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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 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 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

The Beasts of Tarzan