Since he had first seen Tarzan again from the wings of the theater
there had been forming in his deadened brain the beginnings of a
desire for revenge. It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal
to attribute to others the misfortunes that are the result of their
own wickedness, and so now it was that Alexis Paulvitch was slowly
recalling the events of his past life and as he did so laying at
the door of the man whom he and Rokoff had so assiduously attempted
to ruin and murder all the misfortunes that had befallen him in
the failure of their various schemes against their intended victim.

He saw at first no way in which he could, with safety to himself,
wreak vengeance upon Tarzan through the medium of Tarzan's son; but
that great possibilities for revenge lay in the boy was apparent
to him, and so he determined to cultivate the lad in the hope that
fate would play into his hands in some way in the future. He told
the boy all that he knew of his father's past life in the jungle
and when he found that the boy had been kept in ignorance of all
these things for so many years, and that he had been forbidden
visiting the zoological gardens; that he had had to bind and gag
his tutor to find an opportunity to come to the music hall and see
Ajax, he guessed immediately the nature of the great fear that lay
in the hearts of the boy's parents--that he might crave the jungle
as his father had craved it.

And so Paulvitch encouraged the boy to come and see him often, and
always he played upon the lad's craving for tales of the savage
world with which Paulvitch was all too familiar. He left him alone
with Akut much, and it was not long until he was surprised to learn
that the boy could make the great beast understand him--that he
had actually learned many of the words of the primitive language