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vindictiveness upon his lips.
To his surprise Jane Clayton rose and, without a word of protest,
laid the little bundle in his arms.
"Here is the child," she said. "Thank God he is beyond
your power to harm."
Grasping the import of her words, Rokoff snatched the blanket
from the child's face to seek confirmation of his fears.
Jane Clayton watched his expression closely.
She had been puzzled for days for an answer to the question
of Rokoff's knowledge of the child's identity. If she had
been in doubt before the last shred of that doubt was wiped
away as she witnessed the terrible anger of the Russian as he
looked upon the dead face of the baby and realized that at
the last moment his dearest wish for vengeance had been
thwarted by a higher power.
Almost throwing the body of the child back into Jane Clayton's arms,
Rokoff stamped up and down the hut, pounding the air with his
clenched fists and cursing terribly. At last he halted in front
of the young woman, bringing his face down close to hers.
"You are laughing at me," he shrieked. "You think that
you have beaten me--eh? I'll show you, as I have shown the
miserable ape you call `husband,' what it means to interfere
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with the plans of Nikolas Rokoff.
"You have robbed me of the child. I cannot make him the
son of a cannibal chief, but"--and he paused as though to
let the full meaning of his threat sink deep--"I can make the
mother the wife of a cannibal, and that I shall do--after I
have finished with her myself."
If he had thought to wring from Jane Clayton any
sign of terror he failed miserably. She was beyond that.
Her brain and nerves were numb to suffering and shock.
To his surprise a faint, almost happy smile touched her lips.
She was thinking with thankful heart that this poor little
corpse was not that of her own wee Jack, and that--best of all--
Rokoff evidently did not know the truth.
She would have liked to have flaunted the fact in his face,
but she dared not. If he continued to believe that the child
had been hers, so much safer would be the real Jack wherever
he might be. She had, of course, no knowledge of the whereabouts
of her little son--she did not know, even, that he still
lived, and yet there was the chance that he might.
It was more than possible that without Rokoff's knowledge
this child had been substituted for hers by one of the Russian's
confederates, and that even now her son might be safe
with friends in London, where there were many, both able
and willing, to have paid any ransom which the traitorous
conspirator might have asked for the safe release of Lord
Greystoke's son.
She had thought it all out a hundred times since she had
discovered that the baby which Anderssen had placed in her
arms that night upon the Kincaid was not her own, and it had
been a constant and gnawing source of happiness to her to
dream the whole fantasy through in its every detail.
No, the Russian must never know that this was not her baby.
She realized that her position was hopeless--with Anderssen
and her husband dead there was no one in all the world with
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a desire to succour her who knew where she might be found.
Rokoff's threat, she realized, was no idle one. That he
would do, or attempt to do, all that he had promised, she
was perfectly sure; but at the worst it meant but a little earlier
release from the hideous anguish that she had been enduring.
She must find some way to take her own life before the Russian
could harm her further.
Just now she wanted time--time to think and prepare herself
for the end. She felt that she could not take the last,
awful step until she had exhausted every possibility of escape.
She did not care to live unless she might find her way
back to her own child, but slight as such a hope appeared
she would not admit its impossibility until the last moment
had come, and she faced the fearful reality of choosing between
the final alternatives--Nikolas Rokoff on one hand and
self-destruction upon the other.
"Go away!" she said to the Russian. "Go away and leave me
in peace with my dead. Have you not brought sufficient misery
and anguish upon me without attempting to harm me further?
What wrong have I ever done you that you should persist
in persecuting me?"
"You are suffering for the sins of the monkey you chose
when you might have had the love of a gentleman--of Nikolas
Rokoff," he replied. "But where is the use in discussing
the matter? We shall bury the child here, and you will
return with me at once to my own camp. Tomorrow I shall
bring you back and turn you over to your new husband--the
lovely M'ganwazam. Come!"
He reached out for the child. Jane, who was on her feet
now, turned away from him.
"I shall bury the body," she said. "Send some men to dig
a grave outside the village."
Rokoff was anxious to have the thing over and get back to
his camp with his victim. He thought he saw in her apathy a
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resignation to her fate. Stepping outside the hut, he motioned
her to follow him, and a moment later, with his men, he
escorted Jane beyond the village, where beneath a great tree
the blacks scooped a shallow grave.
Wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, Jane laid it tenderly
in the black hole, and, turning her head that she might not
see the mouldy earth falling upon the pitiful little bundle,
she breathed a prayer beside the grave of the nameless waif
that had won its way to the innermost recesses of her heart.
Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose and followed the Russian
through the Stygian blackness of the jungle, along the winding,
leafy corridor that led from the village of M'ganwazam, the
black cannibal, to the camp of Nikolas Rokoff, the white fiend.
Beside them, in the impenetrable thickets that fringed the path,
rising to arch above it and shut out the moon, the girl could
hear the stealthy, muffled footfalls of great beasts, and ever
round about them rose the deafening roars of hunting lions,
until the earth trembled to the mighty sound.
The porters lighted torches now and waved them upon either
hand to frighten off the beasts of prey. Rokoff urged
them to greater speed, and from the quavering note in his
voice Jane Clayton knew that he was weak from terror.
The sounds of the jungle night recalled most vividly the
days and nights that she had spent in a similar jungle with
her forest god--with the fearless and unconquerable Tarzan
of the Apes. Then there had been no thoughts of terror,
though the jungle noises were new to her, and the roar of a
lion had seemed the most awe-inspiring sound upon the great earth.
How different would it be now if she knew that he was
somewhere there in the wilderness, seeking her! Then, indeed,
would there be that for which to live, and every reason
to believe that succour was close at hand--but he was dead!
It was incredible that it should be so.
There seemed no place in death for that great body and
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those mighty thews. Had Rokoff been the one to tell her of
her lord's passing she would have known that he lied.
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