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.