At the foot of the stairs he groped with his hands, finding a door. He felt for and found a latch. Lifting it, he pushed upon the door; and it opened. Then there came strongly to his nostrils the scent of a woman—a white woman! Had he found her? Had he found the one he sought?
The room was utterly dark. He stepped into it, and as he released the door he heard it close behind him with a gentle click. With the quick intuition of the wild beast, he guessed that he was trapped. He sprang back to the door, seeking to open it; but his fingers found only a smooth surface.
He stood in silence, listening, waiting. He heard rapid breathing at a little distance from him. Insistent in his nostrils was the scent of the woman. He guessed that the breathing he heard was hers; its tempo connoted fear. Cautiously he approached the sound.
He was quite close when a noise ahead of him brought him to a sudden halt. It sounded like the creaking of rusty hinges. Then a light appeared revealing the whole scene.
Directly before him on a pallet of straw sat a white woman. Beyond her was a door constructed of iron bars through which he saw another chamber. At the far side of this second chamber was a doorway in which stood a strange creature holding a lighted torch in one hand. Tarzan could not tell if it were human or gorilla.
It approached the barred doorway, chuckling softly to itself. The woman had turned her face away from Tarzan and was looking at the thing in horror. Now she turned a quick glance toward the ape-man. He saw that she was quite like the girl, Naomi, and very beautiful.
As her eyes fell upon him, revealed by the flickering light of the torch, she gasped in astonishment. "Stanley Obroski!" she ejaculated. "Are you a prisoner too?"
"I guess I am," replied the ape-man.
"What were you doing here? How did they get you? I thought that you were dead."
"I came here to find you," he replied,
"You!" Her tone was incredulous.
The creature in the next room had approached the bars, and stood there chuckling softly. Tarzan looked up at it. It had the face of a man, but its skin was black like that of a gorilla. Its grinning lips revealed the heavy fangs on the anthropoid. Scant black hair covered those portions of its body that an open shirt and a loin cloth revealed. The skin of the body, arms, and legs was black with large patches of white. The bare feet were the feet of a man; the hands were black and hairy and wrinkled, with long, curved claws; the eyes were the sunken eyes of an old man—a very old man.
"So you are acquainted?" he said. "How interesting! And you came to get her, did you? I thought that you had come to call on me. Of course it is not quite the proper thing for a stranger to come by night without an invitation—and by stealth.
"It was just by the merest chance that I learned of your coming. I have Henry to thank for that. Had he not been staging a dance I should not have known, and thus I should have been denied the pleasure of receiving you as I have.
"You see, I was looking down from my castle into the courtyard of Henry's palace when his bonfire flared up and lighted the Holy Stairs—and there you were!"
The creature's voice was well modulated, its diction that of a cultivated Englishman. The incongruity between its speech and its appearance rendered the latter all the more repulsive and appalling by contrast.
"Yes, I came for this girl," said the ape-man.
"And now you are a prisoner too." The creature chuckled.
"What do you want of us?" demanded Tarzan. "We are not enemies; we have not harmed you."
"What do I want of you! That is a long story. But perhaps you two would understand and appreciate it. The beasts with which I am surrounded hear, but they do not understand. Before you serve my final purpose I shall keep you for a while for the pleasure of conversing with rational human beings.
"I have not seen any for a long time, a long, long time. Of course I hate them none the less, but I must admit that I shall find pleasure in their companionship for a short time. You are both very good-looking too. That will make it all the more pleasant, just as it increases your value for the purpose for which I intend you—the final purpose, you understand. I am particularly pleased that the girl is so beautiful. I always did have a fondness for blonds. Were I not already engaged along other lines of research, and were it possible, I should like nothing better than to conduct a scientific investigation to determine the biological or psychological explanation of the profound attraction that the blond female has for the male of all races."
From the pocket of his shirt he extracted a couple of crudely fashioned cheroots, one of which he preferred through the bars to Tarzan. "Will you not smoke Mr.—ah—er—Obroski I believe the young lady called you. Stanley Obroski! That would be a Polish name, I believe; but you do not resemble a Pole. You look quite English—quite as English as I."
"I do not smoke," said Tarzan, and then added, "than you."
"You do not know what you miss—tobacco is such a boon to tired nerves."
"My nerves are never tired."
"Fortunate man! And fortunate for me too. I could not ask for anything better than a combination of youth with a healthy body and a healthy nervous system—to say nothing of your unquestionable masculine beauty. I shall be wholly regenerated."
"I do not know what you are talking about," said Tarzan.
"No, of course not. How could one expect that you would understand what I alone in all the world know! But some other time I shall be delighted to explain. Right now I must go up and have a look down into the king's courtyard. I find that I must keep an eye on Henry the Eighth. He has been grossly misbehaving himself of late—he and Suffolk and Howard. I shall leave this torch burning for you—it will make it much more pleasant; and I want you to enjoy yourselves as much as possible before the—ah—er—well, au revoir! Make yourselves quite at home." He turned and crossed toward a door at the opposite side of the room, chuckling as he went.
Tarzan stepped quickly to the bars separating the two rooms. "Come back here!" he commanded. "Either let us out of this hole or tell us why you are holding us—what you intend doing with us."
The creature wheeled suddenly, its expression transformed by a hideous snarl. "You dare issue orders to me!" it screamed.
"And why not?" demanded the ape-man. "Who are you?"
The creature took a step nearer the bars and tapped its hairy chest with a horny talon. "I am God!" it cried.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"Before I Eat You!"
As the thing that called itself God departed from the other chamber, closing the door after it, Tarzan turned toward the girl sitting on the straw of their prison cell. "I have seen many strange things in my life," he said, "but this is by far the strangest. Sometimes I think that I must be dreaming."
"That is what I thought at first," replied the girl; "but this is no dream—it is a terrible, a frightful reality."
"Including God?" he asked.
"Yes; even God is a reality. That thing is the god of these gorillas. They all fear him and most of them worship him.
They say that he created them. I do not understand it—it is all like a hideous chimera."
"What do you suppose he intends to do with us?"
"Oh, I don't know; but it is something horrible," she replied. "Down in the city they venture hideous guesses, but even they do not know. He brings young gorillas here, and they are never seen again."
"How long have you been here?"
"I have been in God's castle since yesterday, but I was in the palace of Henry the Eighth for more than a week. Don't those names sound incongruous when applied to beasts?"