t Tarzan of the Apes realized that Akut had in some way
been connected with the disappearance of the boy.

Beyond the moment that the cab driver had deposited his fare beside the
curb in front of the house in which the Russian had been quartered
there was no clue. No one had seen either the boy or the ape from that
instant--at least no one who still lived. The proprietor of the house
identified the picture of the lad as that of one who had been a
frequent visitor in the room of the old man. Aside from this he knew
nothing. And there, at the door of a grimy, old building in the slums
of London, the searchers came to a blank wall--baffled.

The day following the death of Alexis Paulvitch a youth accompanying
his invalid grandmother, boarded a steamer at Dover. The old lady was
heavily veiled, and so weakened by age and sickness that she had to be
wheeled aboard the vessel in an invalid chair.

The boy would permit none but himself to wheel her, and with his own
hands assisted her from the chair to the interior of their
stateroom--and that was the last that was seen of the old lady by the
ship's company until the pair disembarked. The boy even insisted upon
doing the work of their cabin steward, since, as he explained, his
grandmother was suffering from a nervous disposition that made the
presence of strangers extremely distasteful to her.

Outside the cabin--and none there was aboard who knew what he did in
the cabin--the lad was just as any other healthy, normal English boy
might have been. He mingled with his fellow passengers, became a prime
favorite with the officers, and struck up numerous friendships among
the common sailors. He was generous and unaffected, yet carried an air
of dignity and strength of character that inspired his many new friends
with admiration as well as affection for him.

Among the passengers there was an American named Condon, a noted
blackleg and crook who was "wanted" in a half dozen of the larger
cities of the United States. He had paid little attention to the boy
until on one occasion he had seen him accidentally display a roll of
bank notes. From then on Condon cultivated the youthful Briton. He
learned, easily, that the boy was traveling alone with his invalid
grandmother, and that their destination was a small port on the west
coast of Africa, a little below the equator; that their name was
Billings, and that they had no friends in the little settlement for
which they wer