“It’s not that he isn’t bright,” he was saying; “if that were true I should have hopes of succeeding, for then I might bring to bear all my energies in overcoming his obtuseness; but the trouble is that he is exceptionally intelligent, and learns so quickly that I can find no fault in the matter of the preparation of his lessons. What concerns me, however, is that fact that he evidently takes no interest whatever in the subjects we are studying. He merely accomplishes each lesson as a task to be rid of as quickly as possible and I am sure that no lesson ever again enters his mind until the hours of study and recitation once more arrive. His sole interests seem to be feats of physical prowess and the reading of everything that he can get hold of relative to savage beasts and the lives and customs of uncivilized peoples; but particularly do stories of animals appeal to him. He will sit for hours together poring over the work of some African explorer, and upon two occasions I have found him setting up in bed at night reading Carl Hagenbeck’s book on men and beasts.”
The boy’s mother tapped her foot nervously upon the hearth rug.
“You discourage this, of course?” she ventured.
Mr. Moore shuffled embarrassedly.
“I—ah—essayed to take the book from him,” he replied, a slight flush mounting his sallow cheek; “but—ah—your son is quite muscular for one so young.”
“He wouldn’t let you take it?” asked the mother.
“He would not,” confessed the tutor. “He was perfectly good natured about it; but he insisted upon pretending that he was a gorilla and that I was a chimpanzee attempting to steal food from him. He leaped upon me with the most savage growls I ever heard, lifted me completely above his head, hurled me upon his bed, and after going through a pantomime indicative of choking me to death he stood upon my prostrate form and gave voice to a most fearsome shriek, which he explained was the victory cry of a bull ape. Then he carried me to the door, shoved me out into the hall and locked me from his room.”
For several minutes neither spoke again. It was the boy’s mother who finally broke the silence.
“It is very necessary, Mr. Moore,” she said, “that you do everything in your power to discourage this tendency in Jack, he—”; but she got no further. A loud “Whoop!” from the direction of the window brought them both to their feet. The room was upon the second floor of the house, and opposite the window to which their attention had been attracted was a large tree, a branch of which spread to within a few feet of the sill. Upon this branch now they both discovered the subject of their recent conversation, a tall, well-built boy, balancing with ease upon the bending limb and uttering loud shouts of glee as he noted the terrified expressions upon the faces of his audience.
The mother and tutor both rushed toward the window but before they had crossed half the room the boy had leaped nimbly to the sill and entered the apartment with them.
“‘The wild man from Borneo has just come to town,’” he sang, dancing a species of war dance about his terrified mother and scandalized tutor, and ending up by throwing his arms about the former’s neck and kissing her upon either cheek.
“Oh, Mother,” he cried, “there’s a wonderful, educated ape being shown at one of the music halls. Willie Grimsby saw it last night. He says it can do everything but talk. It rides a bicycle, eats with knife and fork, counts up to ten, and ever so many other wonderful things, and can I go and see it too? Oh, please, Mother—please let me.”
Patting the boy’s cheek affectionately, the mother shook her head negatively. “No, Jack,” she said; “you know I do not approve of such exhibitions.”
“I don’t see why not, Mother,” replied the boy. “All the other fellows go and they go to the Zoo, too, and you’ll never let me do even that. Anybody’d think I was a girl—or a mollycoddle. Oh, Father,” he exclaimed, as the door opened to admit a tall gray-eyed man. “Oh, Father, can’t I go?”
“Go where, my son?” asked the newcomer.
“He wants to go to a music hall to see a trained ape,” said the mother, looking warningly at her husband.
“Who, Ajax?” questioned the man.
The boy nodded.
“Well, I don’t know that I blame you, my son,” said the father, “I wouldn’t mind seeing him myself. They say he is very wonderful, and that for an anthropoid he is unusually large. Let’s all go, Jane—what do you say?” And he turned toward his wife, but that lady only shook her head in a most positive manner, and turning to Mr. Moore asked him if it was not time that he and Jack were in the study for the morning recitations. When the two had left she turned toward her husband.
“John,” she said, “something must be done to discourage Jack’s tendency toward anything that may excite the cravings for the savage life which I fear he has inherited from you. You know from your own experience how strong is the call of the wild at times. You know that often it has necessitated a stern struggle on your part to resist the almost insane desire which occasionally overwhelms you to plunge once again into the jungle life that claimed you for so many years, and at the same time you know, better than any other, how frightful a fate it would be for Jack, were the trail to the savage jungle made either alluring or easy to him.”
“I doubt if there is any danger of his inheriting a taste for jungle life from me,” replied the man, “for I cannot conceive that such a thing may be transmitted from father to son. And sometimes, Jane, I think that in your solicitude for his future you go a bit too far in your restrictive measures. His love for animals—his desire, for example, to see this trained ape—is only natural in a healthy, normal boy of his age. Just because he wants to see Ajax is no indication that he would wish to marry an ape, and even should he, far be it from you Jane to have the right to cry ‘shame!’” and John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, put an arm about his wife, laughing good-naturedly down into her upturned face before he bent his head and kissed her. Then, more seriously, he continued: “You have never told Jack anything concerning my early life, nor have you permitted me to, and in this I think that you have made a mistake. Had I been able to tell him of the experiences of Tarzan of the Apes I could doubtless have taken much of the glamour and romance from jungle life that naturally surrounds it in the minds of those who have had no experience of it. He might then have profited by my experience, but now, should the jungle lust ever claim him, he will have nothing to guide him but his own impulses, and I know how powerful these may be in the wrong direction at times.”
But Lady Greystoke only shook her head as she had a hundred other times when the subject had claimed her attention in the past.
“No, John,” she insisted, “I shall never give my consent to the implanting in Jack’s mind of any suggestion of the savage life which we both wish to preserve him from.”
It was evening before the subject was again referred to and then it was raised by Jack himself. He had been sitting, curled in a large chair, reading, when he suddenly looked up and addressed his father.
“Why,” he asked, coming directly to the point, “can’t I go and see Ajax?”
“Your mother does not approve,” replied his father.
“Do you?”
“That is not the question,” evaded Lord Greystoke. “It is enough that your mother objects.”
“I am going to see him,” announced the boy, after a few moments of thoughtful silence. “I am not different from Willie Grimsby, or any other of the fellows who have been to see him. It did not harm them and it will not harm me. I could go without telling you; but I would not do that. So I tell you now, beforehand, that I am going to see Ajax.”
There was nothing disrespectful or defiant in the boy’s tone or manner. His was merely a dispassionate statement of facts. His father could scarce repress either a smile or a show of the admiration he felt for the manly course his son had pursued.
“I admire your candor, Jack,” he said. “Permit me to be candid, as well. If you go to see Ajax without permission, I shall punish you. I have never inflicted corporal punishment upon you, but I warn you that should you disobey your mother’s wishes in this instance, I shall.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the boy; and then: “I shall tell you, sir, when I have been to see Ajax.”
Mr. Moore’s room was next to that of his youthful charge, and it was the tutor’s custom to have a look into the boy’s each evening as the former was about to retire. This evening he was particularly careful not to neglect his duty, for he had just come from a conference with the boy’s father and mother in which it had been impressed upon him that he must exercise the greatest care to prevent Jack visiting the music hall where Ajax was being shown. So, when he opened the boy’s door at about half after nine, he was greatly excited, though not entirely surprised to find the future Lord Greystoke fully dressed for the street and about to crawl from his open bed room window.
Mr. Moore made a rapid spring across the apartment; but the waste of energy was unnecessary, for when the boy heard him within the chamber and realized that he had been discovered he turned back as though to relinquish his planned adventure.
“Where were you going?” panted the excited Mr. Moore.
“I am going to see Ajax,” replied the boy, quietly.
“I am astonished,” cried Mr. Moore; but a moment later he was infinitely more astonished, for the boy, approaching close to him, suddenly seized him about the waist, lifted him from his feet and threw him face downward upon the bed, shoving his face deep into a soft pillow.
“Be quiet,” admonished the victor, “or I’ll choke you.”
Mr. Moore struggled; but his efforts were in vain. Whatever else Tarzan of the Apes may or may not have handed down to his son he had at least bequeathed him almost as marvelous a physique as he himself had possessed at the same age. The tutor was as putty in the boy’s hands. Kneeling upon him, Jack tore strips from a sheet and bound the man’s hands behind his back. Then he rolled him over and stuffed a gag of the same material between his teeth, securing it with a strip wound about the back of his victim’s head. All the while he talked in a low, conversational tone.
“I am Waja, chief of the Waji,” he explained, “and you are Mohammed Dubn, the Arab sheik, who would murder my people and steal my ivory,” and he dexterously trussed Mr. Moore’s hobbled ankles up behind to meet his hobbled wrists. “Ah—ha! Villain! I have you in me power at last. I go; but I shall return!” And the son of Tarzan skipped across the room, slipped through the open window, and slid to liberty by way of the down spout from an eaves trough.
Mr. Moore wriggled and struggled about the bed. He was sure that he should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical fear that had claimed him he now lay quietly searching for some means of escape from his dilemma. It finally occurred to him that the room in which Lord and Lady Greystoke had been sitting when he left them was directly beneath that in which he lay upon the floor. He knew that some time had elapsed since he had come up stairs and that they might be gone by this time, for it seemed to him that he had struggled about the bed, in his efforts to free himself, for an eternity. But the best that he could do was to attempt to attract attention from below, and so, after many failures, he managed to work himself into a position in which he could tap the toe of his boot against the floor. This he proceeded to do at short intervals, until, after what seemed a very long time, he was rewarded by hearing footsteps ascending the stairs, and presently a knock upon the door. Mr. Moore tapped vigorously with his toe—he could not reply in any other way. The knock was repeated after a moment’s silence. Again Mr. Moore tapped. Would they never open the door! Laboriously he rolled in the direction of succor. If he could get his back against the door he could then tap upon its base, when surely he must be heard. The knocking was repeated a little louder, and finally a voice called: “Mr. Jack!”
It was one of the house men—Mr. Moore recognized the fellow’s voice. He came near to bursting a blood vessel in an endeavor to scream “come in” through the stifling gag. After a moment the man knocked again, quite loudly and again called the boy’s name. Receiving no reply he turned the knob, and at the same instant a sudden recollection filled the tutor anew with numbing terror—he had, himself, locked the door behind him when he had entered the room.
He heard the servant try the door several times and then depart. Upon which Mr. Moore swooned.
In the meantime Jack was enjoying to the full the stolen pleasures of the music hall. He had reached the temple of mirth just as Ajax’s act was commencing, and having purchased a box seat was now leaning breathlessly over the rail watching every move of the great ape, his eyes wide in wonder. The trainer was not slow to note the boy’s handsome, eager face, and as one of Ajax’s biggest hits consisted in an entry to one or more boxes during his performance, ostensibly in search of a long-lost relative, as the trainer explained, the man realized the effectiveness of sending him into the box with the handsome boy, who, doubtless, would be terror stricken by proximity to the shaggy, powerful beast.
When the time came, therefore, for the ape to return from the wings in reply to an encore the trainer directed its attention to the boy who chanced to be the sole occupant of the box in which he sat. With a spring the huge anthropoid leaped from the stage to the boy’s side; but if the trainer had looked for a laughable scene of fright he was mistaken. A broad smile lighted the boy’s features as he laid his hand upon the shaggy arm of his visitor. The ape, grasping the boy by either shoulder, peered long and earnestly into his face, while the latter stroked his head and talked to him in a low voice.
Never had Ajax devoted so long a time to an examination of another as he did in this instance. He seemed troubled and not a little excited, jabbering and mumbling to the boy, and now caressing him, as the trainer had never seen him caress a human being before. Presently he clambered over into the box with him and snuggled down close to the boy’s side. The audience was delighted; but they were still more delighted when the trainer, the period of his act having elapsed, attempted to persuade Ajax to leave the box. The ape would not budge. The manager, becoming excited at the delay, urged the trainer to greater haste, but when the latter entered the box to drag away the reluctant Ajax he was met by bared fangs and menacing growls.
The audience was delirious with joy. They cheered the ape. They cheered the boy, and they hooted and jeered at the trainer and the manager, which luckless individual had inadvertently shown himself and attempted to assist the trainer.
Finally, reduced to desperation and realizing that this show of mutiny upon the part of his valuable possession might render the animal worthless for exhibition purposes in the future if not immediately subdued, the trainer had hastened to his dressing room and procured a heavy whip. With this he now returned to the box; but when he had threatened Ajax with it but once he found himself facing two infuriated enemies instead of one, for the boy had leaped to his feet, and seizing a chair was standing ready at the ape’s side to defend his new found friend. There was no longer a smile upon his handsome face. In his gray eyes was an expression which gave the trainer pause, and beside him stood the giant anthropoid growling and ready.
What might have happened, but for a timely interruption, may only be surmised; but that the trainer would have received a severe mauling, if nothing more, was clearly indicated by the attitudes of the two who faced him.
Four steps at a time John Clayton took the stairs that led to the floor above. His wife and the servant hurried after him. Once he called his son’s name in a loud voice; but receiving no reply he launched his great weight, backed by all the undiminished power of his giant muscles, against the heavy door. With a snapping of iron butts and a splintering of wood the obstacle burst inward.
At its foot lay the body of the unconscious Mr. Moore, across whom it fell with a resounding thud. Through the opening leaped Tarzan, and a moment later the room was flooded with light from a dozen electric bulbs.
It was several minutes before the tutor was discovered, so completely had the door covered him; but finally he was dragged forth, his gag and bonds cut away, and a liberal application of cold water had hastened returning consciousness.
“Where is Jack?” was John Clayton’s first question, and then; “Who did this?” as the memory of Rokoff and the fear of a second abduction seized him.
Slowly Mr. Moore staggered to his feet. His gaze wandered about the room. Gradually he collected his scattered wits. The details of his recent harrowing experience returned to him.
“I tender my resignation, sir, to take effect at once,” were his first words. “You do not need a tutor for your son—what he needs is a wild animal trainer.”
“But where is he?” cried Lady Greystoke.
“He has gone to see Ajax.”
It was with difficulty that Tarzan restrained a smile, and after satisfying himself that the tutor was more scared than injured, he ordered his closed car around and departed in the direction of a certain well-known music hall.