The Girl and the Bill. Bannister Merwin

      “Did you?”

      “No, and that is where my troubles really began. Just as I was preparing to go, Mr. Poritol called. I had forgotten that we had asked him out for an afternoon of golf. He is such a funny player.

      “As soon as I told him I was going to the Chicago jail to interview a burglar about some stolen goods, he insisted on acting as escort. He was so amusingly persistent that I finally agreed. We set out for the city in my car, not waiting to take a train.

      “When we reached the jail I presented a letter which my father had written, and the officials agreed to let me have a private interview with Walsh.”

      Orme opened his eyes. This girl’s father must have considerable influence.

      “It is a horrid place, the jail. They took us through a corridor to Walsh’s cell, and called him to the grating. I made Mr. Poritol stand back at the other side of the corridor so that he couldn’t hear us talk.

      “I asked the man what he had done with the papers. He insisted that he had seen none. Then I promised to have him freed, if he would only return them. He looked meditatively over my shoulders and after a moment declined the offer, again insisting that he didn’t understand what I was talking about. ‘I took the other things, miss,’ he said, ‘and I suppose I’ll get time for it. But so help me, I didn’t see no papers.’ ”

      The girl paused and looked at Orme. “This seems like wasting minutes when we might be searching.”

      Orme was pleased to hear the “we.”

      “Well,” she went on, “I knew that the man was not telling the truth. He was too hesitant to be convincing. So I began to promise him money. At every offer he looked past my shoulder and then repeated his denials. The last time he raised his eyes I had an intuition that something was going on behind me. I turned quickly. There stood Mr. Poritol, extending his fingers in the air and forming his mouth silently into words. He was raising my bids!

      “It flashed upon me that the papers would be of immense value to Mr. Poritol—for certain reasons. If only I had thought of it before! I spoke to him sharply and told him to go outside. It always seemed natural to order him about, like a little dog.”

      “However, little dogs have the sharpest teeth,” remarked Orme.

      “That is true. He replied that he couldn’t think of leaving me alone in such a place. So there was nothing for me to do except to go. I would have to return later without Mr. Poritol. ‘Come along,’ I said. ‘My errand is done.’

      “Mr. Poritol smiled at me in a way I didn’t like. The burglar, meantime, had gone to a little table at the back of his cell. There was an ink-bottle there and he seemed to be writing. Looking into the cell, Mr. Poritol said: ‘The poor fellow has very unpleasant quarters.’ Then he said to Walsh: ‘Can’t we do something to make your enforced stay here more comfortable, my very dear sir?’ ”

      Orme smiled at the unconscious mimicry of her accent.

      “Walsh came back to the grating. He held in his hand a five-dollar bill—the one that has made so much trouble. It had been smuggled in to him in some way. ‘You might get me some “baccy,” ’ he said, thrusting the bill through the bars and grinning.

      “Now I understood what was going on. I reached for the bill, as though it were intended for me, but Mr. Poritol was quicker. He snatched the bill and put it in his pocket.

      “I didn’t know what to do. But suddenly Mr. Poritol seemed to be frightened. Perhaps he thought that I would have him arrested, though he might have known that there were reasons why I couldn’t. He gave me a panicky look and rushed out of the corridor. Afterward I learned that he told the guard I had sent him on an errand.

      “Well”—she sighed—“of course, I followed, after a last glance at Walsh, who was peering through the grating with a look of evil amusement. He must have been well paid, that burglar. But then,” she mused, “they could afford it—yes, they could well afford it.

      “When I got to the street, Poritol was just disappearing in my car! I can only think that he had lost his head very completely, for he didn’t need to take the car. He could have mixed with the street-crowd and gone afoot to the hotel where——”

      “Alcatrante?”

      “Yes, Mr. Alcatrante—where he was stopping, and have waited there. But Mr. Alcatrante was playing golf at Wheaton, and Mr. Poritol seems to have thought that he must go straight to him. He cannot escape from being spectacular, you see.

      “He ran out through the western suburbs, putting on more and more speed. Meantime I set a detective on the track of the car. That is how I learned what I am now telling you. As for the car, Mr. Poritol sent it back to me this morning with a hired chauffeur. He wrote a note of abject apology, saying that he had been beside himself and had not realized what he was doing.

      “After setting the detective at work, I went out to our place by train. I dreaded confessing my failure to father, but he took it very well. We had dinner together in his study. Maku was in the room while we were talking. Now I can see why Maku disappeared after dinner and did not return.”

      “But how did Poritol lose the bill?” asked Orme.

      The girl laughed. “It was really ridiculous. He over-speeded and was caught by one of those roadside motor-car traps, ten or twelve miles out in the country. They timed him, and stopped him by a bar across the road. From what the detective says, I judge he was frightened almost to speechlessness. He may have thought that he was being arrested for stealing the car. When they dragged him before the country justice, who was sitting under a tree near by, he was white and trembling.

      “They fined him ten dollars. He had in his pocket only eleven dollars and sixty-three cents, and the marked bill was nearly half of the sum. He begged them to let him go—offered them his watch, his ring, his scarf-pin—but the justice insisted on cash. Then he told them that the bill had a formula on it that was valuable to him and no one else.

      “The justice was obdurate, and Mr. Poritol finally hit on the device which you have seen. It fitted in well with his sense of the theatrical; and the detective says that there was not a scrap of paper at hand. The point was that Mr. Poritol was more afraid of delay than anything else. He knew that I would put someone on his track.”

      “When did all this happen?” asked Orme.

      “Yesterday afternoon. Mr. Poritol came back to Chicago by trolley and got some money. He went back to the country justice and discovered that the marked bill had been paid out. He has followed it through several persons to you, just as Maku did, and as I have done. But I heard nothing of the Japanese.”

      “You shouldn’t have attempted this alone,” said Orme, solicitously.

      She smiled faintly. “I dared not let anyone into the secret. I was afraid that a detective might learn too much.” She sighed wearily. “I have been on the trail since morning.”

      “And how did you finally get my address?”

      “The man who paid the bill in at the hat-shop lives in Hyde Park. I did not get to him until this evening, while he was at dinner. He directed me to the hat-shop, which, of course, was closed. I found the address of the owner of the shop in the directory and went to his house. He remembered the bill, and gave me the addresses of his two clerks. The second clerk I saw proved to be the one who had paid the bill to you. Luckily he remembered your address.”

      Orme stirred himself. “Then the Japanese have the directions for finding the papers.”

      “My predicament,” said the girl, “is complicated by the question whether the bill does actually carry definite directions.”

      “It carries something—a set of abbreviations,” said Orme. “But I could not make them out. Let us hope that the Japanese can’t. The best course for us to take is to go at once