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 returned, for the girl screamed sharply.

“Be still!” commanded the older woman.  Breathless, across the top of the armchair, 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.