at a
cross street he discovered another pole, down which he ran to the
ground.

For a square or two he ran swiftly; then he turned into a little
all-night cafe and in the lavatory removed the evidences of his
over-roof promenade from hands and clothes. When he emerged a few
moments later it was to saunter slowly on toward his apartments.

Not far from them he came to a well-lighted boulevard which it was
necessary to cross. As he stood directly beneath a brilliant arc
light, waiting for a limousine that was approaching to pass him, he
heard his name called in a sweet feminine voice. Looking up, he met
the smiling eyes of Olga de Coude as she leaned forward upon the back
seat of the machine. He bowed very low in response to her friendly
greeting. When he straightened up the machine had borne her away.

"Rokoff and the Countess de Coude both in the same evening," he
soliloquized; "Paris is not so large, after all."

Chapter 4

The Countess Explains

"Your Paris is more dangerous than my savage jungles, Paul," concluded
Tarzan, after narrating his adventures to his friend the morning
following his encounter with the apaches and police in the Rue Maule.
"Why did they lure me there? Were they hungry?"

D'Arnot feigned a horrified shudder, but he laughed at the quaint
suggestion.

"It is difficult to rise above the jungle standards and reason by the
light of civilized ways, is it not, my friend?" he queried banteringly.

"Civilized ways, forsooth," scoffed Tarzan. "Jungle standards do not
countenance wanton atrocities. There we kill for food and for
self-preservation, or in the winning of mates and the protection of the
young. Always, you see, in accordance with the dictates of some great
natural law. But here! Faugh, your civilized man is more brutal than
the brutes. He kills wantonly, and, worse than that, he utilizes a
noble sentiment, the brotherhood of man, as a lure to entice his unwary
victim to his doom. It was in answer to an appeal from a fellow being
that I hastened to that room where the assassins lay in wait for me.

"I did not realize, I could not realize for a long time afterward, that
any woman could sink to such moral depravity as that one must have to
call a would-be rescuer to death. But it must have been so--the sight
of Rokoff there and the woman's later repudiation of me to the police
make it impossible to place any other construction upon her acts.
Rokoff must have kn