CHAPTER XIII



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 ensure 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 gateway 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.