From the old negress, Tambudza, Tarzan had gathered a suggestion
that now filled his mind with doubts and misgivings. When the old
woman had told him of the child's death she had also added that
the white woman, though grief-stricken, had confided to her that
the baby was not hers.
Tarzan could see no reason for believing that Jane could have found
it advisable to deny her identity or that of the child; the only
explanation that he could put upon the matter was that, after all,
the white woman who had accompanied his son and the Swede into the
jungle fastness of the interior had not been Jane at all.
The more he gave thought to the problem, the more firmly convinced
he became that his son was dead and his wife still safe in London, and
in ignorance of the terrible fate that had overtaken her first-born.
After all, then, his interpretation of Rokoff's sinister taunt
had been erroneous, and he had been bearing the burden of a double
apprehension needlessly--at least so thought the ape-man. From
this belief he garnered some slight surcease from the numbing grief
that the death of his little son had thrust upon him.
And such a death! Even the savage beast that was the real Tarzan,
inured to the sufferings and horrors of the grim jungle, shuddered
as he contemplated the hideous fate that had overtaken the innocent
child.
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