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.”