"RichardHardingDavis-TheFrameUp" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Richard Harding)

"What Nolan testified wouldn't be any help," said Wharton. "They would say it
was just a story he invented to save me."
"Then square yourself this way," urged Rumson. "Send a note now by hand to Ham
Cutler and one to your sister. Tell them you're going to Ida Earle's--and
why--tell them you're afraid it's a frame-up, and for them to keep your notes as
evidence. And enclose the one from her."
Wharton nodded in approval, and, while he wrote, Rumson and the detective
planned how, without those inside the road- house being aware of their presence,
they might be near it.
Kessler's Cafe lay in the Seventy-ninth Police Precinct. In taxi-cabs they
arranged to start at once and proceed down White Plains Avenue, which parallels
the Boston Road, until they were on a line with Kessler's, but from it hidden by
the woods and the garages. A walk of a quarter of a mile across lots and under
cover of the trees would bring them to within a hundred yards of the house.
Wharton was to give them a start of half an hour. That he might know they were
on watch, they agreed, after they dismissed the taxi-cabs, to send one of them
into the Boston Post Road past the road-house. When it was directly in front of
the cafe, the chauffeur would throw away into the road an empty cigarette-case.
From the cigar-stand they selected a cigarette box of a startling yellow. At
half a mile it was conspicuous.
"When you see this in the road," explained Rumson, "you'll know we're on the
job. And after you're inside, if you need us, you've only to go to a rear window
and wave."
"If they mean to do him up," growled Bissell, "he won't get to a rear window."
"He can always tell them we're outside," said Rumson----"and they are extremely
likely to believe him. Do you want a gun?"
"No," said the D. A.
"Better have mine,"' urged Hewitt.
"I have my own," explained the D. A.
Rumson and Hewitt set off in taxi-cabs and, a half-hour later, Wharton followed.
As he sank back against the cushions of the big touring-car he felt a pleasing
thrill of excitement, and as he passed the traffic police, and they saluted
mechanically, he smiled. Had they guessed his errand their interest in his
progress would have been less perfunctory. In half an hour he might know that
the police killed Banf; in half an hour he himself might walk into a trap they
had, in turn, staged for him. As the car ran swiftly through the clean October
air, and the wind and sun alternately chilled and warmed his blood, Wharton
considered these possibilities.
He could not believe the woman Earle would lend herself to any plot to do him
bodily harm. She was a responsible person. In her own world she was as important
a figure as was the district attorney in his. Her allies were the man "higher up
" in Tammany and the police of the upper ranks of the uniformed force. And of
the higher office of the district attorney she possessed an intimate and
respectful knowledge. It was not to be considered that against the prosecuting
attorney such a woman would wage war. So the thought that upon his person any
assault was meditated Wharton dismissed as unintelligent. That it was upon his
reputation the attack was planned seemed much more probable. But that
contingency he had foreseen and so, he believed, forestalled. There then
remained only the possibility that the offer in the letter was genuine. It
seemed quite too good to be true. For, as he asked himself, on the very eve of