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
t