Chapter 4 The Countess Explains

"Your Paris is more dangerous than my savage jungles, Paul,"

concluded Tarzan, after narrating his adventures to his friend the

morning following his encounter with the apaches and police in the

Rue Maule. "Why did they lure me there? Were they hungry?"

D'Arnot feigned a horrified shudder, but he laughed at the quaint

suggestion.

"It is difficult to rise above the jungle standards and reason

by the light of civilized ways, is it not, my friend?" he queried

banteringly.

"Civilized ways, forsooth," scoffed Tarzan. "Jungle standards do

not countenance wanton atrocities. There we kill for food and for

self-preservation, or in the winning of mates and the protection

of the young. Always, you see, in accordance with the dictates of

some great natural law. But here! Faugh, your civilized man is

more brutal than the brutes. He kills wantonly, and, worse than

that, he utilizes a noble sentiment, the brotherhood of man, as a

lure to entice his unwary victim to his doom. It was in answer to

an appeal from a fellow being that I hastened to that room where

the assassins lay in wait for me.

"I did not realize, I could not realize for a long time afterward,

that any woman could sink to such moral depravity as that one must

have to call a would-be rescuer to death. But it must have been

so--the sight of Rokoff there and the woman's later repudiation of

me to the police make it impossible to place any other construction

upon her acts. Rokoff must have known that I frequently passed

through the Rue Maule. He lay in wait for me--his entire scheme

worked out to the last detail, even to the woman's story in case

a hitch should occur in the program such as really did happen. It

is all perfectly plain to me."

"Well," said D'Arnot, "among other things, it has taught you what

I have been unable to impress upon you--that the Rue Maule is a

good place to avoid after dark."