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THE GIRL AND THE BILL
An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure
by
BANNISTER MERWIN
Illustrated
[Illustration: "'Perhaps you can imagine how those letters puzzled
me,' he volunteered"]
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers :: New York
Copyright, 1909, by
Dodd, Mead and Company
Published, March, 1909
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Threshold of Adventure 1
II Senhor Poritol 21
III The Shadows 41
IV The Girl of the Car 58
V "Evans, S. R." 77
VI A Chance Lead 93
VII A Japanese at Large 115
VIII The Trail of Maku 136
IX Number Three Forty-One 162
X "Find the American" 178
XI The Way Out 192
XII Power of Darkness 209
XIII An Old Man of the Sea 223
XIV Prisoners in the Dark 253
XV From the Devil to the Deep Sea 279
XVI The Struggle 295
XVII A Chance of the Game 322
XVIII The Goal 347
XIX A Saved Situation 359
THE GIRL AND THE BILL
CHAPTER I
THE THRESHOLD OF ADVENTURE
The roar of State Street filled the ears of Robert Orme not unpleasantly.
He liked Chicago, felt towards the Western city something more than the
tolerant, patronizing interest which so often characterizes the Eastern
man. To him it was the hub of genuine Americanism--young, aggressive,
perhaps a bit too cocksure, but ever bounding along with eyes toward
the future. Here was the city of great beginnings, the city of
experiment--experiment with life; hence its incompleteness--an
incompleteness not dissimilar to that of life itself. Chicago lived; it
was the pulse of the great Middle West.
Orme watched the procession with clear eyes. He had been strolling
southward from the Masonic Temple, into the shopping district. The
clangor, the smoke and dust, the hurrying crowds, all worked into his
mood. The expectation of adventure was far from him. Nor was he a man who
sought impressions for amusement; whatever came to him he weighed, and
accepted or rejected according as it was valueless or useful. Wholesome
he was; anyone might infer that from his face. Doubtless, his fault lay
in his overemphasis on the purely practical; but that, after all, was a
lawyer's fault, and it was counterbalanced by a sweet kindliness toward
all the world--a loveableness which made for him a friend of every chance
acquaintance.
It was well along in the afternoon, and shoppers were hurrying homeward.
Orme noted the fresh beauty of the women and girls--Chicago has reason to
be proud of her daughters--and his heart beat a little faster. Not that
he was a man to be caught by every pretty stranger; but scarcely
recognized by himself, there was a hidden spring of romance in his
practical nature. Heart-free, he never met a woman without wondering
whether she was _the_ one. He had never found her; he did not know that
he was looking for her; yet always there was the unconscious question.
A distant whistle, the clanging of gongs, the rapid beat of galloping
hoofs--fire-engines were racing down the street. Cars stopped, vehicles
of all kinds crowded in toward the curbs.
Orme paused and watched the fire horses go thundering by, their smoking
chariots swaying behind them and dropping long trails of sparks. Small
boys were running, men and women were stopping to gaze after the passing
engines, but Orme's attention was taken by something that was happening
near by, and as the gongs and the hoof-beats grew fainter he looked with
interest to the street beside him.
He had got as far as the corner of Madison Street. The scramble to get
out of the way of the engines had here resulted in a traffic-jam. Two
policemen were moving about, shouting orders for the disentanglement of
the street-cars and vehicles which seemed to be inextricably wedged
together.
A burly Irish teamster was bellowing at his horse. The hind wheel of a
smart barouche was caught in the fore wheel of a delivery wagon, and the
driver of the delivery wagon was expressing his opinion of the situation
in terms which seemed to embarrass the elderly gentleman who sat in the
barouche. Orme's eye traveled through the outer edge of the disturbance,
and sought its center.
There in the midst of the tangle was a big black touring-car. Its one
occupant was a girl--and such a girl! Her fawn-colored cloak was thrown
open; her face was unveiled. Orme was thrilled when he caught the glory
of her face--the clear skin, browned by outdoor living; the demure but
regular features; the eyes that seemed to transmute and reflect softly
all impressions from without. Orme had never seen anyone like her--so
nobly unconscious of self, so appealing and yet so calm.
She was waiting patiently, interested in the clamor about her, but
seemingly undisturbed by her own part in it. Orme's eyes did not leave
her face. He was merely one of a crowd at the curb, unnoted by her, but
when after a time, he became aware that he was staring, he felt the blood
rush to his cheeks, and he muttered: "What a boor I am!" And then, "But
who can she be? who can she be?"
A policeman made his way to the black car. Orme saw him speak to the
girl; saw her brows knit; and he quickly threaded his way into the
street. His action was barely conscious, but nothing could have stopped
him at that moment.
"You'll have to come to the station, miss," the policeman was saying.
"But what have I done?" Her voice was broken music.
"You've violated the traffic regulations, and made all this trouble,
that's what you've done."
"I'm on a very important errand," she began, "and----"
"I can't help that, miss, you ought to have had someone with you that
knew the rules."
Her eyes were perplexed, and she looked about her as if for help. For a
moment her gaze fell on Orme, who was close to the policeman's elbow.
Now, Orme had a winning and disarming smile. Without hesitation, he
touched the policeman on the shoulder, beamed pleasantly, and said:
"Pardon me, officer, but this car was forced over by that dray."
"She was on the wrong side," returned the policeman, after a glance which
modified his first intention to take offense. "She had no business over
here."
"It was either that or a collision. My wheel was scraped, as it was."
She, too, was smiling now.
The policeman pondered. He liked to be called "officer"; he liked to be
smiled upon; and the girl, to judge from her manner and appearance, might
well be the daughter of a man of position. "Well," he said after a
moment, "be more careful another time." He turned and went back to his
work among the other vehicles, covering the weakness of his surrender by
a fresh display of angry authority.
The girl gave a little sigh of relief and looked at Orme. "Thank you,"
she said.
Then he remembered that he did not know this girl. "Can I be of further
service?" he asked.
"No," she answered, "I think not. But thank you just the same." She gave
him a friendly little nod and turned to the steering-gear.
There was nothing for it but to go, and Orme returned to the curb. A
moment later he saw the black car move slowly away, and he felt as though
something sweet and fine were going out of his life. If only there had
been some way to prolong the incident! He knew intuitively that this girl
belonged to his own class. Any insignificant acquaintance might introduce
them to each other. And yet convention now thrust them apart.
Sometime he might meet her. Indeed, he determined to find out who she was
and make that sometime a certainty. He would prolong his stay in Chicago
and search society until he found her. No one had ever before sent such a
thrill through his heart. He must find her, become her friend,
perhaps----But, again he laughed to himself, "What a boor I am!"
After all she was but a passing stranger, and the pleasant revery into
which his glimpse of her had led him was only a revery. The memory of her
beauty and elusive charm would disappear; his vivid impression of her
would be effaced. But even while he thought this he found himself again
wondering who she was and how he could find her. He could not drive her
from his mind.
Meantime he had proceeded slowly on his way. Suddenly a benevolent,
white-bearded man halted him, with a deprecating gesture. "Excuse me,
sir," he began, "but your hat----"
Orme lifted his straw hat from his head. A glance showed him that it was
disfigured by a great blotch of black grease. He had held his hat in his
hand while talking to the girl, and it must have touched her car at a
point where the axle of the dray had rubbed. So this was his one memento
of the incident.
He thanked the stranger, and walked to a near-by hatter's, where a ready
clerk set before him hats of all styles. He selected one quickly and left
his soiled hat to be cleaned and sent home later.
Offering a ten-dollar bill in payment, he received in change a
five-dollar bill and a silver dollar. He gave the coin a second glance.
It was the first silver dollar that he had handled for some time, for he
seldom visited the West.
"There's no charge for the cleaning," said the clerk, noting down Orme's
name and address, and handing the soiled hat to the cash-boy.
Orme, meantime, was on the point of folding the five-dollar bill to put
it into his pocket-book. Suddenly he looked at it intently. Written in
ink across the face of it, were the words:
"Remember Person You Pay This To."
The writing was apparently a hurried scrawl, but the letters were large
and quite legible. They appeared to have been written on an uneven
surface, for there were several jogs and breaks in the writing, as if the
pen had slipped.
"This is curious," remarked Orme.
The clerk blinked his watery eyes and looked at the bill in Orme's hand.
"Oh, yes, sir," he explained. "I remember that. The gentleman who paid it
in this morning called our attention to it."
"If he's the man who wrote this, he probably doesn't know that there's a
law against defacing money."
"But it's perfectly good, isn't it?" inquired the clerk. "If you want
another instead----"
"Oh, no," laughed Orme. "The banks would take it."
"But, sir----" began the clerk.
"I should like to keep it. If I can't get rid of it, I'll bring it back.
It's a hoax or an endless chain device or something of the sort. I'd like
to find out."
He looked again at the writing. Puzzles and problems always interested
him, especially if they seemed to involve some human story.
"Very well," said the clerk, "I'll remember that you have it, Mr.----" he
peered at the name he had set down--"Mr. Orme."
Leaving the hatter's, Orme turned back on State Street, retracing his
steps. It was close to the dinner hour, and the character of the street
crowds had changed. The shoppers had disappeared. Suburbanites were by
this time aboard their trains and homeward bound. The street was thronged
with hurrying clerks and shop-girls, and the cars were jammed with
thousands more, all of them thinking, no doubt, of the same two
things--something to eat and relaxation.
What a hive it was, this great street! And how scant the lives of the
great majority! Working, eating, sleeping, marrying and given in
marriage, bearing children and dying--was that all? "But growing, too,"
said Orme to himself. "Growing, too." Would this be the sum of his own
life--that of a worker in the hive? It came to him with something of an
inner pang that thus far his scheme of things had included little more.
He wondered why he was now recognizing this scantiness, this lack in his
life.
He came out of his revery to find himself again at the Madison Street
corner. Again he seemed to see that beautiful girl in the car, and to
hear the music of her voice.
How could he best set about to find her? She might be, like himself, a
visitor in the city. But there was the touring-car. Well, she might have
run in from one of the suburbs. He could think of no better plan than to
call that evening on the Wallinghams and describe the unknown to Bessie
and try to get her assistance. Bessie would divine the situation, and she
would guy him unmercifully, he knew; but he would face even that for
another glimpse of the girl of the car.
And at that moment he was startled by a sharp explosion. He looked to the
street. There was the black car, bumping along with one flat tire. The
girl threw on the brakes and came to a stop.
In an instant Orme was in the street. If he thought that she would not
remember him, her first glance altered the assumption, for she looked
down at him with a ready smile and said: "You see, I do need you again,
after all."
As for Orme, he could think of nothing better to say than simply, "I am
glad." With that he began to unfasten the spare tire.
"I shall watch you with interest," she went on. "I know how to run a
car--though you might not think it--but I don't know how to repair one."
"That's a man's job anyway," said Orme, busy now with the jack, which was
slowly raising the wheel from the pavement.
"Shall I get out?" she asked. "Does my weight make any difference?"
"Not at all," said Orme; but, nevertheless, she descended to the street
and stood beside him while he worked. "I didn't know there were all those
funny things inside," she mused.
Orme laughed. Her comment was vague, but to him it was enough just to
hear her voice. He had got the wheel clear of the street and was taking
off the burst tire.
"We seem fated to meet," she said.
Orme looked up at her. "I hope you won't think me a cad," he said, "if I
say that I hope we may meet many times."
Her little frown warned him that she had misunderstood.
"Do you happen to know the Tom Wallinghams?" he asked.
Her smile returned. "I know _a_ Tom Wallingham and a _Bessie_
Wallingham."
"They're good friends of mine. Don't you think that they might introduce
us?"
"They might," she vouchsafed, "if they happened to see us both at the
same time."
Orme returned to his task. The crowd that always gathers was now close
about them, and there was little opportunity for talk. He finished his
job neatly, and stowed away the old tire.
She was in the car before he could offer to help her. "Thank you again,"
she said.
"If only you will let me arrange it with the Wallinghams," he faltered.
"I will think about it." She smiled.
He felt that she was slipping away. "Give me some clue," he begged.
"Where is your spirit of romance?" she railed at him; then apparently
relenting: "Perhaps the next time we meet----"
Orme groaned. With a little nod like that which had dismissed him at the
time of his first service to her, she pulled the lever and the car moved
away.
Tumult in his breast, Orme walked on. He watched the black car thread its
way down the street and disappear around a corner. Then he gave himself
over to his own bewildering reflections, and he was still busy with them
when he found himself at the entrance of the Pere Marquette. He had
crossed the Rush Street bridge and found his way up to the Lake Shore
Drive almost without realizing whither he was going.
Orme had come to Chicago, at the request of Eastern clients, to meet
half-way the owners of a Western mining property. When he registered at
the Annex, he found awaiting him a telegram saying that they had been
detained at Denver and must necessarily be two days late. Besides the
telegram, there had been a letter for him--a letter from his friend, Jack
Baxter, to whom he had written of his coming. Jack had left the city on
business, it appeared, but he urged Orme to make free of his North Side
apartment. So Orme left the Annex and went to the rather too gorgeous,
but very luxurious Pere Marquette, where he found that the staff had
been instructed to keep a close eye on his comfort. All this had happened
but three short hours ago.
After getting back to the apartment, Orme's first thought was to
telephone to Bessie Wallingham. He decided, however, to wait till after
dinner. He did not like to appear too eager. So he went down to the
public dining-room and ate what was placed before him, and returned to
his apartment just at dusk.
In a few moments he got Bessie Wallingham on the wire.
"Why, Robert Orme!" she exclaimed. "Wherever did you come from?"
"The usual place. Are you and Tom at home this evening?"
"I'm so sorry. We're going out with some new friends. Wish I knew them
well enough to ask you along. Can you have some golf with us at Arradale
to-morrow afternoon?"
"Delighted! Say, Bessie, do you know a girl who runs a black
touring-car?"
"What?"
"Do you know a tall, dark girl who has a black touring-car?"
"I know lots of tall, dark girls, and several of them have black
touring-cars. Why?"
"Who are they?"
There was a pause and a little chuckle; then: "Now, Bob, that won't do.
You must tell me all about it to-morrow. Call for us in time to catch the
one-four."
That was all that Orme could get out of her and after a little banter and
a brief exchange of greetings with Tom, who was called to the telephone
by his wife, the wire was permitted to rest.
Orme pushed a chair to the window of the sitting-room and smoked lazily,
looking out over the beautiful expanse of Lake Michigan, which reflected
from its glassy surface the wonderful opalescence of early evening. He
seemed to have set forth on a new and adventurous road. How strangely the
girl of the car had come into his life!
Then he thought of the five-dollar bill, with the curious inscription. He
took it from his pocket-book and examined it by the fading light. The
words ran the full length of the face. Orme noticed that the writing had
a foreign look. There were flourishes which seemed distinctly
un-American.
He turned the bill over. Apparently there was no writing on the back, but
as he looked more closely he saw a dark blur in the upper left-hand
corner. Even in the dusk he could make out that this was not a spot of
dirt; the edges were defined too distinctly for a smudge; and it was not
black enough for an ink-blot.
Moving to the center-table, he switched on the electric lamp, and looked
at the blur again. It stood out plainly now, a series of letters and
numbers:
Evans, S. R. Chi. A. 100 N. 210 E. T.
The first thought that came to Orme was that this could be no hoax. A
joker would have made the curious cryptogram more conspicuous. But what
did it mean? Was it a secret formula? Did it give the location of a
buried treasure? And why in the name of common sense had it been written
on a five-dollar bill?
More likely, Orme reasoned, it concealed information for or about some
person--"S. R. Evans," probably. And who was this S. R. Evans?
The better to study the mystery, Orme copied the inscription on a sheet
of note-paper, which he found in the table drawer. From the first he
decided that there was no cipher. The letters undoubtedly were
abbreviations. "Evans" must be, as he had already determined, a man's
name. "Chi" might be, probably was, "Chicago." "100 N. 210 E." looked
like "100 (feet? paces?) north, 210 (feet? paces?) east."
The "A." and the "T." bothered him. "A." might be the place to which "S.
R. Evans" was directed, or at which he was to be found--a place
sufficiently indicated by the letter. Now as to the "T."--was it
"treasure"? Or was it "time"? Or "true"? Orme had no way of telling. It
might even be the initial of the person who had penned the instructions.
Without knowing where "A." was, Orme could make nothing of the
cryptogram. For that matter, he realized that unless the secret were
criminal it was not his affair. But he knew that legitimate business
information is seldom transmitted by such mysterious means.
Again and again he went over the abbreviations, but the more closely he
studied them, the more baffling he found them. The real meaning appeared
to hinge on the "A." and the "T." Eventually he was driven to the
conclusion that those two letters could not be understood by anyone who
was not already partly in the secret, if secret it was. It occurred to
him to have the city directory sent up to him. He might then find the
address of "S. R. Evans," if that person happened to be a Chicagoan. But
it was quite likely that the "Chi." might mean something other than that
"Evans" lived in Chicago. Perhaps, in the morning he would satisfy his
curiosity about "S. R. Evans," but for the present he lacked the
inclination to press the matter that far.
In the midst of his puzzling, the telephone-bell rang. He crossed the
room and put the receiver to his ear. "Yes?" he questioned.
The clerk's voice answered. "Senhor Poritol to see Mr. Orme."
"Who?"
"S-e-n-h-o-r--P-o-r-i-t-o-l," spelled the clerk.
"I don't know him," said Orme. "There must be some mistake. Are you sure
that he asked for me?"
There was a pause. Orme heard a few scattered words which indicated that
the clerk was questioning the stranger. Then came the information: "He
says he wishes to see you about a five-dollar bill."
"Oh!" Orme realized that he had no reason to be surprised. "Well, send
him up."
He hung up the receiver and, returning to the table, put the marked bill
back into his pocket-book and slipped into a drawer the paper on which he
had copied the inscription.