the door and
admitted him to the little room which he and the great ape occupied.
In former years Paulvitch had been a fastidious scoundrel; but ten
years of hideous life among the cannibals of Africa had eradicated the
last vestige of niceness from his habits. His apparel was wrinkled and
soiled. His hands were unwashed, his few straggling locks uncombed.
His room was a jumble of filthy disorder. As the boy entered he saw
the great ape squatting upon the bed, the coverlets of which were a
tangled wad of filthy blankets and ill-smelling quilts. At sight of
the youth the ape leaped to the floor and shuffled forward. The man,
not recognizing his visitor and fearing that the ape meant mischief,
stepped between them, ordering the ape back to the bed.

"He will not hurt me," cried the boy. "We are friends, and before, he
was my father's friend. They knew one another in the jungle. My
father is Lord Greystoke. He does not know that I have come here. My
mother forbid my coming; but I wished to see Ajax, and I will pay you
if you will let me come here often and see him."

At the mention of the boy's identity Paulvitch's eyes narrowed. Since
he had first seen Tarzan again from the wings of the theater there had
been forming in his deadened brain the beginnings of a desire for
revenge. It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute
to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness,
and so now it was that Alexis Paulvitch was slowly recalling the events
of his past life and as he did so laying at the door of the man whom he
and Rokoff had so assiduously attempted to ruin and murder all the
misfortunes that had befallen him in the failure of their various
schemes against their intended victim.

He saw at first no way in which he could, with safety to himself, wreak
vengeance upon Tarzan through the medium of Tarzan's son; but that
great possibilities for revenge lay in the boy was apparent to him, and
so he determined to cultivate the lad in the hope that fate would play
into his hands in some way in the future. He told the boy all that he
knew of his father's past life in the jungle and when he found that the
boy had been kept in ignorance of all these things for so many years,
and that he had been forbidden visiting the zoological gardens; that he
had had to bind and gag his tutor to find an opportunity to come to the
music hall and see Ajax, he guessed immediately the nature of t