For a month Tarzan was a regular and very welcome devotee at the
shrine of the beautiful Countess de Coude. Often he met other
members of the select little coterie that dropped in for tea of an
afternoon. More often Olga found devices that would give her an
hour of Tarzan alone.

For a time she had been frightened by what Nikolas had insinuated.
She had not thought of this big, young man as anything more than
friend, but with the suggestion implanted by the evil words of
her brother she had grown to speculate much upon the strange force
which seemed to attract her toward the gray-eyed stranger. She
did not wish to love him, nor did she wish his love.

She was much younger than her husband, and without having realized
it she had been craving the haven of a friendship with one nearer
her own age. Twenty is shy in exchanging confidences with forty.
Tarzan was but two years her senior. He could understand her, she
felt. Then he was clean and honorable and chivalrous. She was not
afraid of him. That she could trust him she had felt instinctively
from the first.

From a distance Rokoff had watched this growing intimacy with
malicious glee. Ever since he had learned that Tarzan knew that
he was a Russian spy there had been added to his hatred for the
ape-man a great fear that he would expose him. He was but waiting
now until the moment was propitious for a master stroke. He wanted
to rid himself forever of Tarzan, and at the same time reap an ample