Slowly the red mist faded from before Tarzan's eyes.
Things began to take form--he was regaining the perspective of civilized man.His eyes fell upon the figure of the kneeling woman.
"Olga," he whispered.She looked up, expecting to see the maniacal light of murder in the eyes above her.
Instead she saw sorrow and contrition.
"Oh, Jean!" she cried."See what you have done.He was my husband.I loved him, and you have killed him."Very gently Tarzan raised the limp form of the Count de Coude and bore it to a couch.Then he put his ear to the man's breast.
"Some brandy, Olga," he said.
She brought it, and together they forced it between his lips.
Presently a faint gasp came from the white lips.
The head turned, and De Coude groaned.
"He will not die," said Tarzan."Thank God!""Why did you do it, Jean?" she asked.
"I do not know.He struck me, and I went mad.I have seen the apes of my tribe do the same thing.I have never told you my story, Olga.It would have been better had you known it--this might not have happened.I never saw my father.
The only mother I knew was a ferocious she-ape.Until I was fifteen I had never seen a human being.I was twenty before I saw a white man.A little more than a year ago I was a naked beast of prey in an African jungle.
"Do not judge me too harshly.Two years is too short a time in which to attempt to work the change in an individual that it has taken countless ages to accomplish in the white race.""I do not judge at all, Jean.The fault is mine.
You must go now--he must not find you here when he regains consciousness.Good-by."It was a sorrowful Tarzan who walked with bowed head from the palace of the Count de Coude.
Once outside his thoughts took definite shape, to the end that twenty minutes later he entered a police station not far from the Rue Maule.Here he soon found one of the officers with whom he had had the encounter several weeks previous.The policeman was genuinely glad to see again the man who had so roughly handled him.After a moment of conversation Tarzan asked if he had ever heard of Nikolas Rokoff or Alexis Paulvitch.
"Very often, indeed, monsieur.Each has a police record, and while there is nothing charged against them now, we make it a point to know pretty well where they may be found should the occasion demand.It is only the same precaution that we take with every known criminal.Why does monsieur ask?""They are known to me," replied Tarzan."I wish to see Monsieur Rokoff on a little matter of business.If you can direct me to his lodgings I shall appreciate it."A few minutes later he bade the policeman adieu, and, with a slip of paper in his pocket bearing a certain address in a semirespectable quarter, he walked briskly toward the nearest taxi stand.
Rokoff and Paulvitch had returned to their rooms, and were sitting talking over the probable outcome of the evening's events.They had telephoned to the offices of two of the morning papers from which they momentarily expected representatives to hear the first report of the scandal that was to stir social Paris on the morrow.