"Do you think you can climb it?" he asked the girl.
"I don't know," she said, "but I can try."
"You might fall," he warned. "I'll carry you." He swung her lightly to his back before she realized what he purposed. "Hold tight!" he admonished; then he swarmed up the rope like a monkey.
At the top he seized the beam and drew himself and the girl onto it; and here they repeated what they had done before, searching for and finding another beam above the one upon which they stood.
As the ape-man drew himself to the third beam he saw an opening directly before his face, and through the opening a star. Now the darkness was relieved. The faint light of a partially cloudy night revealed a little section of flat roof bounded by a parapet, and when Tarzan reconnoitered further he discovered that they had ascended into one of the small towers that surmounted the castle.
As he was about to step from the tower onto the roof he heard the uncanny chuckle with which they were now so familiar, and drew back into the darkness of the interior. Silent and motionless the two stood there waiting, listening.
The chuckling was repeated, this time nearer; and to the keen ears of Tarzan came the sound of naked feet approaching. His ears told him more than this; they told him that the thing that walked did not walk alone—there was another with it.
Presently they came in sight, walking slowly. One of them, as the ape-man had guessed, was the creature that called itself God; the other was a large bull gorilla.
As they came opposite the two fugitives they stopped and leaned upon the parapet, looking down into the city.
"Henry should not have caroused tonight, Cranmer," remarked the creature called God. "He has a hard day before him tomorrow."
"How is that, My Lord God?" inquired the other.
"Have you forgotten that this is the anniversary of the completion of the Holy Stairway to Heaven?"
" 'Sblood! So it is, and Henry has to walk up it on his hands to worship at the feet of his God."
"And Henry is getting old and much too fat. The sun will be hot too. But—it humbleth the pride of kings and teacheth humility to the common people."
"Let none forget that thou art the Lord our God, O Father!" said Cranmer piously.
"And what a surprise I'll have for Henry when he reaches the top of the stairs! There I'll stand with this English girl I stole from him kneeling at my feet. You sent for her, didn't you, Cranmer?"
"Yes, My Lord, I sent one of the lesser priests to fetch her. They should be here any minute now. But, My Lord, do you think that it will be wise to anger Henry further? You know that many of the nobles are on his side and are plotting against you."
A horrid chuckle broke from the lips of the gorilla-man. "You forget that I am God," he said. "You must never forget that fact, Cranmer. Henry is forgetting it, and his poor memory will prove his undoing." The creature straightened up to its full height. An ugly growl supplanted the chuckle of a moment before. "You all forget," he cried, "that it was I who created you; it is I who can destroy you! First I shall make Henry mad, and then I shall crush him. That is the kind of god that humans like—it is the only kind they can understand. Because they are jealous and cruel and vindictive they have to have a jealous, cruel, vindictive god. I was able to give you only the minds of humans; so I have to be a god that such minds can appreciate. Tomorrow Henry shall appreciate me to the full!"
"What do you mean, My Lord?"
The gorilla god chuckled again. "When he reaches the top of the stairs I am going to blast him; I am going to destroy him."
"You are going to kill the king! But, My Lord, the Prince of Wales is too young to be king."
"He will not be king—I am tired of kings. We shall pass over Edward VI and Mary. That is one of the advantages of having God on your side, Cranmer—we shall skip eleven years and save you from burning at the stake. The next sovereign of England will be Queen Elizabeth."
"Henry has many daughters from which to choose, My Lord," said Cranmer.
"I shall choose none of them. I have just had an inspiration, Cranmer."
"From whence, My Lord God?"
"From myself, of course, you fool! It is perfect. It is ideal." He chuckled appreciatively. "I am going to make this English girl queen of England —Queen Elizabeth! She will be tractable'—she will do as I tell her; and she will serve all my other purposes as well. Or almost all. Of course I cannot eat her, Cranmer. One cannot eat his queen and have her too."
"Here conies the under priest, My Lord," interrupted Cranmer.
"He is alone," exclaimed God. "He has not brought the girl."
An old gorilla lumbered up to the two. He appeared excited.
"Where is the girl?" demanded God.
"She was not there, My Lord. She is gone, and the man too."
"Gone! But that is impossible."
"The room is empty."
"And the doors! Had they been unlocked—either of them?"
"No, My Lord; they were both locked," replied the under priest.
The gorilla god went suddenly silent. For a few moments he remained in thought; then he spoke in very low tones to Ms two companions.
Tarzan and the girl watched them from their place of concealment in the tower. The ape-man was restless. He wished that they would go away so that he could search for some avenue of escape from the castle. Alone, he might have faced them and relied on his strength and agility to win his freedom; but he could not hope to make good the escape of the girl and himself both in the face of their ignorance of a way out of the castle and the numbers which he was sure the gorilla god could call to his assistance in case of need.
He saw the priest turn and hurry away. The other two walked a short distance from the tower, turned so that they faced it, leaned against the parapet, and continued their conversation: though now Tarzan could no longer overhear their exact words. The position of the two was such that the fugitives could not have left the tower without being seen by them.
The ape-man became apprehensive. The abnormal sensibility of the hunted beast warned him of impending danger; but he did not know where to look for it, nor in what form to expect it.
Presently he saw a bull gorilla roll within the range of his vision. The beast carried a poke. Behind him came an other similarly armed, and another and another and another until twenty of the great anthropoids were gathered on the castle roof.
They clustered about Cranmer and the gorilla god for a minute or two. The latter was talking to them. Tarzan could recognize the tones if not the words. Then the twenty approached the tower and grouped themselves in a semicircle before the low aperture leading into it.
Both Rhonda Terry and the lord of the jungle were assured that their hiding place was guessed if not known, yet they could not be certain. They would wait. That was all that they could do. However, it was an easy place to defend; and they might remain there awaiting some happy circumstance that would give them a better chance of escape than was presented to them at the moment.
The gorillas on the roof seemed only to be waiting. They did not appear to be contemplating an investigation of the interior of the tower. Perhaps, thought Tarzan, they were there for some other purpose than that which he had imagined. They might have been gathered in preparation for the coming of the king to his death in the morning.
By the parapet stood the gorilla god with the bull called Cranmer. The weird chuckle of the former was the only sound that broke the silence of the night. The ape-man wondered why the thing was chuckling.
A sudden upward draft from the shaft below them brought a puff of acrid smoke and a wave of heat. Tarzan felt the girl clutch his arm. Now he knew why the gorillas waited so patiently before the entrance to the tower. Now he knew why the gorilla god chuckled,