Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Within the stables I groped about until I had found saddles and bridles for two horses. But afterward, in the darkness, I could find but a single mount. The doors of the opposite side, leading to the street, were open, and we could see great multitudes of men, women, and children fleeing toward the west. Soldiers, afoot and mounted, were joining the mad exodus. Now and then a camel or an elephant would pass bearing some officer or dignitary to safety. It was evident that the city would fall at any moment — a fact which was amply proclaimed by the terror-stricken haste of the fear-mad mob.

  Horse, camel, and elephant trod helpless women and children beneath their feet. A common soldier dragged a general from his mount, and, leaping to the animal’s back, fled down the packed street toward the west. A woman seized a gun and brained a court dignitary, whose horse had trampled her child to death. Shrieks, curses, commands, supplications filled the air. It was a frightful scene — one that will be burned upon my memory forever.

  I had saddled and bridled the single horse which had evidently been overlooked by the royal household in its flight, and, standing a little back in the shadow of the stable’s interior, Victory and I watched the surging throng without.

  To have entered it would have been to have courted greater danger than we were already in. We decided to wait until the stress of blacks thinned, and for more than an hour we stood there while the sounds of battle raged upon the eastern side of the city and the population flew toward the west. More and more numerous became the uniformed soldiers among the fleeing throng, until, toward the last, the street was packed with them. It was no orderly retreat, but a rout, complete and terrible.

  The fighting was steadily approaching us now, until the crack of rifles sounded in the very street upon which we were looking. And then came a handful of brave men — a little rear guard backing slowly toward the west, working their smoking rifles in feverish haste as they fired volley after volley at the foe we could not see.

  But these were pressed back and back until the first line of the enemy came opposite our shelter. They were men of medium height, with olive complexions and almond eyes. In them I recognized the descendants of the ancient Chinese race.

  They were well uniformed and superbly armed, and they fought bravely and under perfect discipline. So rapt was I in the exciting events transpiring in the street that I did not hear the approach of a body of men from behind. It was a party of the conquerors who had entered the palace and were searching it.

  They came upon us so unexpectedly that we were prisoners before we realized what had happened. That night we were held under a strong guard just outside the eastern wall of the city, and the next morning were started upon a long march toward the east.

  Our captors were not unkind to us, and treated the women prisoners with respect. We marched for many days — so many that I lost count of them — and at last we came to another city — a Chinese city this time — which stands upon the site of ancient Moscow.

  It is only a small frontier city, but it is well built and well kept. Here a large military force is maintained, and here also, is a terminus of the railroad that crosses modern China to the Pacific.

  There was every evidence of a high civilization in all that we saw within the city, which, in connection with the humane treatment that had been accorded all prisoners upon the long and tiresome march, encouraged me to hope that I might appeal to some high officer here for the treatment which my rank and birth merited.

  We could converse with our captors only through the medium of interpreters who spoke both Chinese and Abyssinian. But there were many of these, and shortly after we reached the city I persuaded one of them to carry a verbal message to the officer who had commanded the troops during the return from New Gondar, asking that I might be given a hearing by some high official.

  The reply to my request was a summons to appear before the officer to whom I had addressed my appeal. A sergeant came for me along with the interpreter, and I managed to obtain his permission to let Victory accompany me — I had never left her alone with the prisoners since we had been captured.

  To my delight I found that the officer into whose presence we were conducted spoke Abyssinian fluently. He was astounded when I told him that I was a Pan-American. Unlike all others whom I had spoken with since my arrival in Europe, he was well acquainted with ancient history — was familiar with twentieth century conditions in Pan-America, and after putting a half dozen questions to me was satisfied that I spoke the truth.

  When I told him that Victory was Queen of England he showed little surprise, telling me that in their recent explorations in ancient Russia they had found many descendants of the old nobility and royalty.

  He immediately set aside a comfortable house for us, furnished us with servants and with money, and in other ways showed us every attention and kindness.

  He told me that he would telegraph his emperor at once, and the result was that we were presently commanded to repair to Peking and present ourselves before the ruler.

  We made the journey in a comfortable railway carriage, through a country which, as we traveled farther toward the east, showed increasing evidence of prosperity and wealth.

  At the imperial court we were received with great kindness, the emperor being most inquisitive about the state of modern Pan-America. He told me that while he personally deplored the existence of the strict regulations which had raised a barrier between the east and the west, he had felt, as had his predecessors, that recognition of the wishes of the great Pan-American federation would be most conducive to the continued peace of the world.

  His empire includes all of Asia, and the islands of the Pacific as far east as 175dW. The empire of Japan no longer exists, having been conquered and absorbed by China over a hundred years ago. The Philippines are well administered, and constitute one of the most progressive colonies of the Chinese empire.

  The emperor told me that the building of this great empire and the spreading of enlightenment among its diversified and savage peoples had required all the best efforts of nearly two hundred years. Upon his accession to the throne he had found the labor well nigh perfected and had turned his attention to the reclamation of Europe.

  His ambition is to wrest it from the hands of the blacks, and then to attempt the work of elevating its fallen peoples to the high estate from which the Great War precipitated them.

  I asked him who was victorious in that war, and he shook his head sadly as he replied:

  “Pan-America, perhaps, and China, with the blacks of Abyssinia,” he said. “Those who did not fight were the only ones to reap any of the rewards that are supposed to belong to victory. The combatants reaped naught but annihilation. You have seen — better than any man you must realize that there was no victory for any nation embroiled in that frightful war.”

  “When did it end?” I asked him.

  Again he shook his head. “It has not ended yet. There has never been a formal peace declared in Europe. After a while there were none left to make peace, and the rude tribes which sprang from the survivors continued to fight among themselves because they knew no better condition of society. War razed the works of man — war and pestilence razed man. God give that there shall never be such another war!”

  You all know how Porfirio Johnson returned to Pan-America with John Alvarez in chains; how Alvarez’s trial raised a popular demonstration that the government could not ignore. His eloquent appeal — not for himself, but for me — is historic, as are its results. You know how a fleet was sent across the Atlantic to search for me, how the restrictions against crossing thirty to one hundred seventy-five were removed forever, and how the officers were brought to Peking, arriving upon the very day that Victory and I were married at the imperial court.

  My return to Pan-America was very different from anything I could possibly have imagined a year before. Instead of being received as a traitor to my country, I was acclaimed a hero. It was good to get back again, good to witness the kindly treatment that wa
s accorded my dear Victory, and when I learned that Delcarte and Taylor had been found at the mouth of the Rhine and were already back in Pan-America my joy was unalloyed.

  And now we are going back, Victory and I, with the men and the munitions and power to reclaim England for her queen. Again I shall cross thirty, but under what altered conditions!

  A new epoch for Europe is inaugurated, with enlightened China on the east and enlightened Pan-America on the west — the two great peace powers whom God has preserved to regenerate chastened and forgiven Europe. I have been through much — I have suffered much, but I have won two great laurel wreaths beyond thirty. One is the opportunity to rescue Europe from barbarism, the other is a little barbarian, and the greater of these is — Victory.

  THE GIRL FROM FARRIS’S (1916)

  CONTENTS

  1. DOARTY MAKES A “PINCH”

  2. AND WIRES ARE PULLED

  3. THE GRAND JURY

  4. DECENCY

  5. A FRIEND IN NEED

  6. SECOR’S FIANCÉE

  7. JUNE’S EMPLOYER

  8. SAMMY THE SLEUTH

  9. “UNCLEAN — UNCLEAN!”

  10. “RATS DESERT...”

  11. A MATTER OF MEMORY

  12. JUST THREE WORDS

  13. “FOR THE MURDER OF—”

  14. SOME LOOSE THREADS

  1. 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?

  An 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 — the 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 not over particular about such matters; especially those who elect to leave their bed and board at two of a morning by 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 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 val
uable 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 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.