The Girl from Farriss | Page 2

way of a back fire escape.
At the first floor the ladder ended--a common and embarrassing habit of fire escape ladders, which are as likely as not to terminate twenty feet above a stone areaway, or a picket fence--but the stand pipe continued on to the ground. A stand pipe, flat against a brick wall, is not an easy thing for a 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 nocternial 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 find 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 their 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 get 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