'And you dare to spurn my love!' She was breathing heavily, her breasts rising and falling to the tumultuous urge of her emotions.
'It is no question of love between us,' replied the ape-man. 'To me it is only a question of liberty and life for myself and my companions.'
'You love another?' questioned Janzara.
'Yes,' Tarzan told her.
'Who is she?' demanded the princess.
'Will you come quietly, or shall I be compelled to carry you away by force?' asked the ape-man, ignoring her question.
For a moment the woman stood silently before him, her every muscle tensed, her dark eyes two blazing wells of fire, and then slowly her expression changed. Her face softened and she stretched one hand toward him.
'I will help you, Zuanthrol,' she said. 'I will help you to escape. Because I love you I shall do this. Come! Follow me!' She turned and moved softly across the apartment.
'But my companions,' said the ape-man. 'I cannot go without them.'
'Where are they?'
He did not tell her, for as yet he was none too sure of her motives.
'Show me the way,' he said, 'and I can return for them.'
'Yes,' she replied, 'I will show you and then perhaps you will love me better than you love the other.'
In the passage behind the paneling Talaskar and Komodoflorensal awaited the outcome of Tarzan's venture. Distinctly to their ears came every word of the conversation between the ape-man and the princess.
'He loves you,' said Komodoflorensal. 'You see, he loves you.'
'I see nothing of the kind,' returned Talaskar. 'Because he does not love the Princess Janzara is no proof that he loves me.'
'But he does love you—and you love him! I have seen it since first he came. Would that he were not my friend, for then I might run him through.'
'Why would you run him through because he loves me—if he does?' demanded the girl. 'Am I so low that you would rather see your friend dead than mated with me?'
'I—' he hesitated. 'I cannot tell you what I mean.'
The girl laughed, and then suddenly sobered. 'She is leading him from her apartment. We had better follow.'
As Talaskar laid her fingers upon the spring that actuated the lock holding the panel in place, Janzara led Tarzan across her chamber toward a doorway in one of the side walls—not the doorway through which her slave had departed.
'Follow me,' whispered the princess, 'and you will see what the love of Janzara means.'
Tarzan, not entirely assured of her intentions, followed her warily.
'You are afraid,' she said. 'You do not trust me! Well, come here then and look, yourself, into this chamber before you enter.'
Komodoflorensal and Talaskar had but just stepped into the apartment when Tarzan approached the door to one side of which Janzara stood. They saw the floor give suddenly beneath his feet and an instant later Zuanthrol had disappeared. As he shot down a polished chute he heard a wild laugh from Janzara following him into the darkness of the unknown.
Komodoflorensal and Talaskar leaped quickly across the chamber, but too late. The floor that had given beneath Tarzan's feet had slipped quietly back into place. Janzara stood above the spot trembling with anger and staring down at the place where the ape-man had disappeared. She shook as an aspen shakes in the breeze—shook in the mad tempest of her own passions.
'If you will not come to me you shall never go to another!' she screamed, and then she turned and saw Komodoflorensal and Talaskar running toward her. What followed occurred so quickly that it would be impossible to record the facts in the brief time that they actually consumed. It was over almost before Tarzan reached the bottom of the chute and picked himself from the earthen floor upon which he had been deposited.
The room in which he found himself was lighted by several candles burning in iron-barred niches. Opposite him was a heavy gate of iron bars through which he could see another lighted apartment in which a man, his chin sagging dejectedly upon his breast, was seated upon a low bench. At the sound of Tarzan's precipitate entrance into the adjoining chamber the man looked up and at sight of Zuanthrol, leaped to his feet.
'Quick! To your left!' he cried, and Tarzan, turning, saw two huge, green-eyed beasts crouching to spring.
His first impulse was to rub his eyes as one might to erase the phantom figures of a disquieting dream, for what he saw were two ordinary African wildcats—ordinary in contour and markings, but in size gigantic. For an instant the ape-man forgot that he was but one-fourth his normal size, and that the cats, that appeared to him as large as full-grown lions, were in reality but average specimens of their kind.
As they came toward him he whipped out his sword, prepared to battle for his life with these great felines as he had so often before with their mighty cousins of his own jungle.
'If you can hold them off until you reach this gate,' cried the man in the next chamber, 'I can let you through. The bolt is upon this side,' but even as he spoke one of the cats charged.
Komodoflorensal, brushing past Janzara, leaped for the spot upon the floor at which Tarzan had disappeared and as it gave beneath him he heard a savage cry break from the lips of the Princess of Veltopismakus.
'So it is you he loves?' she screamed. 'But he shall not have you—no! not even in death!' and that was all that Komodoflorensal heard as the black chute swallowed him.
Talaskar, confronted by the infuriated Janzara, halted, and then stepped back, for the princess was rushing upon her with drawn dagger.
'Die, slave!' she screamed, as she lunged for the white breast of Talaskar, but the slave girl caught the other's wrist and a moment later they went down, locked in one another's embrace. Together they rolled about the floor, the daughter of Elkomoelhago seeking to drive her slim blade into the breast of the slave girl, while Talaskar fought to hold off the menacing steel and to close with her fingers upon the throatof her antagonist.
As the first cat charged the other followed, not to be robbed of its share of the flesh of the kill, for both were half-starved and ravenous, and as the ape-man met the charge of the first, sidestepping its rush and springing in again to thrust at its side, Komodoflorensal, who had drawn his sword as he entered the apartment of Janzara, shot into the subterranean den almost into the teeth of the second beast, which was so disconcerted by the sudden appearance of this second human that it wheeled and sprang to the far end of the den before it could gather its courage for another attack.
In the chamber above, Talaskar and Janzara fought savagely, two she-tigers in human form. They rolled to and fro about the room, straining and striking; Janzara screaming: 'Die, slave! You shall not have him!' But Talaskar held her peace and saved her breath, so that slowly she was overcoming the other when they chanced to roll upon the very spot that had let Tarzan and Komodoflorensal to the pit beneath.
As Janzara realized what had happened she uttered a scream of terror. 'The cats! The cats!' she cried, and then the two disappeared into the black shaft.
Komodoflorensal did not follow the cat that had retreated to the far end of the pit; but sprang at once to Tarzan's aid, and together they drove off the first beast as they backed toward the gate where the man in the adjoining chamber stood ready to admit them to the safety of his own apartment.
The two cats charged and then retreated, springing in quickly and away again as quickly, for they had learned the taste of the sharp steel with which the humans were defending themselves. The two men were almost at the gate, another instant and they could spring through. The cats charged again and again were driven to the far corner of the pit. The man in the next chamber swung open the gate.
'Quick!' he cried, and at the same instant two figures shot from the mouth of the shaft and, locked tightly in one another's embrace, rolled to the floor of the pit directly in the path of the charging carnivores.
Chapter Twenty
