The Girl from Farriss

The Girl from Farris's
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
"The Girl From Farris's" was first published in ALL-STORY
WEEKLY for September 23 and 30, 1916, and October 7 and 14, 1916.
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CHAPTER I
DOARTY MAKES A "PINCH"
JUST what Mr. Doarty was doing in the alley back of Farris's at two of
a chill spring morning would have puzzled those citizens of Chicago
who knew Mr. Doarty best.
To a casual observer it might have appeared that Mr. Doarty was doing
nothing more remarkable than leaning against a telephone pole, which
in itself might have been easily explained had Mr. Doarty not been so
palpably sober; but there are no casual observers in the South Side
levee at two in the morning--those who are in any condition to observe
at all have the eyes of ferrets.
This was not the first of Mr. Doarty's nocturnal visits to the vicinage of
Farris's. For almost a week he had haunted the neighborhood between
midnight and dawn, for Mr. Doarty had determined to "get" Mr. Farris.
From the open doors of a corner saloon came bursts of bacchanal
revelry--snatches of ribald song; hoarse laughter; the hysterical scream
of a woman; but though this place, too, was Farris's and the closing
hour long passed Mr. Doarty deigned not to notice so minor an
infraction of the law.

Hadn't Lieutenant Barnut filed some ninety odd complaints against the
saloon-keeper-alderman of the Eighteenth Ward for violation of this
same ordinance, only to have them all pigeonholed in the city
prosecutor's office? Hadn't he appeared in person before the September
Grand Jury, and hadn't the State Attorney's office succeeded in
bamboozling that august body into the belief that they had nothing
whatsoever to do with the matter?
And anyhow, what was an aldermanic drag compared with that
possessed by "Abe" Farris? No; Mr. Doarty, had you questioned him,
would have assured you that he had not been born so recently as
yesterday; that he was entirely dry behind the ears; and that if he "got"
Mr. Farris at all he would get him good and plenty, for had he not only
a week before, learning that Mr. Doarty was no longer in the good
graces of his commanding officer, refused to acknowledge Mr. Doarty's
right to certain little incidental emoluments upon which time-honored
custom had placed the seal of lawful title?
In other words--Mr. Doarty's words,--Abe Farris had not come across.
Not only had he failed in this very necessary obligation, but he had
added insult to injury by requesting Mr. Doarty to hie himself to the
celestial nadir; and he had made his remarks in a loud, coarse tone of
voice in the presence of a pock-marked barkeep who had it in for Mr.
Doarty because of a certain sixty, weary, beerless days that the
pock-marked one had spent at the Bridewell on Mr. Doarty's account.
But the most malign spleen becomes less virulent with age, and so it
was that Mr. Doarty found his self-appointed task becoming irksome to
a degree that threatened the stability of his Machiavellian resolve.
Furthermore, he was becoming sleepy and thirsty.
"T' 'ell with 'im," sighed Mr. Doarty, sadly, as he removed his weight
from the supporting pole to turn disconsolately toward the mouth of the
alley.
At the third step he turned to cast a parting, venomous glance at the
back of Farris's; but he took no fourth step toward the alley's mouth.
Instead he dissolved, wraithlike, into the dense shadow between two

barns, his eyes never leaving the back of the building that he had
watched so assiduously and fruitlessly for the past several nights.
In the back of Farris's is a rickety fire escape--a mute, decaying witness
to the lack of pull under which some former landlord labored. Toward
this was Mr. Doarty's gaze directed, for dimly discernible upon it was
something that moved--moved slowly and cautiously downward.
It required but a moment for Mr. Doarty's trained eye to transmit to his
eager brain all that he required to know, for the moment at least, of the
slow-moving shadow upon the shadowy ladder--then he darted across
the alley toward the yard in the rear of Farris's.
A girl was descending the fire escape. How frightened she was she
alone knew, and that there must have been something very dreadful to
escape in the building above her was apparent from the risk she took at
each step upon that loose and rusted fabric of sagging iron.
She was clothed in a flowered kimono, over which she had drawn a
black silk underskirt. Around her shoulders was an old red shawl, and
she was shod only in bedroom slippers. Scarcely a suitable attire for
street wear; but then people in the vicinity of Twenty-Fourth Street are
pot over particular about