The woman still stood where she had when Tarzan entered, but her face had undergone a number of changes with the few minutes which had elapsed.From the semblance of distress which it had worn when Tarzan first saw it, it had changed to one of craftiness as he had wheeled to meet the attack from behind; but the change Tarzan had not seen.
Later an expression of surprise and then one of horror superseded the others.And who may wonder.For the immaculate gentleman her cries had lured to what was to have been his death had been suddenly metamorphosed into a demon of revenge.Instead of soft muscles and a weak resistance, she was looking upon a veritable Hercules gone mad.
"MON DIEU!" she cried; "he is a beast!" For the strong, white teeth of the ape-man had found the throat of one of his assailants, and Tarzan fought as he had learned to fight with the great bull apes of the tribe of Kerchak.
He was in a dozen places at once, leaping hither and thither about the room in sinuous bounds that reminded the woman of a panther she had seen at the zoo.Now a wrist-bone snapped in his iron grip, now a shoulder was wrenched from its socket as he forced a victim's arm backward and upward.
With shrieks of pain the men escaped into the hallway as quickly as they could; but even before the first one staggered, bleeding and broken, from the room, Rokoff had seen enough to convince him that Tarzan would not be the one to lie dead in that house this night, and so the Russian had hastened to a nearby den and telephoned the police that a man was committing murder on the third floor of Rue Maule, 27.
When the officers arrived they found three men groaning on the floor, a frightened woman lying upon a filthy bed, her face buried in her arms, and what appeared to be a well-dressed young gentleman standing in the center of the room awaiting the reenforcements which he had thought the footsteps of the officers hurrying up the stairway had announced --but they were mistaken in the last; it was a wild beast that looked upon them through those narrowed lids and steel-gray eyes.With the smell of blood the last vestige of civilization had deserted Tarzan, and now he stood at bay, like a lion surrounded by hunters, awaiting the next overt act, and crouching to charge its author.
"What has happened here?" asked one of the policemen.
Tarzan explained briefly, but when he turned to the woman for confirmation of his statement he was appalled by her reply.
"He lies!" she screamed shrilly, addressing the policeman.
"He came to my room while I was alone, and for no good purpose.When I repulsed him he would have killed me had not my screams attracted these gentlemen, who were passing the house at the time.He is a devil, monsieurs; alone he has all but killed ten men with his bare hands and his teeth."So shocked was Tarzan by her ingratitude that for a moment he was struck dumb.The police were inclined to be a little skeptical, for they had had other dealings with this same lady and her lovely coterie of gentlemen friends.
However, they were policemen, not judges, so they decided to place all the inmates of the room under arrest, and let another, whose business it was, separate the innocent from the guilty.
But they found that it was one thing to tell this well-dressed young man that he was under arrest, but quite another to enforce it.