"The exact reason why they inherited these human attributes and not others is still a mystery that I have not solved. But I had proved the correctness of my theory. Now I set to work to educate my wards. It was not difficult. I sent these first out as missionaries and teachers.
"As the gorillas learned and came to me for further instruction, I taught them agriculture, architecture, and building—among other things. Under my direction they built this city, which I named London, upon the river that I have called Thames. We English always take England wherever we go.
"I gave them laws, I became their god, I gave them a royal family and a nobility. They owe everything to me, and now some of them want to turn upon me and destroy me—yes, they have become very human. They have become ambitious, treacherous, cruel—they are almost men."
"But you?" asked the girl. "You are not human, You are part gorilla. How could you have been an Englishman?"
"I am an Englishman, nevertheless," replied the creature. "Once I was a very handsome Englishman. But old age overtook me. I felt my powers failing. I saw the grave beckoning. I did not wish to die, for I felt that I had only commenced to learn the secrets of life.
"I sought some means to prolong my own and to bring back youth. At last I was successful. I discovered how to segregate body cells and transfer them from one individual to another. I used young gorillas of both sexes and transplanted their virile, youthful body cells to my own body.
"I achieved success in so far as staying the ravages of old age is concerned and renewing youth, but as the body cells of the gorillas multiplied within me I began to acquire the physical characteristics of gorillas. My skin turned black, hair grew upon all parts of my body, my hands changed, my teeth; some day I shall be, to all intent and purpose, a gorilla. Or rather I should have been had it not been for the fortunate circumstance that brought you to me."
"I do not understand," said Rhonda.
"You will. With the body cells from you and this young man I shall not only insure my youth, but I shall again take on the semblance of man." His eyes burned with a mad fire.
The girl shuddered. "It is horrible!" she exclaimed.
The creature chuckled. "You will be serving a noble purpose—a far more noble purpose than as though you had merely fulfilled the prosaic biological destiny for which you were born."
"But you will not have to kill us!" she exclaimed. "You take the germ cells from gorillas without killing them. When you have taken some from us, you will let us go?"
The creature rose and came close to the bars. His yellow fangs were bared in a fiendish grin. "You do not know all," he said. A mad light shone in his blazing eyes. "I have not told you all that I have learned about rejuvenation. The new body cells are potent, but they work slowly. I have found that by eating the flesh and the glands of youth the speed of the metamorphosis is accelerated.
"I leave you now to meditate upon the great service that you are to render science!" He backed toward the far door of the other apartment. "But I will return. Later I shall eat you—eat you both. I shall eat the man first; and then, my beauty, I shall eat you! But before I eat you—ah, before I eat you!"
Chuckling, he backed through the doorway and closed the door after him.
26. TRAPPED
It looks like curtains," said the girl.
"Curtains?"
"The end of the show."
Tarzan smiled. "I suppose you mean that there is no hope for us— that we are doomed."
"It looks like it, and I am afraid. Aren't you afraid?"
"I presume that I am supposed to be, eh?"
She surveyed him from beneath puckered brows. "I cannot understand you, Stanley," she said. "You do not seem to be afraid now, but you used to be afraid of everything. Aren't you really afraid, or are you just posing —the actor, you know?"
"Perhaps I feel that what is about to happen is about to happen and that being afraid won't help any. Fear will never get us out of here alive, and I certainly don't intend to stay here and die if I can help it."
"I don't see how we are going to get out," said Rhonda.
"We are nine tenths out now."
"What do you mean?"
"We are still alive," he laughed, "and that is fully nine tenths of safety. If we were dead we would be a hundred per cent lost; so alive we should certainly be at least ninety per cent saved."
Rhonda laughed. "I didn't know you were such an optimist," she declared.
"Perhaps I have something to be optimistic about," he replied. "Do you feel that draft on the floor?"
She looked up at him quickly. There was a troubled expression in her eyes as she scrutinized his. "Perhaps you had better lie down and try to sleep," she suggested. "You are overwrought."
It was his turn to eye her. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Do I seem exhausted?"
"No, but—but I just thought the strain might have been too great on you."
"What strain?" he inquired.
"What strain!" she exclaimed. "Stanley Obroski, you come and lie down here and let me rub your head—perhaps it will put you to sleep."
"I'm not sleepy. Don't you want to get out of here?"
"Of course I do, but we can't."
"Perhaps not, but we can try. I asked you if you felt the draft on the floor."
"Of course I feel it, but what has that to do with anything. I'm not cold."
"It may not have anything to do with anything," Tarzan admitted, "but it suggests possibilities."
"What possibilities?" she demanded.
"A way out. The fresh air comes in from that other room through the bars of that door; it has to go out somewhere. The draft is so strong that it suggests a rather large opening. Do you see any large opening in this room through which the air could escape."
The girl rose to her feet. She was commencing to understand the drift of his remarks. "No," she said, "I see no opening."
"Neither do I; but there must be one, and we know that it must be some place that we cannot see." He spoke in a whisper.
"Yes, that is right."
"And the only part of this room that we can't see plainly is among the dark shadows on the ceiling over in that far corner. Also, I have felt the air current moving in that direction."
He walked over to the part of the room he had indicated and looked up into the darkness. The girl came and stood beside him, also peering upward.
"Do you see anything?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
"It is very dark," he replied, "but I think that I do see something —a little patch that appears darker than the rest, as though it had depth."
"Your eyes are better than mine," she said. "I see nothing."
From somewhere apparently directly above them, but at a distance, sounded a hollow chuckle, weird, uncanny.
Rhonda laid her hand impulsively on Tarzan's arm. "You are right," she whispered. "There is an opening above us—that sound came down through it."
"We must be very careful what we say above a whisper," he cautioned.
The opening in the ceiling, if such it were, appeared to be directly in the corner of the room. Tarzan examined the walls carefully, feeling every square foot of them as high as he could reach; but he found nothing that would give him a handhold. Then he sprang upward with outstretched hand —and felt an edge of an opening in the ceiling.
"It is there," he whispered.
"But what good will it do us? We can't reach it."