Nineteen - Ape Man in the House of Usher

He was running, in the dream he was always running. Not away from the sounds of battle as one might expect, but towards them – always towards them. His feet pounded the uneven ground as the sounds of screaming and explosions grew louder and louder in his ears. “Not this time,” he kept thinking, “this time I’ll be in time, this time I’ll warn them. This time…” But as is constantly the way in dreams, it was always too late. He skidded to a halt before the waterfront to see hundreds of planes buzzing above like some angry hive of insects, the droning noise of their engines a fierce hum in the air that accompanied the brutal explosions erupting from the bombs they dropped upon the vessels beneath them. Battleships and aircraft carriers rolled in the red waves, their decks breaking apart with fire, their hulls cracking like eggshells as the crews aboard raced back and forth, looking for a way to defend themselves, looking for a way to escape, looking in vain. There were bodies in the water, a raging sea already red with blood. He watched in horror as the planes circled and dropped towards the nearby aircraft fields, where pilots were racing to get their vehicles in the air, to fight back. The strafing of the planes sent an onslaught of bullets through both metal and flesh, the parked aircraft and their valiant crews torn to pieces before they even had a chance to get airborne. And there he stood upon the periphery, helpless to do anything, mouth wide in a perpetual scream as the world he knew was torn to pieces right in front of his very eyes…

Edgar Rice Burroughs awoke with a start, savagely shaking sleep from him with a toss of his head, running both hands across his face as if to forcefully wipe the lingering remnants of the dream away. It had been the same dream every night since it had happened, just over a year ago now. The attack on Pearl Harbor; the surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet. The naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, had been torn to pieces right in front of his eyes and he’d had trouble sleeping ever since. His good friend General Green had told him more than once that he made loud howling noises in the midst of his nightmares; apparently the howling screams had been enough to scare multiple guests at the Niumalu Hotel where he’d been staying in Hawaii.

“Oh, that’s just how I dream up all the extraordinary characters and outlandish plots for my books,” he’d lied when Green had asked him about it. “I always dream about the strangest things – I make sure I keep a notebook by my bedside and when I wake up, I jot it all down for my stories.” But it wasn’t John Carter of Mars or Carson of Venus or Black Bear of the Apache or the Moon Maid or Tanar of Savage Pellucidar, or even Tarzan of the Apes that he dreamt about – it was war. It was the nightmare of bloody and terrifying war ripping the world apart around him, and him always powerless to stop it.

The US was well and truly entrenched in the war now, and Ed was right behind it. The President had described 7 December 1941, the date of the Pearl Harbour attack, as a date that would live in infamy, and Ed was certain that it would, but already a year had passed since then, a year of torment and terror across the world. He had awoken to the morning of Thursday 31 December 1942 knowing that New Year’s Eve was beckoning, but he wasn’t much in the mood to celebrate. It looked like 1943 would be nothing more than another year of conflict and destruction for everyone. Ed swung his legs out from under the covers, placing both feet firmly on the floor, thinking that whatever the new year brought, he would do his best to meet it head on, with strength and tenacity.

“But first,” he muttered quietly to himself, “I need a haircut.”

He performed his morning ablutions and dressed in his military uniform, noting that he had very little in the way of clean clothes remaining in his suitcase. Having arrived in Australia just before Christmas, he had found that everything had been closed for the holidays. He was hopeful that today he might have more luck in locating a barber and a laundromat somewhere in the city of Sydney where he was currently staying. Hopeful, but realistically resigned to another fruitless day of searching empty city streets. Before departing he looked for a moment at the typewriter that sat upon the desk in the corner of his hotel room. As ever he felt the pull of its gravity, the desire to start hammering away at the keys and create something new. The typewriter went with him everywhere; it was the weapon he was most qualified to wield against the enemy in the ongoing war effort. With difficulty he turned away from it and exited the room.

As he walked across the reception area towards the exit doors of the hotel, Ed heard his name called repeatedly from nearby.

“Major Burroughs,” a female voice called, loudly but uncertainly, “oh, Major Burroughs.”

It was the young woman who worked the reception desk through the morning period at Usher’s Metropolitan Hotel. Ed turned and made his way to the desk, smiling broadly as he did so.

“Hello there,” he grinned, “and what can I do for you this fine morning?” She treated him to a smile in return.

“I’m glad I caught you before you left,” she replied. “A gentleman from the newspapers called earlier and left a message to say he’d meet you here later today for an interview, if that still suits you. He mentioned cocktails at the first-floor lounge.”

“Oh sure,” Ed nodded. “I’ll be back in time for that – I’m just going for a bit of a walk. Actually, I’m hoping I might be able to get a haircut.” With a final nod and smile he made his way toward the exit, where a smiling doorman held the path open for him to venture forth onto the streets of Sydney.

As he left the hotel he turned to his right, moving away from the intersection with King Street, continuing along Castlereagh Street toward the north. He passed restaurants and bars, all closed up and dark, although he reasoned with New Year’s Eve being tonight, they would be bound to open later in the day. As he crossed Martin Place he spied the grand Australia Hotel across the road to the left of him, opened in 1891 according to an engraving on the structure. It might have looked grand, but personally Ed preferred Ushers, its style suited his temperament more and they made a mean steak and kidney pie. A tram trundled past him as he continued on. As it turned the corner on Hunter Street, he opted to do the same, wandering uphill to the east until he reached the Mitchell Building, part of the Public Library of New South Wales.

Unable to resist, Ed made his way up towards it. It was an impressive sandstone structure, the entry flowing up a set of steps that led through vast columns to a portico, beyond which was an ornate vestibule with a reproduction of the Tasman Map set in marble mosaic upon its floor. He could see ahead through a further set of glass doors the main reading room. Desks and chairs were spread evenly across the interior space, with each wall packed with shelves of books. In fact, above the ground level there were a further two floors of bookshelves, ringed by balcony walkways and reached by criss-crossing stairs, all three storeys of volumes visibly towering upward on every side. It made one feel as though they were at the bottom of a well made of neatly stacked books. Increasing the well illusion was a vast skylight set in the roof, sunlight illuminating the room and the various librarians and readers that scurried here and there across its interior.

Ed was tempted to wander in, to further explore the magnificent collection spread out before him, but a sudden pang held him back. He remembered the various literary reviewers, librarians and so-called intelligentsia who had either ignored or intentionally boycotted his works back home. It wasn’t universally so of course, he’d actually written once to the librarian of Syracuse, New York after hearing his works had been removed from the shelves. The librarian had explained it wasn’t the officials that had been removing them, but rather that they kept being stolen by avid readers and the library struggled to keep replacing them fast enough. The Los Angeles Public Library had banned his books though, which was still a sore point. He had no idea what librarians thought about him in Sydney, Australia, but in many ways he wasn’t too keen to find out. Instead, he turned away from the beauty of the library and headed north, making his way into the grounds of the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens.

The beauty of nature never failed to take Ed’s breath away, so he took his time as he ambled along the wide paths that ran past statues and plinths and gardens rich with vibrant growth, from cascading beds of brightly coloured flowers to a mixture of trees both exotic and elegant. He crossed artificial irrigation channels via small ornamental bridges, slowly making his way north again. He passed the ornate Conservatorium building, then the extravagant architecture of Government House, before emerging from the gardens at Bennelong Point. Another extravagant structure was situated there and, just for a moment, he mistook it for a military emplacement, so much did it look to him like a sea fort. It was only when a tram trundled past and sidled into the structure that he realised what it really was, a tram depot, although a surprisingly elaborate one. He walked around it and entered the park that sat on its far side, still staring at the depot with a furrowed brow as he tried to work it out.

“You won’t be able to report there for duty I’m afraid,” smiled an elderly man from nearby in the park, noticing Ed’s consternation. He was walking his dog, a small white terrier who currently seemed to be fascinated by the scents of a nearby tree.

“I was just wondering,” Ed admitted, “why a tram depot would look like a military emplacement?”

“Ha,” the man replied. “No wonder you’re confused. From your accent I’m guessing you must be out from America.” Ed nodded his confirmation with a half-smile. “Well,” the man continued, “this used to be a fort – Fort Macquarie to be exact. They knocked it down to build the tram depot but decided to design the depot so it looked like the fort that was here before.”

“I see,” Ed nodded. He looked around the park, noting it was absent of people apart from himself, the man and his dog. The Sydney streets and Botanic Gardens had been similarly empty on his walk. “It seems to be pretty quiet here today,” he commented.

“You should have been here a few months back,” the old man replied. “The Japanese sub was on display in the park then and you couldn’t move for people.”

“Japanese sub?” Ed queried uncertainly.

“Oh, back at the end of May,” the man explained, “the Japs sent some midget submarines into Sydney Harbour to attack. I had friends who were out on the harbour that night – they said they got the news while they were on the water and the ferries completely cut their engines so as not to be targeted. They just floated in the darkness, dead in the water for hours, not knowing if they might be torpedoed at any moment. Of course, the Japs did sink one ship – the HMAS Kuttabul. There were 21 sailors who died that night, before we stopped them. Well, when the wrecks of two of the submarines were fished out of the harbour there was enough intact from both of them to assemble one reconstructed submarine. That was what they put on display here, you see? I think it’s being taken on tour around Australia now – all raising money for the war effort, you understand.”

It was then that the man’s dog took an interest in another scent from a tree further across the park and he mumbled his apologies and gave in to the incessant tugging on the leash he held. Ed took the opportunity to make his way to the edge of the park and look out across the water toward the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He’d been told by the hotel receptionist that it had officially opened just over ten years ago now, but it was already a famous landmark of Australia. Looking at it he marvelled, remembering that she’d told him it had been built outward from each bank, reaching completion when the two sides had met in the middle. He wondered what they’d have done if someone had gotten their sums wrong and the two sides hadn’t met! He smiled at the image of motorists performing daredevil vehicle jumps across the gap between two mismatching bridge halves. Then he frowned as he thought of the Japanese submarines attacking this harbour, imagining the chaos and destruction he had witnessed in Pearl Harbour happening here. It sent a chill shiver right down his spine, despite the warmth of the day. Trying to shake off the persistent image, he continued on his walk along the water’s edge, passing Circular Quay on his way to a part of Sydney he’d heard was referred to as The Rocks.

Ed was becoming frustrated at not finding a single barber or laundromat, or at least any that were open for business, when he spied a jewellery store ahead of him and, on a sudden whim, pushed his way inside. Within he found cabinets containing various sparkling items set within what looked like pillars of marble and stone. The store’s proprietor looked to be much the same age as Ed was, glasses pinching the bridge of his nose and he enthusiastically glided across the white stone floor, a smile of greeting on his face. Ed reasoned that in wartime, business had probably been slow; certainly, there were no other customers within the store this day.

“Good day to you sir,” he wafted with a half bow, “and welcome to my humble store. May I be of any assistance to you today?”

“Actually,” Ed nodded, “maybe you can. I’m looking for some sort of jewellery that is uniquely Australian. Would you have anything like that here?”

“A gift for a special someone?” the man suggested, barely holding back a suggestive wink.

“Actually, it’s for my step-daughter, Caryl,” Ed explained. “She’s a sweet kid, always writing me letters. I just thought it’d be nice to bring her back something unique from my travels, you know.”

“Of course,” the man nodded seriously, guiding Ed as he did so toward a specific cabinet. “And as luck would have it, I have just the thing, just the very thing for you sir – the black opal.”

Ed looked into the cabinet to see a golden necklace holding an ornate setting with an oval stone at its centre. The stone was like nothing he’d ever seen before, featuring blocks of red and green colourings. He stared into its depths as the man beside him continued speaking.

“Black opals are the rarest type of opal, only found in a few select and rare places in the world. Here in Australia, the Lightning Ridge opal mining fields are synonymous with this world-famous gem. The highest quality black opals in the world are found there. Here sir, you look upon one of those rare and beautiful stones set in finest gold – I dare say you would be hard pressed to find a more appropriate gift – uniquely Australian as well as rare and beautiful.”

Ed was impressed. He stared a little longer at it, this thing of beauty, knowing that Caryl would love it as much as he did. “I’ll take it,” he nodded, noticing with a smile that the man appeared to be suppressing the urge to break into a dance of joy.

From the jewellery store Ed continued his ambling. He found a sandwich shop to supply his lunch, spent some time down by the harbour, watching the ships glide past while the broad fantasy architecture amusement park Art Deco grin of the Sydney Luna Park entrance smiled at him from the other side of the water. It reminded him of Coney Island back in New York and he was tempted to cross the water to investigate further, but realised he didn’t have sufficient time. The day had gotten away from him. By the time he made the journey back south along Pitt Street, turning onto King Street to complete his circuit and return to the hotel, he was worried he’d already be overdue to meet his visitor.

There was a different woman at the reception desk as the doorman opened the entrance wide and beckoned him back into Usher’s Metropolitan Hotel. The woman at the desk confirmed what he had feared, his guest was already waiting for him in the first-floor lounge. Ed immediately made his way there.

The lounge was starting to fill up with people, many eager to sample drinks from the famous Usher’s Hotel cocktail book. Ed had thought of his own Moon Maid character when he spotted their Moon Mist cocktail on the menu. There was only one man seated at a table on his own, so Ed made his way towards him, hand outstretched. The stranger was on his feet and grasping Ed’s hand by the time he reached the table.

“Major Burroughs,” he enthused warmly as he shook his hand, “thank you so much for meeting me, it’s an honour. My name is Bill, reporter for the Daily Mirror. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Please,” Ed smiled, “you can drop the Major Burroughs, Ed is just fine. I’m not too fond of the warm beer here but a highball would suit me well.”

Scant minutes later both were settled with drinks in hand, ready to start the conversation proper.

“I hope you don’t mind if I take notes as we talk,” Bill asked politely. Ed did not, so the reporter set up his pad and pencil next to his drink on the table, keeping them easy to hand for him to periodically scribble away with as the evening wore on. “If I may, I just wanted to say how much I admire you for joining the war effort. It’s certainly no mean feat at, er…”

“At my age?” Ed finished, amused at Bill’s sudden look of bashful discomfort. “It’s fine, you can say it, I just turned sixty-seven in September – I’m not exactly a fresh young recruit!”

“That’s incredible,” Bill whistled, shaking his head. “It’s important work but to take it on at your age is quite amazing. Does that make you the oldest active war correspondent?”

“To my knowledge, yes,” Burroughs smiled. “Next stop New Guinea. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s write, so I figure the best contribution I can make to the war effort is to write for United Press and keep writing about the war until the conflict is finally over.”

“What about your books though?” Bill queried. “You’re still working on those, right?”

“No, not right now,” Ed answered with a shake of his head. “Every word I write now is dedicated to the war effort; I don’t have time for anything else.”

“That’s a shame,” Bill answered, “I thought maybe we could look forward to Tarzan fighting the Nazis in an upcoming volume.”

“It’s funny you say that,” Ed confided, “but that very thing got me into trouble back in the Great War. I wrote a story called Tarzan the Untamed where he fought the German forces in Africa. That was all well and good at the time, but after the war was over it caused an outrage. They were translating all the Tarzan books into German and they were selling really well, right up until Untamed was due to be translated, then suddenly my German readers were made aware that there was a story that had Tarzan feeding German soldiers to lions and that sort of thing. They banned me over there after that!”

“Not such a bad thing now though,” Bill suggested. “I mean, they’re back to being the villains of the world again now, aren’t they?”

“They probably will be forever after this,” Ed agreed. “Still, I don’t know if I should go down the propaganda path again…”

“Well, how about bringing Tarzan to Australia? I can easily see him running through the outback and making friends with an Aboriginal tribe!”

Burroughs laughed. “Never say never,” he shrugged, “but as I say, right now I’m focussed on the war effort.” He paused, then asked quietly: “Are my books read much here in Australia?”

“I’ll say,” Bill nodded. “You’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t read Tarzan of the Apes. The movies are popular here too. Maybe it’s because we have our own outback and bush areas with wild animals, I think people probably feel Tarzan isn’t too far removed from some of our own bush pioneers. Have you ever read anything by Australian authors?” Ed admitted that he hadn’t. “You might like Banjo Patterson,” Bill suggested. “He passed away last year. Bush poetry was his thing – he’d probably be best known for The Man from Snowy River, a long poem all about wrangling wild horses.”

“You have wild horses here in Australia?” Ed asked enthusiastically and was treated to a nod in reply. “I’ve always loved horses,” he mused. “I did a lot of riding back on my ranch at Tarzana, back in the day. In fact, that probably all started when I served in the army back in the 1890s.”

“You were in the army back then?” Bill questioned under a pair of raised eyebrows,

“Sure,” Ed nodded, eyes glazed as he remembered. “I was with the seventh cavalry at Fort Grant in Arizona, out hunting Black Jack and the Apache Kid and their cutthroat bands across the wide stretches of Arizona country. That was when I first got my love of horses. Then during the Great War I signed up for the Illinois Reserve Militia, got promoted to Major and led the First Battalion, Second Infantry of the Illinois Reserves. It was up to me to train them all in horse riding skills and get them ready for combat.”

“And here you are again,” Bill commented, “now in another war.”

“Too many wars,” Ed commented sadly. “Too many damn wars.”

“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” Bill said softly, leaning forward, “but I heard you were there a year ago, when Pearl Harbour was attacked. Is that true?”

Ed was silent for a moment. He could see Bill looking nervous, worried he’d said the wrong thing. Ed was surprised to realise that he’d never really talked about it. Clearing his throat he admitted: “Yes. I was there. I was there with my son Hulbert, playing tennis of all things, when we heard these loud sounds of firing. We thought it was our military running practice exercises, but then we saw the bomb blasts. There was this dense, black smoke just billowing up everywhere, from Pearl Harbour and Hickam Field. Then there were explosions in the sky, the anti-aircraft shells, and the ships at sea began firing as well. There was a supply ship just offshore from the hotel where Hulbert and I were staying and a bomb landed just next to it, blasting the ocean water upwards in a plume. We knew then how serious things were. Hulbert and I raced down to the wharf and joined up with Patrol 2, Company A, First Battalion, who were stationed there. We passed a car on the way that had been hit with an anti-aircraft shell. It was just a smoking ruin, hardly anything left of it. There wasn’t much Hulbert and I could do, but they issued us with Springfield rifles, so we spent the rest of the day doing what we could, standing guard, marching prisoners to the Immigration Station. It was two o’clock the next morning before we were relieved from duty. By then I thought my feet were about to fall off and my collar bone would collapse under the weight of the rifle, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop. I made sure I did my duty…”

Both men were silent for a moment, before Ed drained his highball in a single gulp and motioned for a waiter to bring him another.

“Can you imagine, I was sixty-six years of age and serving alongside my son no less in an active war zone, walking the sentry beat together as Hawaii burned around us. I signed up straight away to be a war correspondent for the United Press after that. And I’m still at it! Hulbert did the same – he’s a First Lieutenant now, working as a combat photographer. I couldn’t be prouder, you know.”

Bill nodded, a grim smile on his face and Ed noticed he’d stopped writing notes, which prompted him to go on, to say something he hadn’t told anyone before.

“I keep dreaming about it,” he said. “Pearl Harbour, I mean. I keep having these nightmares about it. I thought I could write it out of my system, you know, just devote myself to the war effort and do everything I could and that way, you know, that way I’d start sleeping again but, well, a year now. Over a year. And still…” He trailed off, not sure what else to say.

“Maybe,” Bill shrugged, “maybe it’s not the war you need to be writing about. Maybe it’s your fiction you need to get back to, to find the way out through that.”

“What good would that do?” Ed shrugged. “I mean, Tarzan isn’t real, is he? Sure, I could write a story about him fighting off the Japs, and maybe it’d help me some, but there are real soldiers out there fighting and dying, and what are my stories going to do for them? What difference can a work of fiction make with all this horror we’re living through right now?”

“Look,” Bill shrugged, “maybe I’m out of line here, but I think fiction, and particularly your kind of fiction, well, it gives people hope. Tarzan might not be real in this world, but he sure as hell is real to a lot of readers out there. I’ll bet those soldiers fighting on the front lines right now would be only too eager to get their hands on any one of your books they could, to read about those fantastic warriors and fighters and their adventures and get some hope that maybe, just maybe, if we’re brave enough and strong enough, we can stop evil from winning. That we can hold back the fascist armies and one day, just go home and live our lives again.”

“Yes,” Ed nodded, “in the end that’s all any of us really want, isn’t it. To go home and be with our families and keep them safe.”

The two men were silent for a few moments, before Ed shook off the malaise that seemed to have settled on them, announcing he was hungry and ordering up some of Usher’s famous steak and kidney pies. After a few more highballs Bill convinced Ed to let him take his picture while he belted out his own version of Tarzan’s famous cry. Much to the amusement of the others in the lounge, Ed fully went for it, beating his chest and bellowing it out at top volume. Everyone laughed and the drinking went on.

“Listen,” Bill smiled, holding out his hand for Ed to shake, “I have to go file the story, but thanks, it’s really been a pleasure to meet you.”

“Me too,” Ed smiled, shaking the journalist’s hand. As he left, Ed made his own way back to his room, where the typewriter was waiting for him. He emptied his pockets, placing the box containing Caryl’s opal necklace on the desk. This time he didn’t try to resist the typewriter’s allure, leaping into action and belting way at the keys with abandon. After a few hours there was a neat pile of paper stacked next to it, a new article for the United Press about the ongoing war effort. Satisfied, Ed undressed and rapidly got himself ready for bed. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror he gave a quick scowl at his untidy head of hair, engaging in a similar withering look for his now voluminous pile of pending laundry. “Tomorrow,” he thought, “I’ll find a hairdresser and laundromat somewhere tomorrow.” As he lay in bed, thoughts of the day still spiralling through his head, he heard the sound of bells and chimes outside and realised it was midnight. “A new year,” he mused to himself. “I hope 1943 is a better one than 1942 was.” And while outside revellers wishing the same thing gave in to desperate celebration, Ed was already softly snoring, deep in the arms of Morpheus.

Once more, in his dream, Ed was running. In the dream he was always running. Not away from the sounds of battle, but towards them – always towards them. His feet pounded the uneven ground as the sounds of screaming and explosions grew louder and louder in his ears. “Not this time,” he kept thinking, “not this time…” But it was then that he felt a hand fall upon his shoulder, bringing him to a sudden stop. He turned to see an almost naked, bronzed giant of a man standing beside him, looking down upon him with eyes of deepest grey as his jet black hair was tousled by the breeze. The only clothing he wore consisted of a loin cloth, but about his neck sparkled a gold, diamond studded locket hanging from a golden chain. At his hip there hung a knife and on his back there was a quiver of arrows; across one shoulder there was a bow, while coiled diagonally across his chest was a strong rope carefully woven from grass fibres. In one hand he held a long spear. The sounds of violence continued as the man looked at him, and Ed saw a long scar that stretched across his forehead suddenly glow a bright crimson.

“Rest my friend,” the Ape Man said simply. “Leave this to me.”

Then he was gone, running off toward the battle as Ed stood silently in the street, watching him depart. Soon enough there were more sounds of violence, but this time Ed knew they were the screams of the enemy he was hearing. One by one each airplane drone ended with the sound of explosion and terror, until once more silence rained over Pearl Harbour. Silence, for a moment only, before a new sound echoed out across the harbour and its surrounding streets, a fierce animal cry that chilled the blood of any who heard it.

In his sleep Ed murmured to himself: “the victory cry of the Bull Ape.” Then he was softly snoring again, enjoying the best night’s rest that he had had in more than a year.

***

I walked up towards the building at 64-68 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. From the outside the façade looked the same as it did in the historical pictures I’d located, but where the original structure had ended at three storeys height, there now sprouted from the top of it an additional seven floors, an unexpected mushroom stretching skyward above me, like an accusing finger pointing at the sun; just another monolith in a cityscape now full of them, each one built taller than the last, like stretching liana vines or hopeful Babel towers, each seeking their place in the sun. Down on street level it was all shadow as the winds whipped through the canyons formed from these walls of buildings, stirring my hair as I looked left and right, waiting for a break in the buzzing traffic that raced past on the road before me, horns blaring like the cries of migrating herds of beasts as they thundered past. I darted across swiftly the moment the herd thinned. On one side of the building was a Chanel store, sat right on the corner of Castlereagh and King, while the other side sported the entry to a car park, descending ramp disappearing into darkness past a bright red boom gate and a yellow sign above reading “maximum height 3.4 metres”. Boldly I strode forward to the door that interested me and was faintly surprised to see it swing open before me. A doorman stood just inside, holding the entry wide with his left hand, a broad smile balanced atop his immaculate suit as he swept his right arm wide in a beckoning gesture. I stepped within.

The inside of the store momentarily dazzled me as I stood blinking on its verge, taking in the cabinets around me filled with sparkling jewellery. Beyond those were floors, fixtures and pillars of marble and stone. Beneath my feet shone a delicate ivory base with spiderwebbing creamy beige streaks and star patterns, glowing in the light that touched them from the street outside. It felt more like a piece of Ancient Rome than an Australian shop front, an illusion that was further sustained as an elegant woman glided towards me, smiling broadly as she spoke in the lilting tones of a strong Italian accent.

“Welcome,” she intoned with a slight bow of her head. “It this your first time visiting a Bulgari store.”

“Yes,” I admitted, then hastily continued, “actually, it’s not the store I came in to see. I was just interested in the building.”

She seemed to do a slight double take, her eyes blinking three times in quick succession, her planned speech derailed before she had even gotten it rolling along the tracks. “The building?” she queried, her head tilting slightly to one side as her wide dark eyes looked at me in mounting curiosity.

“Ah, yes,” I nodded by way of reply, wondering what the best way would be to explain the purpose of my visit. “Have you ever heard of Tarzan?” I asked. If anything, this only seemed to confuse her more.

“Tar,” she responded, “Zan?” It was then that a voice piped up behind us and we both turned to look at the doorman.

“I know Tarzan,” he said with a grin. “It’s that movie with Margot Robbie, in the jungle.” He paused for a moment, his eyes glazing over as he continued in a dreamy, faraway voice: “I like Margot Robbie...”

“Ah, assolutamente no, I know what you mean now,” the woman suddenly burst out with recognition, disagreeing with the doorman. “It was the cartoon from Disney. They lived in a treehouse in the jungle with the gorillas, no?”

“Yes,” I nodded enthusiastically to them both, “actually, you’re both right. But before both of those versions, back before any of the movies or cartoons or tv shows, Tarzan was a series of books written by a man named Edgar Rice Burroughs. And back in 1942 he stayed here in this building.”

“Here?” the woman queried, looking around as if expecting him to pop out from under a counter at any moment. The doorman, fascinated now, had left his station by the door to come closer and listen more intently.

“Yes,” I nodded, “this building used to be the Usher’s Metropolitan Hotel. During the Second World War Edgar Rice Burroughs was a war correspondent, and on his way to New Guinea to report on the fighting there, at the very end of 1942, he stayed here for a few days, in this very building.”

“The man who created Tarzan stayed here?” the women echoed with a half-smile on her lips. “You know, I’m going to use this now, when customers come into the store – I will tell them this!”

We all beamed at each other for a moment or two, then I glanced around at the surroundings again. “He’s one of my favourite authors,” I confided. “Is there any chance,” I asked, “that anything remains in here from that time? Are there any remnants of the hotel that were retained in the store.” The woman shook her head enthusiastically from side to side.

“I am afraid not,” she confirmed. “This is a very special store for Bulgari, you know, the whole thing was designed by the New York architect Peter Marino. Bulgari wanted to celebrate its 20th anniversary in Australia, so they commissioned him to design something special. This bold and contemporary look took 11 months to finish. If there was anything of the hotel before that, well, it has all been completely removed now.”

I nodded sadly in recognition. “I thought that might be the case,” I shrugged, “but I was still curious to see. Even if it’s just the outside shell that remains, I can still say I’ve been to where Edgar Rice Burroughs stayed now.” I smiled and thanked them both for their time and headed for the exit. As the doorman once more opened the portal to the outside world, and the woman stood by grinning broadly, I noticed glittering in a nearby cabinet a necklace, the red and green flecked stone of a black opal set within its golden embrace. Smiling, I strode out onto the streets of Sydney, following in the footsteps of the original Ape Man.

***

“Mary certainly helped in a pinch,” said Jerry, “but if Tarzan hadn’t been on the job all the time, pinch hitting for her, we’d have been sunk months ago.”

“Well,” said Bolton, “I think you won’t have to call on either Mary or Tarzan from now on. I’m ordered to Sydney, and it won’t be so long now before you can sit down in Ushers Hotel with a steak and kidney pie in front of you.”

“And drink warm beer,” said Bubonovitch.

It was with no small amount of satisfaction that Ed completed the final page of his novel, Tarzan and the Foreign Legion. He pulled the sheaf of paper out of the carriage, depositing it on the manuscript pile to the side of the desk, before moving his chair back from the now silent typewriter that sat in front of him. The Ape Man and his friends had put pay to the plans of the Japanese soldiers in Sumatra and were now safely on their way to Australia aboard a British vessel. The End.

“Hmm,” he mused to himself. “Maybe I could write a Tarzan story set in Australia.” He imagined Bolton being assigned to the Australian outback to investigate a potential spy ring there, asking his good friend John Clayton to join him. He imagined them setting out together from Usher’s Hotel, making their way toward the dry bush regions of the outback with its peculiar wildlife. He saw Tarzan riding wild stallions through the belts of eucalyptus trees. He heard cicadas singing noisily while the Ape Man ran wild across the scrub with dingoes and kangaroos by his side. Instead of the monkey Nkima perhaps a talkative Koala could perch on his shoulder…? The idea of it certainly brought a smile to his lips. “Maybe another day,” he mused quietly to himself. “I’m tired now… so tired…” There would be time for new stories later, there would always be time for more stories, with so many of them bubbling through his mind in a never-ending stream. But not tonight. Without another word he turned off the desk lamp, bringing darkness to the room, and made his way slowly to bed.

Tarzan and the Foreign Legion was published on 22 August 1947, dedicated to the author’s friend Brigadier General Truman H Landon. It would be the last Tarzan book published in the author’s lifetime. Edgar Rice Burroughs passed away on 19 March 1950, at 74 years of age.