nd in a low whisper: "Lady Greystoke!
It is I, M. Frecoult. Where are you?" But there was no response.
Hastily the man felt around the interior, groping blindly through the
darkness with outstretched hands. There was no one within!

Werper's astonishment surpassed words. He was on the point of stepping
without to question the sentry, when his eyes, becoming accustomed to
the dark, discovered a blotch of lesser blackness near the base of the
rear wall of the hut. Examination revealed the fact that the blotch was
an opening cut in the wall. It was large enough to permit the passage
of his body, and assured as he was that Lady Greystoke had passed out
through the aperture in an attempt to escape the village, he lost no
time in availing himself of the same avenue; but neither did he lose
time in a fruitless search for Jane Clayton.

His own life depended upon the chance of his eluding, or outdistancing
Achmet Zek, when that worthy should have discovered that he had
escaped. His original plan had contemplated connivance in the escape
of Lady Greystoke for two very good and sufficient reasons. The first
was that by saving her he would win the gratitude of the English, and
thus lessen the chance of his extradition should his identity and his
crime against his superior officer be charged against him.

The second reason was based upon the fact that only one direction of
escape was safely open to him. He could not travel to the west because
of the Belgian possessions which lay between him and the Atlantic. The
south was closed to him by the feared presence of the savage ape-man he
had robbed. To the north lay the friends and allies of Achmet Zek.
Only toward the east, through British East Africa, lay reasonable
assurance of freedom.

Accompanied by a titled Englishwoman whom he had rescued from a
frightful fate, and his identity vouched for by her as that of a
Frenchman by the name of Frecoult, he had looked forward, and not
without reason, to the active assistance of the British from the moment
that he came in contact with their first outpost.

But now that Lady Greystoke had disappeared, though he still looked
toward the east for hope, his chances were lessened, and another,
subsidiary design completely dashed. From the moment that he had first
laid eyes upon Jane Clayton he had nursed within his breast a secret
passion for the beautiful American wife of the English lord, and when
Achmet Zek's discovery of the jew