The Girl from Farris's. Edgar Rice Burroughs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that no one had been cut up, or shot up, and that the prisoner was scandalously sober they ceased even to be mildly curious. By the time the wagon arrived the two were again alone.

      At the station the girl signed a complaint against one Abe Farris, and was then locked up to insure her appearance in court the following morning.

      Officer Doarty, warrant in hand, fairly burned the pavement back to Farris's. It had been many a month since he had made an arrest which gave him as sincere personal pleasure as this one. He routed Farris out of bed and hustled him into his clothes. This, he surmised, might be the sole satisfaction that he would derive, since the municipal court judge before whom the preliminary hearing would come later in the morning might, in all likelihood, discharge the defendant.

      If the girl held out and proved a good witness there was a slight chance that Farris would be held to the Grand Jury, in which event he would derive a certain amount of unpleasant notoriety at a time when public opinion was aroused by the vice question, and the mayor in a most receptive mood for making political capital by revocation of a few saloon licenses.

      All this would prove balm to Mr. Doarty's injured sensibilities.

      Farris grumbled and threatened, but off to the station he went without even an opportunity to telephone for a bondsman. That he procured one an hour later was no fault of Mr. Doarty, who employed his most persuasive English in an endeavor to convince the sergeant that Mr. Farris should be locked up forthwith, and given no access to a telephone until daylight. But the sergeant had no particular grudge against Mr. Farris, while, on the other hand, he was possessed of a large family to whom his monthly pay check was an item of considerable importance. So to Mr. Farris, he was affable courtesy personified.

      Thus it was that the defendant went free, while the injured one remained behind prison bars.

      Farris's first act was to obtain permission to see the girl who had sworn to the complaint against him. As he approached her cell he assumed a jocular suavity that he was far from feeling.

      "What you doin' here, Maggie?" he asked, by way of an opening.

      "Ask Doarty."

      "Didn't you know that you'd get the worst of it if you went to buckin' me?" queried Farris.

      "I didn't want to do it," replied the girl; " though that's not sayin' that some one hadn't ought to do it to you good an' proper--you got it comin' to you, all right."

      "It won't get you nothin', Maggie."

      "Maybe it'll get me my clothes--that's all I want."

      "Why didn't you say so in the first place, then, and not go stirrin' up a lot of hell this way?" asked Farris in an injured tone. "Ain't I always been on the square with you?"

      "Sure! You been as straight as a corkscrew with me."

      "Didn't I keep the bulls from guessin' that you was the only girl in the place that had any real reason for wantin' to croak old--the old guy?" continued Mr. Farris, ignoring the reverse English on the girl's last statement.

      A little shiver ran through the girl at mention of the tragedy that was still fresh in her memory--her own life tragedy in which the death of the old man in the hallway at Farris's had been but a minor incident.

      "What you goin' to tell the judge?" asked Farris after a moment's pause.

      "The truth--that you kept me there against my will by locking my clothes up where I couldn't get 'em," she replied.

      "I was only kiddin--you could 'a' had 'em any old time. Anyways, there wasn't no call for your doin' this."

      "You got a funny way of kiddin'; but even at that, I didn't have any idea of peachin' on you--he made me," said the girl.

      "Who? Doarty?"

      The girl nodded. "Sure--who else? He's got it in for you."

      Farris turned away much relieved, and an hour later a colored man delivered a package at the station for Maggie Lynch. It contained the girl's clothes, and an envelope in which were five germ-laden but perfectly good, ten-dollar bills.

      The matron smiled as she opened the envelope.

      "Some fox," she said.

      "Some fox, is right," replied the girl.

      Chapter II: And Wires are Pulled

       Table of Contents

      THE Rev. Theodore Pursen sat at breakfast. With his right hand he dallied with iced cantaloup. The season was young for cucumis melo; but who would desire a lean shepherd for a fat flock? Certainly not the Rev. Theodore Pursen. A slender, well-manicured left hand supported an early edition of the "Monarch of the Mornings," a sheet which quite made up in volume of sound and in color for any lack of similarity in other respects to the lion of poetry and romance.

      On the table in his study were the two morning papers which the Rev. Pursen read and quoted in public--the Monarch was for the privacy of his breakfast table.

      Across from the divine sat his young assistant, who shared the far more than comfortable bachelor apartments of his superior.

      The Rev. Pursen laid down the paper with a sigh.

      "Ah me," he said.

      His assistant looked up in polite interrogation.

      "This is, indeed, an ungrateful world," continued Mr. Pursen, scooping a delicious mouthful from the melon's heart.

      "Here is an interview with an assistant State attorney in which he mentions impractical reformers seeking free advertising and cheap notoriety. In view of the talk I had with him yesterday I cannot but believe that he refers directly to me

      "It is a sad commentary upon the moral perspective of the type of rising young men of to-day, which this person so truly represents, that ulterior motives should be ascribed to every noble and unselfish act. To what, indeed, are we coming?"

      "Yes," agreed the assistant, "whither are we drifting?"

      "But was it not ever thus? Have not we of the cloth been ever martyrs to the cause of truth and righteousness?"

      "Too true," sighed the assistant, "we have, indeed."

      "Yet, on the other hand," continued Mr. Pursen, "there is an occasional note of encouragement that makes the fighting of the battle worth while."

      "For example?" suggested the assistant.

      Mr. Pursen turned again to the "Monarch of the Mornings."

      "Here is a quarter of a column devoted to an interview with me on the result of my investigation of conditions in supposedly respectable residence districts. The article has been given much greater prominence than that accorded to the misleading statements of the assistant State attorney. I am sure that thousands of people in this great city are even this minute reading this noticeable heading--let us hope that it will bear fruit, however much one may decry the unpleasant notoriety entailed."

      Mr. Pursen СКАЧАТЬ