to show himself upon the music hall stage, and upon the single
occasion that the trainer attempted force the results were such
that the unfortunate man considered himself lucky to have escaped
with his life. All that saved him was the accidental presence of
Jack Clayton, who had been permitted to visit the animal in the
dressing room reserved for him at the music hall, and had immediately
interfered when he saw that the savage beast meant serious mischief.

And after the money consideration, strong in the heart of the Russian
was the desire for revenge, which had been growing with constant
brooding over the failures and miseries of his life, which he
attributed to Tarzan; the latest, and by no means the least, of
which was Ajax's refusal to longer earn money for him. The ape's
refusal he traced directly to Tarzan, finally convincing himself
that the ape man had instructed the great anthropoid to refuse to
go upon the stage.

Paulvitch's naturally malign disposition was aggravated by the
weakening and warping of his mental and physical faculties through
torture and privation. From cold, calculating, highly intelligent
perversity it had deteriorated into the indiscriminating,
dangerous menace of the mentally defective. His plan, however, was
sufficiently cunning to at least cast a doubt upon the assertion
that his mentality was wandering. It assured him first of the
competence which Lord Greystoke had promised to pay him for the
deportation of the ape, and then of revenge upon his benefactor
through the son he idolized. That part of his scheme was crude
and brutal--it lacked the refinement of torture that had marked
the master strokes of the Paulvitch of old, when he had worked with
that virtuoso of villainy, Nikolas Rokoff--but it at least assured