ntal presence
of Jack Clayton, who had been permitted to visit the animal in the
dressing room reserved for him at the music hall, and had immediately
interfered when he saw that the savage beast meant serious mischief.

And after the money consideration, strong in the heart of the Russian
was the desire for revenge, which had been growing with constant
brooding over the failures and miseries of his life, which he
attributed to Tarzan; the latest, and by no means the least, of which
was Ajax's refusal to longer earn money for him. The ape's refusal he
traced directly to Tarzan, finally convincing himself that the ape man
had instructed the great anthropoid to refuse to go upon the stage.

Paulvitch's naturally malign disposition was aggravated by the
weakening and warping of his mental and physical faculties through
torture and privation. From cold, calculating, highly intelligent
perversity it had deteriorated into the indiscriminating, dangerous
menace of the mentally defective. His plan, however, was sufficiently
cunning to at least cast a doubt upon the assertion that his mentality
was wandering. It assured him first of the competence which Lord
Greystoke had promised to pay him for the deportation of the ape, and
then of revenge upon his benefactor through the son he idolized. That
part of his scheme was crude and brutal--it lacked the refinement of
torture that had marked the master strokes of the Paulvitch of old,
when he had worked with that virtuoso of villainy, Nikolas Rokoff--but
it at least assured Paulvitch of immunity from responsibility, placing
that upon the ape, who would thus also be punished for his refusal
longer to support the Russian.

Everything played with fiendish unanimity into Paulvitch's hands. As
chance would have it, Tarzan's son overheard his father relating to the
boy's mother the steps he was taking to return Akut safely to his
jungle home, and having overheard he begged them to bring the ape home
that he might have him for a play-fellow. Tarzan would not have been
averse to this plan; but Lady Greystoke was horrified at the very
thought of it. Jack pleaded with his mother; but all unavailingly.
She was obdurate, and at last the lad appeared to acquiesce in his
mother's decision that the ape must be returned to Africa and the boy
to school, from which he had been absent on vacation.

He did not attempt to visit Paulvitch's room again that day, but
instead busied himself in ot