The Frame Up | Page 9

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: