The Girl and the Bill

Robert Orme, a lawyer sent out from the East on a client’s mining business, has two idle days in Chicago when he talks a policeman out of hauling in a young woman whose touring car has snarled traffic on State Street. Minutes later, buying a hat to replace the one he ruined against her car, he takes a five-dollar bill in change with “Remember Person You Pay This To” inked across the face and a line of abbreviations on the back. By evening the girl is in his hotel parlor asking for that same bill, and so are a South American named Poritol, the minister Alcatrante, and two Japanese agents willing to use their fists. What the scribble protects is an unsigned treaty. Merwin published it in 1909, the year he began writing scenarios for Edison.