The Girl from Farris's by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Author:Edgar Rice Burroughs [Burroughs, Edgar Rice]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Mystery, Epic, General, Science Fiction - General, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction - Science Fiction, Space Opera, United States, Travel, Chicago (Ill.), Prostitutes, East North Central, Midwest
ISBN: 9781419163821
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing
Published: 2000-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII.

SAMMY THE SLEUTH.

OGDEN SECOR did not recognize June Lathrop as Maggie Lynch, the girl from Farris's, and it was with relief that almost found expression in an audible sigh that the girl returned to her desk in her own office.

Here she surprised the lank and somber office-boy, Sammy, in the act of closing one of the drawers of her desk.

"What do you want, Sammy?" she asked pleasantly.

The youth went from white to red, and from red to scarlet. He stammered and coughed--trying to frame an apology, until June, from mild wonderment, became keenly suspicious.

"I'm awfully sorry, Miss Lathrop," he managed to get out at last. "I didn't mean any harm--I was only practising."

"Practising?" exclaimed the girl. "Practising what?"

"I suppose," said Sammy, "that I'll have to tell you now; but I didn't want any one to know until I had graduated and got a position with Pinkerton."

"Pinkerton?" questioned June, still at a loss to make head or tail of what the youth was leading to. "What has practising or Pinkerton to do with searching my desk surreptitiously? It was a very ungentlemanly thing to do, Sammy, and I really ought to tell Mr. Stickler about it."

"Oh, please don't do that," wailed Sammy. "Please don't and I'll tell you all about it."

"All right," said June, "now tell me."

"You see," said Sammy nervously, "I'm taking a correspondence course in a detective school, and a part of each lesson is to put into practise what I have learned in former lessons. Just now I was practising searching a burglar's flat. Almost every day I practise shadowing."

"Shadowing?" exclaimed June. "What is shadowing? How do you do it?"

"Oh, it's easy," replied Sammy, his confidence returning as he discovered that June appeared to have forgiven the liberties he had taken with her desk.

"You see," he continued, "a detective has to be able to follow a suspect all over without being seen himself. I practise on lots of people--Mr. Stickler, Mr. Secor, Miss Smith, and the rest of them. When they go to lunch I shadow them, a different one nearly every noon. Friday I shadowed you--right into the Lunch Club on Wabash Avenue, and ate at a table behind you, and followed you back to the office and you never got onto me at all."

"Ugh!" shivered June. "How uncanny. Don't you ever dare shadow me again Sammy--promise me," and Sammy promised.

After the new stenographer had left his office, Ogden Secor tried to recall where he had known her before. He was positive that her face was familiar, and connected with some event in his life that was none too pleasant; but try as he would he could not place the girl. At last he dropped the matter from his mind.

For several months thereafter the routine of June's new life ran on smoothly and uninterruptedly. She saved the major portion of her salary, and once more met Eddie the Dip in the little restaurant that she might pay him the balance of the money she owed him.

Daily association with the life of the office of John Secor & Co.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.