The Girl from Farris's. Edgar Rice Burroughs

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СКАЧАТЬ young lady in a flowered kimono and little else to negotiate; but this was an unusual young lady, and great indeed must have been the stress of circumstance which urged her on, for she came down the stand pipe with the ease of a cat, and at the bottom, turned, horrified, to look into the face of Mr. Doarty.

      With a little gasp of bewilderment she attempted to dodge past him, but a huge paw of a hand reached out and grasped her shoulder.

      "Well dearie?" said Mr. Doarty.

      "Cut it out," replied the girl, "and le'me loose. Who are you anyhow?"

      For answer Mr. Doarty pulled back the lapel of his coat disclosing a shiny piece of metal pinned on his suspender.

      "I ain't done nothing," said the girl.

      "Of course you ain't," agreed Mr. Doarty. "Don't I know that real ladies always climb down fire escapes at two o'clock in the morning just to prove that they ain't done nothin'?"

      "Goin' to pinch me?"

      "Depends," replied the plain-clothes man. "What's the idea of this nocturnal get-away."

      The girl hesitated.

      "Give it to me straight," admonished her captor. "It'll go easier with you."

      "I guess I might as well," she said. "You see I get a swell offer from the Beverly Club, and that fat schonacker," she gave a vindictive nod of her head toward the back of Farris's resort, "he gets it tipped off to him some way, and has all my clothes locked up so as I can't get away."

      "He wouldn't let you out of his place, eh?" asked Mr. Doarty, half to himself.

      "He said I owed him three hundred dollars for board and clothes."

      "An' he was keepin' you a prisoner there against your will?" purred Mr. Doarty.

      "Yes," said the girl.

      Mr. Doarty grinned. This wasn't exactly the magnitude of the method he had hoped to "get" Mr. Farris; but it was better than nothing. The present Grand Jury was even now tussling with the vice problem. Hours of its valuable time were being taken up by reformers who knew all about the general conditions with which every adult citizen is familiar; but the tangible cases, backed by the sort of evidence that convicts, were remarkable only on account of there scarcity.

      Something seemed always to seal the mouths of the principal witnesses the moment they entered the Grand Jury room; but here was a case where personal spite and desire for revenge might combine to make an excellent witness against the most notorious dive keeper in the city. It was worth trying for.

      "Come along," said Mr. Doarty.

      "Aw, don't. Please don't!" begged the girl. "I ain't done nothing, honest!"

      "Sure you ain't," replied Mr. Doarty. "I'm only goin' to have you held as a witness against Farris. That'll get you even with him, and give you a chance to get out and take that swell job at the Beverly Club."

      "They wouldn't have me if I peached on Farris, and you know it. Why, I couldn't gt a job in a house in town if I done that."

      "How would you like to be booked for manslaughter?" asked the plain clothes man.

      "What you giving me!" laughed the girl. "Stow the kid."

      "It ain't no kid," replied Mr. Doarty solemnly. "The police knows a lot about the guy that some one croaked up in Farris's in March, but we been layin' low for a certain person as is suspected of passin' him the drops. It gets tipped off to the inmates of Farris's, an' I bein' next, spots her as she is makin' her get-away. Are you hep?"

      The young lady was hep--most assuredly who would not be hep to the very palpable threat contained in Mr. Doarty's pretty little fiction?

      "An'," continued Doarty, "when Farris finds you been tryin' to duck he won't do nothin' to help you."

      The girl had known of many who had gone to the pen on slighter evidence than this. She knew that the police had been searching for some one upon whom to fasten the murder of a well known business man who had not been murdered at all, but who had had the lack of foresight to succumb to an attack of acute endocarditis in the hallway of the Farris place.

      The searching eyes of the plain-clothes man had not failed to detect the little shudder of horror that had been the visible reaction in the girl to the sudden recollections induced by mention of that unpleasant affair, and while he had no reason whatever to suspect her or another of any criminal responsibility for the man's death, yet he made a mental note of the effect his words had had upon her.

      Had she not been an inmate of the house at the time the thing occurred? And was it not just possible that an excellent police case might be worked up about her later if the exigencies of the service demanded a brilliant police coup to distract the public's attention from some more important case in which they had blundered?

      For a moment the girl was silent. How badly he had frightened her with his threat Mr. Doarty had not the faintest conception, nor, could he have guessed the pitiable beating of her heart, would he have been able to conjecture the real cause of her alarm. That the policeman would assume criminal guilt in her should she allow her perturbation to become too apparent she well knew, and so, for the moment of her silence, she struggled to regain mastery of herself. Nor was she unsuccessful.

      "It wouldn't get you anything," she said, "to follow that lay, for the report of the coroner's physician shows that Mr.--that the man died of heart disease. But, cutting out all this foolishness, I'll swear a complaint against Farris if you want me to--if you thing that it will get you anything. Though, and you can take it from me who knows, it's more likely to get you a prairie beat out Brighton way--there's many a bull pullin' his box to-night out in the wilderness who thought that he could put one over on Abe Farris--and Farris is still doin' business at the old stand."

      As they talked they had been walking toward the street, and now Doarty crossed over to the corner with the girl and pulled for the wagon.

      "What did it stand you to forget the guy's name? he asked, after they had stood in silence for a time awaiting the wagon's tardy arrival.

      "They offered me a hundred," she replied.

      "An', of course, you didn't take it," he ventured, grinning.

      The girl made no response.

      "The newspapers sure suffered an awful shock when they found the old bloke was one of the biggest stockholders in two State Street department stores," continued Mr. Doarty reminiscently.

      "They say his family routed the advertising manager of every paper in the city out of bed at one o'clock in the morning, and that three morning papers had to pull out the story after they had gone to press with it, and stick in a column obituary tellin' all about what he had done for his city and his fellow man, with a cut of his mug in place of the front page cartoon--gee! But it must be great to have a drag like that."

      "Yes," said the girl in a faint voice.

      Faintly in the distance a gong clanged.

      "Them guys is sure takin' their time," observed Mr. Doarty.

      A little crowd had gathered about the couple at the police-box, only mildly curious, for an arrest is no uncommon thing in that section of town; and when they discovered СКАЧАТЬ