Reseda, CA
“The entire affair is shrouded in mystery,” said D’Arnot. “I have it on the best of authority that neither the police nor the special agents of the general staff have the faintest conception of how it was accomplished. All they know, all that anyone knows, is that Nikolas Rokoff has escaped.” — from The Beasts of Tarzan
Lord Greystoke bellowed with rage to discover that, while his humble creator, Burroughs, was quite suddenly called away to Ogden, Utah, his offices had been burgled. It seemed that nothing had been taken, all the papers and the small bit of cash that Burroughs kept onhand remained undisturbed.
However, the office’s lovely French doors had been jimmied open, and the hinges on the safe battered, as if by a hammer. Surely this had the stink about it of Nikolas Rokoff, recently escaped from a French prison, and bent on avenging the man whose testimony had locked him away!
And then, Lord Greystoke dropped his jaw in horror. He should have realized! Of course, the bungled burglary was no more than a diversion, meant no doubt, to distract him from Rokoff’s more sinister designs. Greystoke burst through the ruined French doors of Burroughs’s office, and raced home to determine whether his archenemy had kidnapped his wife and son. Again.
