"Wait!" he said. "You are not talking to me as anybody's brother-in-law, but as the district attorney."
The girl laughed vindictively.
"I don't wonder you're ashamed of him!" she jeered.
Again she began: "I first met Ham Cutler last May. He wanted to marry me then. He told me he was not a married man."
As her story unfolded, Wharton did not again interrupt; and speaking quickly, in abrupt, broken phrases, the girl brought her narrative to the moment when, as she claimed, Cutler had attempted to kill her.
At this point a knock at the locked door caused both the girl and her audience to start. Wharton looked at Mrs. Earle inquiringly, but she shook her head, and with a look at him also of inquiry, and of suspicion as well, opened the door.
With apologies her head waiter presented a letter.
"For Mr. Wharton," he explained, "from his chauffeur."
Wharton's annoyance at the interruption was most apparent. "What the devil----" he began.
He read the note rapidly, and with a frown of irritation raised his eyes to Mrs. Earle.
"He wants to go to New Rochelle for an inner tube," he said. "How long would it take him to get there and back?"
The hard and distrustful expression upon the face of Mrs. Earle, which was habitual, was now most strongly in evidence. Her eyes searched those of Wharton.
"Twenty minutes, she said.
"He can't go," snapped Wharton.
"Tell him," he directed the waiter, "to stay where he is. Tell him I may want to go back to the office any minute." He turned eagerly to the girl. "I'm sorry," he said. With impatience he crumpled the note into a ball and glanced about him. At his feet was a waste-paper basket. Fixed upon him he saw, while pretending not to see, the eyes of Mrs. Earle burning with suspicion. If he destroyed the note, he knew suspicion would become certainty. Without an instant of hesitation, carelessly he tossed it intact into the waste-paper basket. Toward Rose Gerard he swung the revolving chair.
"Go on, Please," he commanded.
The girl had now reached the climax of her story, but the eyes of Mrs. Earle betrayed the fact that her thoughts were elsewhere. With an intense and hungry longing, they were concentrated upon her own waste-paper basket.
The voice of the girl in anger and defiance recalled Mrs. Earle to the business of the moment.
"He tried to kill me," shouted Miss Rose. "And his shooting himself in the shoulder was a bluff. THAT'S my story; that's the story I'm going to tell the judge"--her voice soared shrilly--"that's the story that's going to send your brother-in-law to Sing Sing!"
For the first time Mrs. Earle contributed to the general conversation.
"You talk like a fish," she said.
The girl turned upon her savagely.
"If he don't like the way I talk," she cried, "he can come across!"
Mrs. Earle exclaimed in horror. Virtuously her hands were raised in protest.
"Like hell he will!" she said. "You can't pull that under my roof!"
Wharton looked disturbed.
"Come across?" he asked.
"Come across?" mimicked the girl. "Send me abroad and keep me there. And I'll swear it was an accident. Twenty-five thousand, that's all I want.
Cutler told me he was going to make you governor. He can't make you governor if he's in Sing Sing, can he? Ain't it worth twenty-five thousand to you to be governor? Come on," she jeered, "kick in!"
With a grave but untroubled voice Wharton addressed Mrs. Earle.
"May I use your telephone?" he asked. He did not wait for her consent, but from the desk lifted the hand telephone.
"Spring, three one hundred!" he said. He sat with his legs comfortably crossed, the stand of the instrument balanced on his knee, his eyes gazing meditatively at the yellow tree-tops.
If with apprehension both women started, if the girl thrust herself forward, and by the hand of Mrs. Earle was dragged back, he did not appear to know it.
"Police headquarters?" they heard him ask. "I want to speak to the commissioner. This is the district attorney."
In the pause that followed, as though to torment her, the pain, in her side apparently turned, for the girl screamed sharply.
"Be still!" commanded the older woman. Breathless, across the top of the arm-chair, she was leaning forward. Upon the man at the telephone her eyes were fixed in fascination.
"Commissioner," said the district attorney, "this is Wharton speaking.
A woman has made a charge of attempted murder to me against my brother-in-law, Hamilton Cutler. On account of our relationship, I want you to make the arrest. If there were any slip, and he got away, it might be said I arranged it. You will find him at the Winona apartments on the Southern Boulevard, in the private hospital of a Doctor Samuel Muir. Arrest them both. The girl who makes the charge is at Kessler's Cafe, on the Boston Post Road, just inside the city line. Arrest her too. She tried to blackmail me. I'll appear against her."
Wharton rose and addressed himself to Mrs. Earle.
"I'm, sorry," he said, "but I had to do it. You might have known I could not hush it up. I am the only man who can't hush it up. The people of New York elected me to enforce the laws." Wharton's voice was raised to a loud pitch. It seemed unnecessarily loud. It was almost as though he were addressing another and more distant audience. "And," he continued, his voice still soaring, "even if my own family suffer, even if I suffer, even if I lose political promotion, those laws I will enforce!"
In the more conventional tone of every-day politeness, he added: "May I speak to you outside, Mrs. Earle?"
But, as in silence that lady descended the stairs, the district attorney seemed to have forgotten what it was he wished to say.
It was not until he had seen his chauffeur arouse himself from apparently deep slumber and crank the car that he addressed her.
"That girl," he said, "had better go back to bed. My men are all around this house and, until the police come, will detain her."
He shook the jewelled fingers of Mrs. Earle warmly. "I thank you," he said; "I know you meant well. I know you wanted to help me, but"--he shrugged his shoulders--"my duty!"
As he walked down the driveway to his car his shoulders continued to move.
But Mrs. Earle did not wait to observe this phenomenon. Rid of his presence, she leaped, rather than ran, up the stairs and threw open the door of her office.
As she entered, two men followed her. One was a young man who held in his hand an open note-book, the other was Tim Meehan, of Tammany. The latter greeted her with a shout.
"We heard everything he said," he cried. His voice rose in torment. "An'
we can't use a word of it! He acted just like we'd oughta knowed he'd act. He's HONEST! He's so damned honest he ain't human; he's a--gilded saint!"
Mrs. Earle did not heed him. On her knees she was tossing to the floor the contents of the waste-paper basket. From them she snatched a piece of crumpled paper.
"Shut up!" she shouted. "Listen! His chauffeur brought him this." In a voice that quivered with indignation, that sobbed with anger, she read aloud:
"'As directed by your note from the window, I went to the booth and called up Mrs. Cutler's house and got herself on the phone. Your brother-in-law lunched at home to-day with her and the children and they are now going to the Hippodrome.