been followed many times from this and
other places of amusement, but seldom if ever had he been alone.
Tonight D'Arnot had had another engagement, and Tarzan had come by
himself.

As he turned in the direction he was accustomed to taking from this
part of Paris to his apartments, the watcher across the street ran from
his hiding-place and hurried on ahead at a rapid pace.

Tarzan had been wont to traverse the Rue Maule on his way home at
night. Because it was very quiet and very dark it reminded him more of
his beloved African jungle than did the noisy and garish streets
surrounding it. If you are familiar with your Paris you will recall
the narrow, forbidding precincts of the Rue Maule. If you are not, you
need but ask the police about it to learn that in all Paris there is no
street to which you should give a wider berth after dark.

On this night Tarzan had proceeded some two squares through the dense
shadows of the squalid old tenements which line this dismal way when he
was attracted by screams and cries for help from the third floor of an
opposite building. The voice was a woman's. Before the echoes of her
first cries had died Tarzan was bounding up the stairs and through the
dark corridors to her rescue.

At the end of the corridor on the third landing a door stood slightly
ajar, and from within Tarzan heard again the same appeal that had lured
him from the street. Another instant found him in the center of a
dimly-lighted room. An oil lamp burned upon a high, old-fashioned
mantel, casting its dim rays over a dozen repulsive figures. All but
one were men. The other was a woman of about thirty. Her face, marked
by low passions and dissipation, might once have been lovely. She
stood with one hand at her throat, crouching against the farther wall.

"Help, monsieur," she cried in a low voice as Tarzan entered the room;
"they were killing me."

As Tarzan turned toward the men about him he saw the crafty, evil faces
of habitual criminals. He wondered that they had made no effort to
escape. A movement behind him caused him to turn. Two things his eyes
saw, and one of them caused him considerable wonderment. A man was
sneaking stealthily from the room, and in the brief glance that Tarzan
had of him he saw that it was Rokoff. But the other thing that he saw
was of more immediate interest. It was a great brute of a fellow
tiptoeing upon him from behind with a huge bludgeon in his hand, and
then, a