The Frame Up | Page 9

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