His pride was to be known as a self-made man, as the servant only of the voters.  And now that he had fought his way to one of the goals of his ambition, now that he was district attorney of New York City, to have it said that the office was the gift of his brother-in-law was bitter.  But he believed the injustice would soon end.  In a month he was coming up for re-election, and night and day was conducting a campaign that he hoped would result in a personal victory so complete as to banish the shadow of his brother-in-law.  Were he re-elected by the majority on which he counted, he would have the party leaders on their knees.  Hamilton Cutler would be forced to come to him.  He would be in line for promotion.  He knew the leaders did not want to promote him, that they considered him too inclined to kick over the traces; but were he now re-elected, at the next election, either for mayor or governor, he would be his party’s obvious and legitimate candidate.

The re-election was not to be an easy victory.  Outside his own party, to prevent his succeeding himself as district attorney, Tammany Hall was using every weapon in her armory.  The commissioner of police was a Tammany man, and in the public prints Wharton had repeatedly declared that Banf, his star witness against the police, had been killed by the police, and that they had prevented the discovery of his murderer.  For this the wigwam wanted his scalp, and to get it had raked his public and private life, had used threats and bribes, and with women had tried to trap him into a scandal.  But “Big Tim” Meehan, the lieutenant the Hall had detailed to destroy Wharton, had reported back that for their purpose his record was useless, that bribes and threats only flattered him, and that the traps set for him he had smilingly side-stepped.  This was the situation a month before election day when, to oblige his brother-in-law, Wharton was up-town at Delmonico’s lunching with Senator Bissell.

Down-town at the office, Rumson, the assistant district attorney, was on his way to lunch when the telephone-girl halted him.  Her voice was lowered and betrayed almost human interest.

From the corner of her mouth she whispered: 

“This man has a note for Mr. Wharton—­says if he don’t get it quick it’ll be too late—­says it will tell him who killed ‘Heimie’ Banf!”

The young man and the girl looked at each other and smiled.  Their experience had not tended to make them credulous.  Had he lived, Hermann Banf would have been, for Wharton, the star witness against a ring of corrupt police officials.  In consequence his murder was more than the taking off of a shady and disreputable citizen.  It was a blow struck at the high office of the district attorney, at the grand jury, and the law.  But, so far, whoever struck the blow had escaped punishment, and though for a month, ceaselessly, by night and day “the office” and the police had sought him, he was still at large, still “unknown.”  There had been hundreds of clews.  They had been furnished by the detectives of the city and county and of the private agencies, by amateurs, by newspapers, by members of the underworld with a score to pay off or to gain favor.  But no clew had led anywhere.  When, in hoarse whispers, the last one had been confided to him by his detectives, Wharton had protested indignantly.