第40章

He saluted the officer as he rode past.Mechanically Gernois returned the salute, but those terrible, wide eyes followed the horseman, expressionless except for horror.It was as though a dead man looked upon a ghost.

At Sidi Aissa Tarzan met a French officer with whom he had become acquainted on the occasion of his recent sojourn in the town.

"You left Bou Saada early?" questioned the officer.

"Then you have not heard about poor Gernois.""He was the last man I saw as I rode away," replied Tarzan.

"What about him?"

"He is dead.He shot himself about eight o'clock this morning."Two days later Tarzan reached Algiers.There he found that he would have a two days' wait before he could catch a ship bound for Cape Town.He occupied his time in writing out a full report of his mission.The secret papers he had taken from Rokoff he did not inclose, for he did not dare trust them out of his own possession until he had been authorized to turn them over to another agent, or himself return to Paris with them.

As Tarzan boarded his ship after what seemed a most tedious wait to him, two men watched him from an upper deck.

Both were fashionably dressed and smooth shaven.The taller of the two had sandy hair, but his eyebrows were very black.

Later in the day they chanced to meet Tarzan on deck, but as one hurriedly called his companion's attention to something at sea their faces were turned from Tarzan as he passed, so that he did not notice their features.In fact, he had paid no attention to them at all.

Following the instructions of his chief, Tarzan had booked his passage under an assumed name--John Caldwell, London.

He did not understand the necessity of this, and it caused him considerable speculation.He wondered what role he was to play in Cape Town.

"Well," he thought, "thank Heaven that I am rid of Rokoff.

He was commencing to annoy me.I wonder if I am really becoming so civilized that presently I shall develop a set of nerves.He would give them to me if any one could, for he does not fight fair.One never knows through what new agency he is going to strike.It is as though Numa, the lion, had induced Tantor, the elephant, and Histah, the snake, to join him in attempting to kill me.I would then never have known what minute, or by whom, I was to be attacked next.

But the brutes are more chivalrous than man--they do not stoop to cowardly intrigue."At dinner that night Tarzan sat next to a young woman whose place was at the captain's left.The officer introduced them.

Miss Strong! Where had he heard the name before? It was very familiar.And then the girl's mother gave him the clew, for when she addressed her daughter she called her Hazel.

Hazel Strong! What memories the name inspired.It had been a letter to this girl, penned by the fair hand of Jane Porter, that had carried to him the first message from the woman he loved.How vividly he recalled the night he had stolen it from the desk in the cabin of his long-dead father, where Jane Porter had sat writing it late into the night, while he crouched in the darkness without.How terror-stricken she would have been that night had she known that the wild jungle beast squatted outside her window, watching her every move.

And this was Hazel Strong--Jane Porter's best friend!