The door of this room was closed. With drooping shoulders and dull
eyes Tarzan stood gazing dumbly at the insensate panel which hid
from him what horrid secret he dared not even guess.
Slowly, with leaden feet, he moved toward the door. Gropingly his
hand reached for the knob. Thus he stood for another long minute,
and then with a sudden gesture he straightened his giant frame,
threw back his mighty shoulders and, with fearless head held high,
swung back the door and stepped across the threshold into the
room which held for him the dearest memories and associations of
his life. No change of expression crossed his grim and stern-set
features as he strode across the room and stood beside the little
couch and the inanimate form which lay face downward upon it; the
still, silent thing that had pulsed with life and youth and love.
No tear dimmed the eye of the ape-man, but the God who made him alone
could know the thoughts that passed through that still half-savage
brain. For a long time he stood there just looking down upon the
dead body, charred beyond recognition, and then he stooped and lifted
it in his arms. As he turned the body over and saw how horribly
death had been meted he plumbed, in that instant, the uttermost
depths of grief and horror and hatred.
Nor did he require the evidence of the broken German rifle in the
outer room, or the torn and blood-stained service cap upon the
floor, to tell him who had been the perpetrators of this horrid
and useless crime.
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