E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 25799-h.htm or 25799-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/7/9/25799/25799-h/25799-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/7/9/25799/25799-h.zip) 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.