"
"Many slaves are brought to the city?" asked Tarzan.
"Yes," she replied.
"And many strangers come from other lands?" he asked.
She shook her head negatively. "Only the Ho-don from the other
side of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho," she replied, "and they are
not strangers."
"Am I then the first stranger to enter the gates of A-lur?" he
asked.
"Can it be," she parried, "that the son of Jad-ben-Otho need question
a poor ignorant mortal like O-lo-a?"
"As I told you before," replied Tarzan, "Jad-ben-Otho alone is
all-knowing."
"Then if he wished you to know this thing," retorted O-lo-a quickly,
"you would know it."
Inwardly the ape-man smiled that this little heathen's astuteness
should beat him at his own game, yet in a measure her evasion
of the question might be an answer to it. "There have been other
strangers here then recently?" he persisted.
"I cannot tell you what I do not know," she replied. "Always is
the palace of Ko-tan filled with rumors, but how much fact and how
much fancy how may a woman of the palace know?"
"There has been such a rumor then?" he asked.
"It was only rumor that reached the Forbidden Garden," she replied.
"It described, perhaps, a woman of another race?" As he put the
question and awaited her answer he thought that his heart ceased
to beat, so grave to him was the issue at stake.
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