know he suspects. That is the reason I am kept in this room with a heavy guard. He says it is for my protection, but I know better."

"Where is this Mafka? I'd like to see him."

"You have seen him. You were just brought before him in the throne room."

"That was Woora," objected Tarzan.

She shook her bead. "No. What put that idea in your head? Woora is with the Zuli."

"So that was Mafka!" said the ape-man, and then he recalled Lord's theory that Mafka and Woora were identical twins. "But I thought no one was allowed to see Mafka."

"Stanley Wood told you that," she said. "That is what he thought; that is what he was told. Mafka was very ill for a long time. He dared not let it be known. He was afraid some one would take advantage of it to kill him. But he wanted to see you. He wished to see a man who could get into our country and so close to the city as you did without his knowing it. I do not understand it myself, and I could see that he was disturbed when he talked with you. Who are you? What are you? How did you get into my apartment? Have you such powers as Mafka has?"

"Perhaps," he said. It would do no harm if she thought he possessed such powers. He spoke in a low tone now and watched her closely. "You'd like to see Stanley Wood escape; you'd like to go with him. Why don't you help me?"

She looked at him eagerly. He could read the longing in her eyes. "How can I help you?" she asked.

"Help me to see Mafka-alone. Tell me where I can find him."

She trembled, and the fear that was in her was reflected in her expression.

"Yes," she said, "I can tell you. If you-" She paused. Her expression changed; her body stiffened. Her eyes became hard and cold-gruel. Her mouth sagged into the sullen expression it had worn when he had first seen her in the throne room. He recalled Wood's statement that she was sometimes an angel, sometimes a she-devil. The metamorphosis had occurred before his eyes. But what caused it? It was possible, of course, that she suffered from some form of insanity; yet he doubted it. He believed there was some other explanation.

"Well?" he queried. "You were saying----"

"The guard! The guard!" she cried. "Help!"

Tarzan sprang to the door and shot the bolt. Gonfala whipped a dagger from her girdle and leaped toward him. Before she could strike, the ape-man seized her wrist and wrenched the weapon from her.

The guard were pounding upon the door and shouting for admittance. The ape-man seized Gonfala by the arm; he held her dagger ready to strike. "Tell them you are all right," he whispered. "Tell them to go away."

She snarled and tried to bite his hand. Then she screamed louder than ever for help.

On the opposite side of the room from the door where the guard sought entrance was a second door, bolted upon the inside like the other. Toward this the ape-man dragged the screaming Gonfala. Slipping the bolt, he pushed the door open. Beyond it was another chamber upon the opposite side of which he saw a third door. Here was a series of chambers that it might be well to remember.

He pushed Gonfala into the first chamber and closed and bolted the door. The warriors of the guard were battering now in earnest. It was evident that they would soon have the door down and gain entrance to the apartment.

Tarzan crossed to the fireplace and leaped to the mouth of the secret passage just as the door crashed in and the warriors of the guard entered the room. He waited where he was-listening. He could hear Gonfala screaming in the adjoining room and pounding on the door, which was now quickly opened.

"Where is he?" she demanded. "Have you got him?"

"Who? There is no one here," replied a member of the guard.

"The man-the prisoner that was brought today."

"There was no one here," insisted a warrior.

"Go at once and notify Mafka that he has escaped," she commanded. "Some of you go to the room in which he was imprisoned and find out how he got out. Hurry! Don't stand there like idiots. Don't you suppose I know what I saw? I tell you he was here. He took my dagger from me and shoved me into that room. Now go! But some of you stay here. He may come back."

Tarzan waited to hear no more, but retraced his steps through the passage to the room in which he had been imprisoned. He left Gonfala's dagger on the high ledge inside the fireplace, and had barely seated himself on one of the benches in the room when he heard footsteps in the corridor outside; then the door was swung open and half a dozen warrior women pushed their way in.

They showed their surprise when they saw him sitting quietly in his cell.

"Where have you been?" demanded one.

"Where could I go?" countered the ape-man.

"You were in the apartment of Gonfala, the Queen."

"But how could I have been?" demanded Tarzan.

"That is what we want to know."

Tarzan shrugged. "Some one is crazy," he said, "but it is not I. If you think I was there why don't you go ask the queen."

The warriors shook their heads. "What is the use?" demanded one. "He is here; that is all we have to know. Let Mafka solve the riddle." Then they left the room.

An hour passed during which Tarzan heard nothing; then the door was opened and a warrior woman ordered him to come out. Escorted by a dozen warriors, he was taken through a long corridor to an apartment on the same floor of the palace. His sense of direction told him that the room was one of the suite which adjoined the Queen's.

Mafka was there. He stood behind a table on which rested something covered with a cloth. Also on the table was the great diamond of Kaji, the Gonfal. Mafka's left hand rested upon it.

The ape-man's keen nostrils scented blood, and his eyes saw that the cloth that covered the object on the table was stained with blood. Whose blood? Something told him that whatever was beneath the blood-stained cloth he had been brought to see.

He stood before the magician, his arms folded across his deep chest, his level, unwavering gaze fixed upon the grotesque figure facing him. For minutes the two stood there in silence, waging a strange battle of minds. Mafka was attempting to plumb that of his prisoner; and Tarzan knew it, but his defense was passive. He was sure that the other could not control him.

Mafka was annoyed. To be frustrated was a new experience. The mind of the man before him was a sealed book. He felt a little bit afraid of him, but curiosity compelled him to see him. It kept him from ordering his destruction. He wished to fathom him; he wished to break the seal. Inside that book was something strange and new. Mafka was determined to learn what it was.

"How did you get to the apartment of the queen?" he demanded suddenly.

"If I were in the apartment of the queen, who should know it better than Mafka?" demanded Tarzan. "If I were there, who should know better than Mafka how I got there?"

The magician appeared discomfitted. He shook his head angrily. "How did you get there?" he demanded.

"How do you know I was there?" countered the ape-man.

"Gonfala saw you."

"Was she sure that it was I in person, or only a figment of her imagination? Would it not have been possible for the great Mafka to make her think that I was there when I was not?"

"But I didn't," growled the magician.

"Perhaps some one else did," suggested Tarzan. He was positive now that Mafka was ignorant of the existence of the secret passage through which he had gained entrance to the apartment of Gonfala. Possibly this part of the palace belonged to a period that antedated Mafka, but why had no one investigated the fireplaces that were obviously not intended to hold fires? There was one in this very room where Mafka was and doubtless had been many times before. Tarzan wondered if it, too, opened into a corridor and where the corridor led; but he had little time for conjecture, as Mafka shot another question at him.

"Who has that power but Mafka?" demanded the magician superciliously, but there was a suggestion of incertitude in his manner. It was more a challenge to uncertainty than a declaration of fact.

Tarzan did not reply; and Mafka seemed to have forgotten that he had put a question, as he continued to study the apeman intently. The latter, indifferent, swept the interior of the room with a leisurely glance that missed nothing. Through open doors leading to other apartments he saw a bedchamber and a workshop. The latter was similar to that which he had seen in the palace of Woora. It was obvious that this was the private suite of Mafka.

Suddenly the magician shot another question. "How did you get to Zuli without my sentries seeing you?"

"Who said I had been in Zuli?" demanded Tarzan.

"You killed my brother. You stole the great emerald of the Zuli. You were coming here to kill me. You ask who said you had been in Zuli. The same man who told me these other things. This man!" And he snatched the cloth from the thing upon the table.

Glaring at the ape-man with staring eyes was the bloody head of the Englishman, Lord; and beside it was the great emerald of the Zuli.

Mafka watched his prisoner intently to note the reaction to this startling and dramatic climax to the interview, but he reaped scant satisfaction. The expression on Tarzan's face underwent no change.

For a moment there was silence; then Mafka spoke. "Thus die the enemies of Mafka," he said. "Thus will you die and the others who have brought intrigue and discontent to Kaji." He turned to the captain of the guard. "Take him away. Place him again in the south chamber with the other troublemakers who are to die with him. It was an evil day that brought them to Kaji."

Heavily guarded, Tarzan was returned to the room in which he had been confined. From Mafka's instructions to the captain of the guard, he had expected to find other prisoners here on his return; but he was alone. He wondered idly who his future companions were to be, and then he crossed to one of the windows and looked out across the city and the broad valley of the Kaji.

He stood there for a long time trying to formulate some plan by which he might contact Wood and discuss means by which the escape of the American could be assured. He had a plan of his own, but he needed the greater knowledge that Wood possessed of certain matters connected with Mafka and the Kaji before he could feel reasonably certain of its Success.

As he stood there pondering the advisability of returning to Gonfala's apartment and seeking again the cooperation that he knew she had been on the point of according him when the sudden Jekyll and Hyde transformation had wrought the amazing change in her, he heard footsteps outside the door of his prison; then the bolt was drawn and the door swung open, and four men were pushed roughly in. Behind them, the door was slammed and bolted.

One of the four men was Stanley Wood. At sight of Tarzan he voiced an exclamation of astonishment. "Clayton!" he cried. "Where did you come from? What in the world are you doing here?"

"The same thing that you are-waiting to be killed."

"How did he get you? I thought you were immune-that he couldn't control you."

Tarzan explained about the misadventure of the leopard pit; then Wood introduced the other three to him. They were Robert van Eyk, Wood's associate, and Troll and Spike, the two white hunters who had accompanied their safari. Troll he had already met.

"I ain't had a chance to tell Wood about seeing you," explained Troll. "This is the first time I've seen him. He was in the cooler, and I was just arrested. I don't even know what for, or what they're goin' to do to me."

"I can tell you what they plan on doing to you," said Tarzan. "We're all to be killed. Mafka just told me. He says you are all troublemakers."

"He wouldn't have to be a psychoanalyst to figure that out," remarked van Eyk. "If we'd had half a break we'd've shown him something in the trouble line, but what you going to do up against a bird like that? He knows what you're thinking before you think it."

"We wouldn't have been in this mess if it hadn't been for Wood messin' around with that Gonfala dame," growled Spike. "I never knew it to fail that you didn't get into trouble with any bunch of heathen if you started mixin' up with their women folk-especially niggers. But a guy's got it comin' to him that plays around with a nigger wench."

"Shut that dirty trap of yours," snapped Wood, "or I'll shut it for you." He took a quick step toward Spike and swung a vicious right for the other man's jaw. Spike stepped back and van Eyk jumped between them.

"Cut it!" he ordered. "We got enough grief without fighting among ourselves."

"You're dead right," agreed Troll. "We'll punch the head of the next guy that starts anything like that again."

"That's all right, too," said Wood; "but Spike's got to apologize or I'll kill him for that the first chance I get. He's got to take it back."

"You'd better apologize, Spike," advised van Eyk.

The hunter looked sullenly from beneath lowering brows. Troll went over and whispered to him. "All right," said Spike, finally; "I take it back. I didn't mean nothin'."

Wood nodded. "Very well," he said, "I accept your apology," and turned and joined Tarzan, who had been standing by a window a silent spectator of what had transpired.

He stood for a time in silence; then he shook his head dejectedly. "The trouble is," he said in low tones, "I know Spike is right. She must have Negro blood in her-they all have; but it doesn't seem to make any difference to me-I'm just plain crazy about her, and that's all there is to it. If you could only see her, you'd understand."

"I have seen her," said the ape-man.

"What!" exclaimed Wood. "You've seen her? When?"

"Shortly after I was brought here," said Tarzan.

"You mean she came here to see you?"

"She was on the throne with Mafka when I was taken before him," explained Tarzan.

"Oh, yes; I see. I thought maybe you'd talked with her."

"I did-afterward, in her apartment. I found a way to get there."

"What did she say? How was she? I haven't seen her since I got back. I was afraid something had happened to her."

"Mafka suspects her of helping you to escape. He keeps her locked up under guard."

"Did she say anything about me?" demanded Wood, eagerly.

"Yes; she wants to help you. At first she was eager and friendly; then, quite abruptly and seemingly with no reason, she became sullen and dangerous, screaming for her guard."

"Yes, she was like that-sweet and lovely one moment; and the next, a regular she-devil. I never could understand it. Do you suppose she's-well, not quite right mentally?"

The ape-man shook his head. "No," he said, "I don't think that. I believe there is another explanation. But that is neither here nor there now. There is just one matter that should concern us-getting out of here. We don't know when Mafka plans on putting us out of the way nor how. Whatever we are going to do we should do immediately-take him by surprise."

"How are we going to surprise him-locked up here in a room, under guard?" demanded Wood.

"You'd be surprised," replied Tarzan, smiling faintly; "so will Mafka. Tell me, can we count on any help beyond what we can do ourselves-the five of us? How about the other prisoners? Will they join with us?"

"Yes, practically all of them-if they can. But what can any of us do against Mafka? We're beaten before we start. If we could only get hold of the Gonfal! I think that's the source of all his power over us."

"We might do that, too," said Tarzan.

"Impossible," said Wood. "What do you think, Bob?" he asked van Eyk, who had just joined them.

"Not a chance in a million," replied van Eyk. "He keeps the old rock in his own apartment at night, or in fact wherever he is the Gonfal is with him. His apartment is always locked and guarded-warriors at the door all the time. No, we never could get it."

Tarzan turned to Wood. "I thought you told me once that they seemed very careless of the Gonfal-that you had handled it."

Wood grinned. "I thought I had, but since I came back I learned differently. One of the women told me. It seems that Mafka is something of a chemist. He has a regular lab and plays around in it a lot-ordinary chemistry as well as his main line of black magic. Well, he learned how to make phony diamonds; so he makes an imitation of the Gonfal, and that's what I handled. They say he leaves the phony out where it can be seen and hides the real Gonfal at night when he goes to bed; so that if, by any chance, some one was able to get into his room to steal it they'd get the wrong stone. But he has to keep the Gonfal near him just the same, or he'd be more or less helpless against an enemy."

"The only chance to get it would be to get into Mafka's apartment at night," said van Eyk, "and that just can't be done."

"Do his apartments connect with Gonfala's?" asked Tarzan.

"Yes, but the old boy keeps the door between them locked at night. He isn't taking any chances-not even with Gonfala."

"I think we can get into Mafka's apartment," said the apeman. "I'm going now to find out."

"Going!" exclaimed Wood. "I'd like to know how."

"Don't let anyone follow me," cautioned the ape-man. "I'll be back."

The two Americans shook their heads skeptically as Tarzan turned away and crossed the room; then they saw him enter the fireplace and disappear.

"Well I'll be damned!" exclaimed van Eyk. "Who is that guy, anyway?"

"An Englishman named Clayton," replied Wood. "At least that's all I know about him, and that came direct from him."

"If there were such a bird as Tarzan of the Apes, I'd say this was he," said van Eyk.

"That's what I thought when I first met him. Say, he flits through the trees like a regular Tarzan, kills his meat with a bow and arrow, and packs it back to camp on his shoulder through the trees."

"And now look what he's done! Up the flue like a-a-well, like something, whatever it is goes up a flue."

"Smoke," suggested Wood; "only he's coming back, and smoke doesn't-except occasionally."

Tarzan followed the corridor as he had before until he came to the opening into Gonfala's chamber; then he retraced his steps a short distance and felt his way back again with his right hand touching the side of the passageway instead of his left as before; nor was he surprised to discover that the tunnel ran on past the apartment of Gonfala. It was what he had expected-what he had been banking his hopes upon.

Now, past the opening that led to Gonfala's room, he touched the left-hand wall again and, pacing off the distance roughly, came to another opening that he judged would be about opposite the center of the next apartment, which was one of Mafka's suite. He did not stop here, but went on until he had located three more openings. Here the corridor ended.

He stepped to the edge of the flue and looked down into the fireplace. It was night now, but a faint illumination came from the opening below him. It was a greenish glow, now all too familiar.

He listened. He heard the snores of a heavy sleeper. Was there another in the apartment below, or was the sleeper alone? His sensitive nostrils sought an answer.

With the dagger of Gonfala in one hand, Tarzan dropped lightly to the floor of the fireplace that opened into the room where the sleeper lay.
Chapter 10. Toward Freedom

BEFORE HIM WAS a large chamber with a single door, heavily bolted upon the inside. He who slept there quite evidently slept in fear. It was Mafka. He lay upon a narrow cot. Upon a table at one side rested the Gonfal and the great emerald of the Zuli and beside them a cutlass and a dagger. Similar weapons lay on a table at the other side of the cot. All were within easy reach of the sleeper. A single cresset burned upon one of the tables.

Tarzan crossed noiselessly to the side of the cot and removed the weapons; first upon one side; then the other. Next, he carried the great emerald and the Gonfal to the fireplace and put them upon the ledge at the mouth of the corridor; then he returned to the side of the cot. Mafka slept on, for the ape-man moved as silently as a ghost in the night.

He laid a hand upon the shoulder of the magician and shook him lightly. Mafka awoke with a start.

"Keep still and you will not be harmed." Tarzan's voice was low, but it was the voice of authority that knew its power.

Mafka looked wildly about the apartment as though searching for help, but there was none.

"What do you want?" His voice trembled. "Tell me what you want and it is yours, if you will not kill me."

"I do not kill old men or women or children unless they force me to. As long as my life is safe, yours is."

"Then why have you come here? What do you want?"

"Nothing that you can give me. What I want, I take."

He turned Mafka over on his stomach and bound his wrists, his ankles, and his knees with strips torn from the bedding; then he gagged him so that he could not raise an alarm. He also blindfolded him that he might not see how entrance had been gained to his apartment.

These things done, he returned to the corridor and groped his way back to Gonfala's apartment, leaving the two great gems where he had first placed them. He was confident they would never be found by another than himself, so sure was he that these corridors were entirely unknown to the present occupants of the palace.

At the entrance to Gonfala's apartment he listened again, but his senses detected no presence in the room below. As he entered it, a quick glance assured him that it was vacant. A single small cresset lighted it dimly. A door at the far end of the room was ajar. He went to it and pushed it open.

As he did so, Gonfala sat up in her couch near the center of the room and faced him. "You have come back! I hoped you would. You have chosen a good time."

"I thought so-he sleeps."

"Then you know?"

"I guessed."

"But why have you come back?"

"Wood and his three friends are prisoners. They are all to be killed."

"Yes, I know. It is by my orders." A qualm of pain and self-disgust was registered in her expression.

"You can help them to escape. Will you?"

"It would do no good. He would only drag them back, and their punishment would be even worse than they can expect now. It is hopeless."

"If Mafka did not interfere would the women obey you?"

"Yes."

"And if you had the opportunity you would like to escape from Kaji?"

"Yes."

"Where would you go?"

"To England."

"Why to England?"

"One who was always good to me, but who is dead now, told me to go to England if ever I escaped. He gave me a letter to take with me."

"Well, get your letter and get ready. You are going to escape. We will be back for you in a little while-Wood and his friends and I. But you will have to help. You will have to give the necessary orders to the women to let us all pass."

She shook her head emphatically. "It will do no good, I tell you. He will get us all."

"Don't worry about that. Just give me your promise that you will do as I ask."

"I'll promise, but it will mean death for me as well as for you."

"Get ready, then; I'll be back with the others in a few minutes."

He left her room, closing the door after him, and went at once to the corridor. A moment later he dropped into the room where Wood and his companions were imprisoned. It was very dark. He spoke to them in low tones, directing them to follow him. Soon they were all in the corridor.

Tarzan led the way to Mafka's room, the glow from the great gems lighting their way as they approached the end of the corridor.

Spike drew in his breath in astonishment. "Gripes! The big rock!" he exclaimed.

Troll halted before the radiant stones and gazed at them in fascinated silence for a moment. "This other-it must be the great emerald of the Zuli. Both of 'em! Lord! They must be worth millions." He started to touch them, but drew back in terror. He knew the power that lay in them, and feared it.

Tarzan dropped over the ledge into the fireplace then, and the others followed him. As they gathered around Mafka's couch, Wood and his companions were speechless with astonishment when they saw the old magician lying bound and helpless.

"How did you do it?" exclaimed Wood.

"I took the gems away from him first. I think all his power lies in them. If I am right, we can get away from here. If I'm wrong-" The ape-man shrugged.

Van Eyk nodded. "I think you're right. What are we going to do with this old devil?"

Troll seized one of the cutlasses that lay beside the cot. "I'll show you what we're going to do with him!"

Tarzan grasped the man's wrist. "Not so fast. You are taking orders from me."

"'Who said so?"

Tarzan wrenched the weapon from Troll's hand and slapped the man across the side of the face with an open palm. The blow sent him reeling across the room to fall in a heap against the wall.

Troll staggered to his feet, feeling his jaw. "I'll get you for this." His voice trembled with rage.

"Shut up and do as you're told." The ape-man's voice showed no emotion. It was, however, a voice that commanded obedience. Then he turned to Wood. "You and van Eyk get the gems. Troll and Spike will carry Mafka."

"Where are we going?" Van Eyk put the question apprehensively. He knew that there was a guard of warrior-women in the corridor outside Mafka's suite.

"We are going first to Gonfala's apartments. They adjoin Mafka's."

"She'll give the alarm, and we'll have the whole bloomin' bunch of 'em on us," objected Spike.

"Don't worry about Gonfala; just do as I say. However, you may as well take these weapons. Something might happen of course."

Wood and van Eyk got the great emerald and the Gonfal from the ledge in the fireplace; then Troll and Spike picked up Mafka, who was trembling in terror; and all followed Tarzan to the door of the apartment. They passed through the adjoining room and the next, coming then to the door leading into Gonfala's suite. Like the other doors, it was barred on the inside. Slipping the bars, the ape-man pushed the door open.

Gonfala was standing in the center of the room as the party entered. She was clothed as for a journey, with a long robe of leopard skins and heavy sandals. A narrow fillet of beaded doeskin bound her golden hair. At sight of Mafka, bound, gagged, and blindfolded, she gasped and shrank away. Then she saw Wood and ran to him.

He put an arm about her. "Don't be afraid, Gonfala. We're going to take you away. That is, if you want to come with us."

"Yes; anywhere-with you. But him! What are you going to do with him?" She pointed at Mafka. "He'll drag us all back, no matter where we go, and kill us; or he'll kill us there. He kills them all, who escape."

Spike spat venomously. "We'd ought to kill him now."

Van Eyk looked at Tarzan. "I agree with Spike. Why shouldn't we, when it's his life or ours?"

The ape-man shook his head. "We don't know the temper of the Kaji women. This man must be something of a deity to them. He represents their power-he is their power. Without him, they would be just a tribe of women upon which any other tribe could prey. He means most to us alive, as a hostage."

Wood nodded. "I think Clayton's right."

The discussion was interrupted by a commotion in the outer corridor upon which the apartments of Mafka and Gonfala opened. There was pounding upon the door of Mafka's apartment and loud cries for the magician.

Tarzan turned to Gonfala. "Call some warrior in authority and see what they want. We'll wait in the next room. Come!" He motioned the others to follow him, and led the way into the adjoining apartment.

Gonfala crossed the room and struck a drum that stood upon the floor near the doorway leading into the corridor. Three times she struck it; then she drew the bolt that secured the door upon the inside. A moment later the door was swung open, and a warrior-woman entered the apartment. She bent to one knee before the queen.

"What is the meaning of the noise in the corridor? Why are they calling Mafka at this hour of the morning?"

"The Zuli are coming, Gonfala. They are coming to make war upon us. They sent a slave to demand the return of their great emerald. There are many of them. We invoke the power of Mafka to make the Zuli weak so that we can kill many of them and drive them away."

"They have no power. Woora is dead, and we have the great emerald. Tell the warriors that I, Gonfala the Queen, command them to go out and slay the Zuli."

"The Zuli are already at the gates of the city. Our warriors are afraid, for they have no power from Mafka. Where is Mafka? Why does he not answer the prayers of the Kaji?"

Gonfala stamped her foot. "Do as I command. You are not here to ask questions. Go to the gate and defend the city. I, Gonfala, will give my warriors power to defeat the Zuli."

"Let us see Mafka," insisted the woman sullenly.

Gonfala reached a quick decision. "Very well. See that my orders for the defense of the city are obeyed; then come to the throne room, and you shall see Mafka. Bring the captains with you."

The woman withdrew, and the door was closed. Immediately, Tarzan stepped into the room. "I overheard. What is your plan?"

"Merely to gain time."

"Then you didn't intend to have Mafka in the throne room to meet them?"

"No. That would be fatal. If we took him in bound, gagged, and blindfolded they might kill us all. If we gave him his freedom, he would kill us."

"Nevertheless, I think it a good plan. We'll do it." A grim smile touched the lips of the ape-man.

"You are mad."

"Perhaps; but if we try to leave now, we can't get out of Kaji without a fight; and I do not relish fighting women. I think there is another way. Do you know where the imitation Gonfal is kept?"

"Yes."

"Get it, and bring it here at once. Wrap a skin around it so that no one can see it. Tell no one. Only you and I must know."

"What are you going to do?"

"Wait and see. Do as I tell you."

"You forget that I am queen." She drew herself up proudly.

"I know only that you are a woman who would like to escape from Kaji with the man she loves."

Gonfala flushed, but she made no reply. Instead, she quit the room at once, going into the apartments of Mafka.

She was gone but a few moments. When she returned she carried a bundle wrapped in a skin.

Tarzan took it from her. "We are ready now. Lead the way to the throne room." He summoned the others from the adjoining apartment; then he turned again to the queen. "Is there a private way to the throne room?"

Gonfala nodded. "This way. Follow me."

She led them into Mafka's apartments where she opened a small door revealing a flight of steps, and they followed her down these to another door that opened upon the dais where the throne chairs stood.

The throne room was empty. The captains had not yet arrived. At Tarzan's direction, Wood placed the Gonfal on the stand beside the throne; Troll and Spike seated Mafka, still bound, gagged, and blindfolded, in his chair; Gonfala seated herself in the other. Tarzan stood beside the table bearing the Gonfal. The others stood behind the chairs. Van Eyk concealed the great emerald of the Zuli beneath a skin he took from the floor of the dais.

In silence they waited. All but Tarzan were tense with nervousness. Presently they heard approaching footfalls in the corridor leading to the throne room. The doors were swung open, and the captains of the Kaji filed in.

They came with heads bent in reverence for their queen and the great power of their magician. When they looked up they were close to the dais. At sight of Mafka they gave vent to cries of astonishment and anger. They looked at the strangers on the dais; then their eyes centered upon the queen.

One of them stepped forward. "What is the meaning of this, Gonfala?" Her tones were menacing.

It was Tarzan who answered. "It means that the power of Mafka is gone. All your lives he has held you in the hollow of his hand. He has made you fight for him. He has taken the best fruits of your conquests. He has held you prisoners here. You feared and hated him, but most of all you feared him."

"He has given us power," answered the warrior. "If that power is gone, we are lost."

"It is not gone, but Mafka no longer wields it."

"Kill them!" cried one of the captains.

The cry arose from many throats. "Kill them! Kill them!" With savage yells they pushed forward toward the dais.

Tarzan laid a hand upon the Gonfal. "Stop! Kneel before your queen!" His voice was low. In the din of their shouting it probably reached the ears of few if any of the warriors, but as one they stopped and knelt.

Again the ape-man spoke. "Stand up! Go to the gates and bring in the captains of the Zuli. They will come. The fighting will stop." The warriors turned and filed out of the chamber.

Tarzan turned toward his companions. "It worked. I thought it would. Whatever this strange power is, it is inherent in the Gonfal. The great emerald has the same mystic power. In the hands of vicious men it is bad. Perhaps, though, it may be used for good."

Gonfala was listening intently. The sounds of the battle ceased; then came echoing footfalls in the long corridor leading to the palace entrance. "They come!" she whispered.

Fifty warrior women entered the throne room of the queen of the Kaji. Half of them were Kaji and half Zuli. They were a savage company. Many of them were bleeding from wounds. They looked sullenly at one another and at the little company upon the dais.

Tarzan faced them. "You are free now from the rule of Woora and Mafka. Woora is dead. I shall turn Mafka over to you presently to do with as you wish. His power is gone if you keep the Gonfal from him. We are leaving your country. Gonfala is going with us. As many prisoners and slaves as wish to accompany us may come. When we are safely out we will hand the Gonfal back to one of your warriors, who may accompany us with three companions-no more. It is dawn. We leave at once. Here is Mafka." He lifted the old magician in his arms and handed him down to the warrior women.

Amidst deathly silence the little company of white men filed out of the throne room with Gonfala the queen of the Kaji. Tarzan carried the Gonfal so that all might see it. Van Eyk bore the great emerald of the Zuli concealed beneath a wrapping of skin.

In the main street of the city a little group of black men and white awaited them, summoned by Tarzan through the necromancy of the Gonfal. They were the slaves and prisoners of the Kaji.

"We are leaving this country," he told them; "any who wish to may accompany us."

"Mafka will kill us," objected one.

Shrill screams issued from the interior of the palace only to be drowned by savage yells of rage and hatred.

"Mafka will never kill again," said the ape-man.
Chapter 11. Treachery

IN PEACE THEY marched through the country of the Kaji under the protection of Tarzan and the Gonfal. Those who had been prisoners and slaves for years were filled with nervous apprehension. They could not believe this miracle that had seemingly snatched them from the clutches of the old magician who had dominated and terrorized them for so long. Momentarily they expected to be killed or dragged back to certain torture and death; but nothing happened, and they came at last to the valley of the Neubari.

"I'll leave you here," said Tarzan. "You will be going south. I go north." He handed the Gonfal to van Eyk. "Keep it until morning; then give it to one of these women." He indicated the three warrior women who had accompanied them from Kaji; then he turned to them. "Take the stone back; and if any among you can use it, use it for good and not for evil.

"Wood, take the great emerald of the Zuli in trust for Gonfala. I hope it will bring her happiness, but the chances are that it will not. At least, however, she need never want."

"Where do we come in?" demanded Spike.

The ape-man shook his head. "You don't; you go out-you go out with your lives. That's a lot more than you could have hoped for a few days ago."

"You mean to say you're goin' to give the big rock back to the niggers and we don't get no split? It ain't fair. Look what we been through. You can't do it."

"It's already done."

Spike turned toward the others. "Are you fellows goin' to stand for this?" he shouted angrily. "Them two rocks belongs to all of us. We ought to take 'em back to London and sell 'em and divide up equal."

"I'm glad enough to get out with my life," said van Eyk. "I think Gonfala has a right to one of the stones; the other will be plenty for both the Kaji and the Zuli to carry out their plans to go out into the world. They'll be cheated out of most of it anyway, but they'll get their wish."

"I think they ought to be divided," said Troll. "We ought to get something out of this."

Some of the white men who had been liberated agreed with him. Others said they only wanted to get home alive and the sooner they saw the last of the two stones the better they'd be satisfied.

"They're evil," said one of the men. "They'll bring no good to anyone."

"I'd take the chance," growled Spike.

Tarzan regarded him coldly. "You won't get it. I've told you all what to do; see that you do it. I'll be travelling south again before you get out of the country. I'll know if you've pulled anything crooked. See that you don't."

Night had fallen. The little band of fugitives, perhaps a hundred strong, were making camp, such as it was, and preparing the food they had brought from Kaji. The blacks, who had been slaves, fell naturally into positions of porters and personal servants to the whites. There had been some slight attempt toward organization, Wood and van Eyk acting as lieutenants to the man they knew only as Clayton, who had assumed the leadership as naturally as the others had accepted the arrangement.

He stood among them now noting the preparations for the night; then he turned to Wood. "You and van Eyk will take charge. You will have no trouble unless it be from Spike. Watch him. Three marches to the south you will find friendly villages. After that it will be easy."

That was all. He turned and was gone into the night. There were no farewells, long-drawn and useless.

"Well," said van Eyk, "that was casual enough."

Wood shrugged. "He is like that."

Gonfala strained her eyes out into the darkness. "He has gone? You think he will not come back?"

"When he finishes whatever business he is on, perhaps. By that time we may be out of the country."

"I felt so safe when he was with us." The girl came and stood close to Wood. "I feel safe with you, too, Stanlee; but him-he seemed a part of Africa."

The man nodded and put an arm about her. "We'll take care of you, dear; but I know how you feel. I felt the same way when he was around. I had no sense of responsibility at all, not even for my own welfare. I just took it for granted that he'd look after everything."

"I often wonder about him," said van Eyk musingly-"who he is, where he comes from, what he is doing in Africa. I wonder-I wonder if there could be-if-"

"If what?"

"If there could be a Tarzan."

Wood laughed. "You know, the same thought came to me. Of course, there is no such person; but this fellow, Clayton, sure would fill the bill."

The black boy who was cooking for them called them then to the evening meal. It was not much, and they decided that Spike and Troll would have to do some hunting the following day.

Suddenly Wood laughed-a bit ruefully. "What with?" he demanded. "We've got spears and knives. What could any of us kill with those?"

Van Eyk nodded. "You're right. What are we going to do? We've got to have meat. All the way to those first friendly villages we've got to depend on game. There won't be anything else."

"If we raise any game, we'll have to send out beaters and chase it toward the spears. We ought to get something that way."

Van Eyk grinned. "If we're lucky enough to raise something with angina pectoris, the excitement might kill it."

"Well, they do kill big game with spears," insisted Wood.

Van Eyk's face brightened. He snapped his fingers. "I've got it! Bows and arrows! Some of our blacks must be good at making them and using them. Hey, Kamudi! Come here!"

One of the black boys arose from the two calloused black heels he had been squatting upon and approached. "Yes, Bwana-you call?"

"Say, can any of you boys kill game with a bow and arrow?"

Kamudi grinned. "Yes, Bwana."

"How about making them? Can any of you make bows and arrows?"

"Yes, Bwana-all can make."

"Fine! Any of the stuff you use grow around here?" Van Eyk's tones were both eager and apprehensive.

"Down by the river-plenty."

"Gee! That's bully. When the boys have finished