ll 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 l