harton.

"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 star