to take you
back from here and so I was going to kill you, as I have sworn to
kill all your kind; but you were right when you said that I was
not such a beast as that slayer of women. I could not slay him as
he slew mine, nor can I slay you, who are a woman."

He crossed to the window, raised the sash and an instant later he
had stepped out and disappeared into the night. And then Fraulein
Bertha Kircher stepped quickly to the corpse upon the floor, slipped
her hand inside the blouse and drew forth a little sheaf of papers
which she tucked into her waist before she went to the window and
called for help.

Chapter VII

When Blood Told

Tarzan of the Apes was disgusted. He had had the German spy, Bertha
Kircher, in his power and had left her unscathed. It is true that he
had slain Hauptmann Fritz Schneider, that Underlieutenant von Goss
had died at his hands, and that he had otherwise wreaked vengeance
upon the men of the German company who had murdered, pillaged, and
raped at Tarzan's bungalow in the Waziri country. There was still
another officer to be accounted for, but him he could not find.
It was Lieutenant Obergatz he still sought, though vainly, for at
last he learned that the man had been sent upon some special mission,
whether in Africa or back to Europe Tarzan's informant either did
not know or would not divulge.

But the fact that he had permitted sentiment to stay his hand when
he might so easily have put Bertha Kircher out of the way in the
hotel at Wilhelmstal that night rankled in the ape-man's bosom.
He was shamed by his weakness, and when he had handed the paper
she had given him to the British chief of staff, even though
the information it contained permitted the British to frustrate a
German flank attack, he was still much dissatisfied with himself.
And possibly the root of this dissatisfaction lay in the fact that
he realized that were he again to have the same opportunity he
would still find it as impossible to slay a woman as it had been
in Wilhelmstal that night.

Tarzan blamed this weakness, as he considered it, upon his association
with the effeminizing influences of civilization, for in the bottom
of his savage heart he held in contempt both civilization and its
representatives--the men and women of the civilized countries of
the world. Always was he comparing their weaknesses, their vices,
their hypocrisies, and their little vanities with the open,
primitive ways of his feroci