The Girl and The Bill Part 8

"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 sc.r.a.p 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 j.a.panese."

"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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese can't. The best course for us to take is to go at once to see Walsh, the burglar."

He a.s.sumed that she would accept his aid.

"That is good of you," she said. "But it seems a little hopeless, doesn't it?"

"Why? What else can we do? I suppose you saw to it that no one else should have access to Walsh."

"Yes, father arranged that by telephone. The man is in solitary confinement. Several persons tried to see him to-day, on the plea of being relatives. None of them was admitted."

What money-king was this girl's father, that he could thus regulate the treatment of prisoners?

"So there were abbreviations on the bill?" she asked.

"Yes. They weren't very elaborate, and I puzzled over them for some time.

The curious fact is that, for all my study of them, I can't remember much of anything about them. What I have since been through, apparently, has driven the letters out of my head."

"Oh, do try to remember," she implored. "Even if you recall only one or two bits of it, they may help me."

"There was something about a man named Evans," he began. "S. R. Evans, it was."

"Evans? That is strange. I can't think how anyone of that name could be involved."

"Then S. R. Evans is not your father?" he ventured.

"Oh, no." She laughed a light little laugh. "My father is--but are you sure that the name was Evans?"

"Quite sure. Then there was the abbreviation 'Chi.'--which I took to mean 'Chicago.'"

"Yes?" she breathed.

"And there were numerals--a number, then the letter 'N.'; another number, followed by the letter 'E.' So far north, so far east, I read it--though I couldn't make out whether the numbers stood for feet or paces or miles."

"Yes, yes," she whispered. Her eyes were intent on his. They seemed to will him to remember. "What else was there?"

"Odd letters, which meant nothing to me. It's annoying, but I simply can't recall them. Believe me, I should like to."

"Perhaps you will a little later," she said. "I'm sorry to be such a bother to you."

"Bother!"

"But it does mean so much, the tracing of this bill."

"Shall we go to see Walsh?" he asked.

"I suppose so." She sighed. Apparently she was discouraged. "But even if he gives the information, it may be too late. The j.a.panese have the directions."

"But perhaps they will not be able to make them out," he suggested.

She smiled. "You don't know the j.a.panese," she said. "They are abominably clever at such things. I will venture that they are already on their way to the hiding-place."

"But even if the papers are in the pocket of one of them, it may be possible to steal them back."

"Hardly." She arose. "I fear that the one chance is the mere possibility that Maku couldn't read the directions. Then, if Walsh _will_ speak out----"

"Now, let me say something," he said. "My name is Robert Orme. Apparently we have common friends in the Wallinghams. When I first saw you this afternoon, I felt that I might have a right to your acquaintance--a social right, if you like; a sympathetic right, I trust."

He held out his hand. She took it frankly, and the friendly pressure of her fine, firm palm sent the blood tingling through him.

"I am sorry," she said, "that I can't give you my name. It would be unfair just now--unfair to others; for if you knew who I am, it might give you a clue to the secret I guard."

"Some day, I hope, I may know," he said gravely. "But your present wish is my law. It is good of you to let me try to help you."

At the same instant they became conscious that their hands were still clasped. The girl blushed, and gently drew hers away.

"I shall call you Girl," Orme added.

"A name I like," she said. "My father uses it. Oh, if I only knew what that burglar wrote on the bill!"

Orme started. What a fool he had been! Here he was, trying to help the girl, forcing her to the long, tired recital of her story, when all the time he held her secret in the table in his sitting-room. For there was still the paper on which he had copied the abbreviated directions.

"Wait here," he said sharply, and without answering the look of surprise on her face, hurried from the room and to the elevator. A few moments later he was back, the sheet of paper in his hand.