A STRANGE, FLAT TOWER
TARZAN, turning, discovered the man standing behind him on the top level
of the ivy-covered east tower of the Palace of Diamonds. His knife
leaped from its sheath at the touch of his quick fingers. But almost
simultaneously his hand dropped to his side, and he stood contemplating
the other, with an expression of incredulity upon his face that but
reflected a similar emotion registered upon the countenance of the
stranger. For what Tarzan saw was no Bolgani, nor a Gomangani, but a
white man, bald and old and shriveled, with a long, white beard—a white
man, naked but for barbaric ornaments of gold spangles and diamonds.
“God!” exclaimed the strange apparition.
Tarzan eyed the other quizzically. That single English word opened up
such tremendous possibilities for conjecture as baffled the mind of the
ape-man.
“What are you? Who are you?” continued the old man, but this time in the
dialect of the great apes.
“You used an English word a moment ago,” said Tarzan. “Do you speak that
language?” Tarzan himself spoke in English.
“Ah, dear God!” cried the old man, “that I should have lived to hear
that sweet tongue again.” And he, too, now spoke in English, halting
English, as might one who was long unaccustomed to voicing the language.
“Who are you?” asked Tarzan, “and what are you doing here?”
“It is the same question that I asked you,” replied the old man. “Do not
be afraid to answer me. You are evidently an Englishman, and you have
nothing to fear from me.”
“I am here after a woman, captured by the Bolgani,” replied Tarzan.
The other nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I know. She is here.”
“Is she safe?” asked Tarzan.
“She has not been harmed. She will be safe until tomorrow or the next
day,” replied the old man. “But who are you, and how did you find your
way here from the outer world?”
“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” replied the ape-man. “I came into this valley
looking for a way out of the valley of Opar where the life of my
companion was in danger. And you?”
“I am an old man,” replied the other, “and I have been here ever since I
was a boy. I was a stowaway on the ship that brought Stanley to Africa
after the establishment of the station on Stanley Pool, and I came into
the interior with him. I went out from camp to hunt, alone, one day. I
lost my way and later was captured by unfriendly natives. They took me
farther into the interior to their village from which I finally escaped,
but so utterly confused and lost that I had no idea what direction to
take to find a trail to the coast. I wandered thus for months, until
finally, upon an accursed day I found an entrance to this valley. I do
not know why they did not put me to death at once, but they did not, and
later they discovered that my knowledge could be turned to advantage to
them. Since then I have helped them in their quarrying and mining and in
their diamond cutting. I have given them iron drills with hardened
points and drills tipped with diamonds. Now I am practically one of
them, but always in my heart has been the hope that some day I might
escape from the valley—a hopeless hope, though, I may assure you.”
“There is no way out?” asked Tarzan.
“There is a way, but it is always guarded.”
“Where is it?” queried Tarzan.
“It is a continuation of one of the mine tunnels, passing entirely
through the mountain to the valley beyond. The mines have been worked by
the ancestors of this race for an almost incalculable length of time.
The mountains are honeycombed with their shafts and tunnels. Back of the
gold-bearing quartz lies an enormous deposit of altered peridotite,
which contains diamonds, in the search for which it evidently became
necessary to extend one of the shafts to the opposite side of the
mountain, possibly for purposes of ventilation. This tunnel and the
trail leading down into Opar are the only means of ingress to the
valley. From time immemorial they have kept the tunnel guarded, more
particularly, I imagine, to prevent the escape of slaves than to thwart
the inroads of an enemy, since they believe that there is no fear of the
latter emergency. The trail to Opar they do not guard, because they no
longer fear the Oparians, and know quite well that none of their
Gomangani slaves would dare enter the valley of the sunworshipers. For
the same reason, then, that the slaves cannot escape, we, too, must
remain prisoners here forever.”
“How is the tunnel guarded?” asked Tarzan.
“Two Bolgani and a dozen or more Gomangani warriors are always upon duty
there,” replied the old man.
“The Gomangani would like to escape?”
“They have tried it many times in the past, I am told,” replied the old
man, “though never since I have lived here, and always they were caught
and tortured. And all their race was punished and worked the harder
because of these attempts upon the part of a few.”
“They are numerous—the Gomangani?”
“There are probably five thousand of them in the valley,” replied the
old man.
“And how many Bolgani?” the ape-man asked.
“Between ten and eleven hundred.”
“Five to one,” murmured Tarzan, “and yet they are afraid to attempt to
escape.”
“But you must remember,” said the old man, “that the Bolgani are the
dominant and intelligent race—the others are intellectually little
above the beasts of the forest.”
“Yet they are men,” Tarzan reminded him.
“In figure only,” replied the old man. “They cannot band together as men
do. They have not as yet reached the community plane of evolution. It is
true that families reside in a single village, but that idea, together
with their weapons, was given to them by the Bolgani that they might not
be entirely exterminated by the lions and panthers. Formerly, I am told,
each individual Gomangani, when he became old enough to hunt for
himself, constructed a hut apart from others and took up his solitary
life, there being at that time no slightest semblance of family life.
Then the Bolgani taught them how to build palisaded villages and
compelled the men and women to remain in them and rear their children to
maturity, after which the children were required to remain in the
village, so that now some of the communities can claim as many as forty
or fifty people. But the death rate is high among them, and they cannot
multiply as rapidly as people living under normal conditions of peace
and security. The brutalities of the Bolgani kill many; the carnivora
take a considerable toll.”
“Five to one, and still they remain in slavery—what cowards they must
be,” said the ape-man.
“On the contrary, they are far from cowardly,” replied the old man.
“They will face a lion with the utmost bravery. But for so many ages
have they been subservient to the will of the Bolgani, that it has
become a fixed habit in them—as the fear of God is inherent in us, so
is the fear of the Bolgani inherent in the minds of the Gomangani from
birth.”
“It is interesting,” said Tarzan. “But tell me now where the woman is of
whom I have come in search.”
“She is your mate?” asked the old man.
“No,” replied Tarzan. “I told the Gomangani that she was, so that they
would protect her. She is La, queen of Opar, High Priestess of the
Flaming God.”
The old man looked his incredulity. “Impossible!” he cried. “It cannot
be that the queen of Opar has risked her life by coming to the home of
her hereditary enemies.”
“She was forced to it,” replied Tarzan, “her life being threatened by a
part of her people because she had refused to sacrifice me to their
god.”
“If the Bolgani knew this there would be great rejoicing,” replied the
old man.
“Tell me where she is,” demanded Tarzan. “She preserved me from her
people, and I must save her from whatever fate the Bolgani contemplate
for her.”
“It is hopeless,” said the old man. “I can tell you where she is, but
you cannot rescue her.”
“I can try,” replied the ape-man.
“But you will fail and die.”
“If what you tell me is true, that there is absolutely no chance of my
escaping from the valley, I might as well die,” replied the ape-man.
“However, I do not agree with you.”
The old man shrugged. “You do not know the Bolgani,” he said.
“Tell me where the woman is,” said Tarzan.
“Look,” replied the old man, motioning Tarzan to follow him into his
apartment, and approaching a window which faced toward the west, he
pointed towards a strange flat tower which rose above the roof of the
main building near the west end of the palace. “She is probably
somewhere in the interior of that tower,” said the old man to Tarzan,
“but as far as you are concerned, she might as well be at the north
pole.”
Tarzan stood in silence for a moment, his keen eyes taking in every
salient detail of the prospect before him. He saw the strange,
flat-topped tower, which it seemed to him might be reached from the roof
of the main building. He saw, too, branches of the ancient trees that
sometimes topped the roof itself, and except for the dim light shining
through some of the palace windows he saw no signs of life. He turned
suddenly upon the old man.
“I do not know you,” he said, “but I believe that I may trust you, since
after all blood ties are strong, and we are the only men of our race in
this valley. You might gain something in favor by betraying me, but I
cannot believe that you will do it.”
“Do not fear,” said the old man, “I hate them. If I could help you I
would, but I know that there is no hope of success for whatever plan you
may have in mind—the woman will never be rescued; you will never leave
the Valley of the Palace of Diamonds—you will never leave the palace
itself unless the Bolgani wish it.”
The ape-man grinned. “You have been here so long,” he said, “that you
are beginning to assume the attitude of mind that keeps the Gomangani in
perpetual slavery. If you want to escape, come with me. We may not
succeed, but at least you will have a better chance if you try than as
if you remained forever in this tower.”
The old man shook his head. “No,” he said, “it is hopeless. If escape
had been possible I should have been away from here long ago.”
“Good-bye then,” said Tarzan, and swinging out of the window he
clambered toward the roof below, along the stout stem of the old ivy.
The old man watched him for a moment until he saw him make his way
carefully across the roof toward the flat-topped tower where he hoped to
find and liberate La. Then the old fellow turned and hurried rapidly
down the crude stairway that rose ladder-like to the center of the
tower.
Tarzan made his way across the uneven roof of the main building,
clambering up the sides of its higher elevations and dropping again to
its lower levels as he covered a considerable distance between the east
tower and that flat-topped structure of peculiar design in which La was
supposed to be incarcerated. His progress was slow, for he moved with
the caution of a beast of prey, stopping often in dense shadows to
listen.
When at last he reached the tower, he found that it had many openings
letting upon the roof—openings which were closed only with hangings of
the heavy tapestried stuff which he had seen in the tower. Drawing one
of these slightly aside he looked within upon a large chamber, bare of
furnishings, from the center of which there protruded through a circular
aperture the top of a stairway similar to that he had ascended in the
east tower. There was no one in sight within the chamber, and Tarzan
crossed immediately to the stairway. Peering cautiously into the opening
Tarzan saw that the stairway descended for a great distance, passing
many floors. How far it went he could not judge, except it seemed likely
that it pierced subterranean chambers beneath the palace. Sounds of life
came up to him through the shaft, and odors, too, but the latter largely
nullified, in so far as the scent impressions which they offered Tarzan
were concerned, by the heavy incense which pervaded the entire palace.
It was this perfume that was to prove the ape-man’s undoing, for
otherwise his keen nostrils would have detected the scent of a near-by
Gomangani. The fellow lay behind one of the hangings at an aperture in
the tower wall. He had been lying in such a position that he had seen
Tarzan enter the chamber, and he was watching him now as the ape-man
stood looking down the shaft of the stairway. The eyes of the black had
at first gone wide in terror at sight of this strange apparition, the
like of which he had never seen before. Had the creature been of
sufficient intelligence to harbor superstition, he would have thought
Tarzan a god descended from above. But being of too low an order to
possess any imagination whatsoever, he merely knew that he saw a strange
creature, and that all strange creatures must be enemies, he was
convinced. His duty was to apprise his masters of this presence in the
palace, but he did not dare to move until the apparition had reached a
sufficient distance from him to insure that the movements of the
Gomangani would not be noticed by the intruder—he did not care to call
attention to himself, for he had found that the more one effaced oneself
in the presence of the Bolgani, the less one was likely to suffer. For a
long time the stranger peered down the shaft of the stairway, and for a
long time the Gomangani lay quietly watching him. But at last the former
descended the stairs and passed out of sight of the watcher, who
immediately leaped to his feet and scurried away across the roof of the
palace toward a large tower arising at its western end.
As Tarzan descended the ladder the fumes of the incense became more and
more annoying. Where otherwise he might have investigated quickly by
scent he was now compelled to listen for every sound, and in many cases
to investigate the chambers opening upon the central corridor by
entering them. Where the doors were locked, he lay flat and listened
close to the aperture at their base. On several occasions he risked
calling La by name, but in no case did he receive any reply.
He had investigated four landings and was descending to the fifth when
he saw standing in one of the doorways upon this level an evidently much
excited and possibly terrified black. The fellow was of giant
proportions and entirely unarmed. He stood looking at the ape-man with
wide eyes as the latter jumped lightly from the stairway and stood
facing him upon the same level.
“What do you want?” finally stammered the black. “Are you looking for
the white she, your mate, whom the Bolgani took?”
“Yes,” replied Tarzan. “What do you know of her?”
“I know where she is hidden,” replied the black, “and if you will follow
me I will lead you to her.”
“Why do you offer to do this for me?” asked Tarzan, immediately
suspicious. “Why is it that you do not go at once to your masters and
tell them that I am here that they may send men to capture me?”
“I do not know the reason that I was sent to tell you this,” replied the
black. “The Bolgani sent me. I did not wish to come for I was afraid.”
“Where did they tell you to lead me?” asked Tarzan.
“I am to lead you into a chamber, the door of which will be immediately
bolted upon us. You will then be a prisoner.”
“And you?” inquired Tarzan.
“I, too, shall be a prisoner with you. The Bolgani do not care what
becomes of me. Perhaps you will kill me, but they do not care.”
“If you lead me into a trap I shall kill you,” replied Tarzan. “But if
you lead me to the woman perhaps we shall all escape. You would like to
escape, would you not?”
“I should like to escape, but I cannot.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“No, I have not. Why should I try to do something that cannot be done?”
“If you lead me into the trap I shall surely kill you. If you lead me to
the woman, you at least have the chance that I do to live. Which will
you do?”
The black scratched his head in thought, the idea slowly filtering
through his stupid mind. At last he spoke.
“You are very wise,” he said. “I will lead you to the woman.”
“Go ahead, then,” said Tarzan, “and I will follow you.”
The black descended to the next level and opening the door entered a
long, straight corridor. As the ape-man followed his guide he had
leisure to reflect upon the means through which the Bolgani had learned
of his presence in the tower, and the only conclusion he could arrive at
was that the old man had betrayed him, since in so far as Tarzan was
aware he alone knew that the ape-man was in the palace. The corridor
along which the black was leading him was very dark, receiving a dim and
inadequate illumination from the dimly lighted corridor they had just
left, the door into which remained open behind them. Presently the black
stopped, before a closed door.
“The woman is in there,” said the black, pointing to the door.
“She is alone?” asked Tarzan.
“No,” replied the black. “Look,” and he opened the door, revealing a
heavy hanging, which he gently separated, revealing to Tarzan the
interior of the chamber beyond.
Seizing the black by the wrist, that he might not escape, Tarzan stepped
forward and put his eyes to the aperture. Before him lay a large
chamber, at one end of which was a raised dais, the base of which was of
a dark, ornately carved wood. The central figure upon this dais was a
huge, black-maned lion—the same that Tarzan had seen escorted through
the gardens of the palace. His golden chains were now fastened to rings
in the floor, while the four blacks stood in statuesque rigidity, two
upon either side of the beast. Upon golden thrones behind the lion sat
three magnificently ornamented Bolgani. At the foot of the steps leading
to the stair stood La, between two Gomangani guards. Upon either side of
a central aisle were carved benches facing the dais, and occupying the
front section of these were some fifty Bolgani, among whom Tarzan almost
immediately espied the little, old man that he had met in the tower, the
sight of whom instantly crystallized the ape-man’s conviction of the
source of his betrayal.
The chamber was lighted by hundreds of cressets, burning a substance
which gave forth both light and the heavy incense that had assailed
Tarzan’s nostrils since first he entered the domain of the Bolgani. The
long, cathedralesque windows upon one side of the apartment were thrown
wide, admitting the soft air of the jungle summer night. Through them
Tarzan could see the palace grounds and that this chamber was upon the
same level as the terrace upon which the palace stood. Beyond those
windows was an open gate-way to the jungle and freedom, but interposed
between him and the windows were fifty armed gorilla-men. Perhaps, then,
strategy would be a better weapon than force with which to carve his way
to freedom with La. Yet to the forefront of his mind was evidently a
belief in the probability that in the end it would be force rather than
strategy upon which he must depend. He turned to the black at his side.
“Would the Gomangani guarding the lion like to escape from the Bolgani?”
he asked.
“The Gomangani would all escape if they could,” replied the black.
“If it is necessary for me to enter the room, then,” said Tarzan to the
black, “will you accompany me and tell the other Gomangani that if they
will fight for me I will take them out of the valley?”
“I will tell them, but they will not believe,” replied the black.
“Tell them that they will die if they do not help me, then,” said
Tarzan.
“I will tell them.”
As Tarzan turned his attention again to the chamber before him he saw
that the Bolgani occupying the central golden throne was speaking.
“Nobles of Numa, King of Beasts, Emperor of All Created Things,” he said
in deep, growling tones, “Numa has heard the words that this she has
spoken, and it is the will of Numa that she die. The Great Emperor is
hungry. He, himself, will devour her here in the presence of his Nobles
and the Imperial Council of Three. It is the will of Numa.”
A growl of approval arose from the beast-like audience, while the great
lion bared his hideous fangs and roared until the palace trembled, his
wicked, yellow-green eyes fixed terribly upon the woman before him,
evidencing the fact that these ceremonies were of sufficient frequency
to have accustomed the lion to what he might expect as the logical
termination of them.
“Day after tomorrow,” continued the speaker, “the mate of this creature,
who is by this time safely imprisoned in the Tower of the Emperors, will
be brought before Numa for judgment. Slaves,” he cried suddenly in a
loud voice, rising to his feet and glaring at the guards holding La,
“drag the woman to your emperor.”
Instantly the lion became frantic, lashing its tail and straining at its
stout chains, roaring and snarling as it reared upon its hind feet and
sought to leap upon La, who was now being forcibly conducted up the
steps of the dais toward the bejeweled man-eater so impatiently awaiting
her.
She did not cry out in terror, but she sought to twist herself free from
the detaining hands of the powerful Gomangani—all futilely, however.
They had reached the last step, and were about to push La into the claws
of the lion, when they were arrested by a loud cry from one side of the
chamber—a cry that halted the Gomangani and brought the assembled
Bolgani to their feet in astonishment and anger, for the sight that met
their eyes was well qualified to arouse the latter within them. Leaping
into the room with raised spear was the almost naked white man of whom
they had heard, but whom none of them had as yet seen. And so quick was
he that in the very instant of entry—even before they could rise to
their feet—he had launched his spear.