“And the girl?”
“He married her. That’s why I didn’t bother to check the divorce records.”
“And he hadn’t got the divorce?”
“No. As it turned out, he’d simply taken the money I’d given him to make an impression on this other girl. He got her to marry him. She had some money saved. Sidney got that.”
“That wasn’t Helen Framley?” I asked.
“No. Her name was Sadie something. I’ve forgotten the last name, but I remember he kept talking about Sadie, and I was curious as to what sort of a girl she was.”
“All right. Then what happened?”
“Absolutely nothing for years. I had entirely lost track of him, and I hardly ever even thought of him. He quit his ring career. I think the Boxing Commission had some evidence on him that made it impossible for him to fight again. I don’t think he wanted to, anyway. He wasn’t the type to stand up under punishment in a ring.”
“And you met Philip?”
“Yes. I’d taken the name of Corla Burke so I could wipe out the past and begin all over. You see, my father—”
“I understand about the name now,” I said. “Let’s go on from there.”
“At first, I—”
“You don’t need to go into that. Just come to the Helen Framley part.”
“I got this very queer letter from Helen Framley. She said that she had read in the paper I was planning to get married almost immediately, that she was friendly with Sidney, and had heard Sidney speak of me, that she wondered if I knew Sidney had never got a divorce. She went on to say that Sidney was very much changed from what he was when I had known him, that he had steadied down a lot and really wanted to make something of himself in the world. She didn’t think he had the money to get a divorce right away, but if I didn’t want to wait, she could fix things up so that I could go ahead with the marriage, and after I had married Philip, Sidney would go ahead and get a divorce. She said he’d had some bad luck, but within a few weeks he’d be in the money again. I could then pretend to my husband there had been some irregularity in stating my age or something of that sort in the license, and get him to marry me all over again, or just keep on living with him and it would be a common-law marriage.”
“ ‘Queer’ is right. How much money did he want?” I asked.
“She didn’t even mention anything like that. Not as coming from me. She simply said that she thought that if he could get enough to set himself up in some business, it would be all he’d want, and I’d never hear from him again.”
“Did you gather the impression that she was writing you at his request?”
“No. She told me that he didn’t know anything about the letter she was writing, that he was intending to write to Philip Whitewell if it appeared that the marriage was going through, that he didn’t want Philip to be placed in the position of making a bigamous marriage.”
“Very considerate about Philip, wasn’t he?”
“Well — oh, it was about what you’d expect of Sidney. This Miss Framley seemed very nice. She looked at it from my viewpoint.”
“How had she found out you were really Sidney’s wife? How had she found you under the name of Corla Burke?”
“She didn’t say — just wrote this brief letter.”
“I see. Now when the proposition was all boiled down, unless you promised Sidney Jannix enough money to start up in business, he was going to prevent your marriage. If you’d promise to take care of him from money you could get from your husband, he was going to sit back and let you become the goose that would lay his golden eggs.”
“Well, if you want to look at it that way.”
“It’s the only way to look at it.”
“Then you think this Helen Framley was—”
“I don’t think Helen Framley ever wrote the letter.”
“But she told me to reply to her.”
“And you did?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And that was the letter that Arthur Whitewell dictated?”
“He didn’t dictate it.”
“But he knew about what was in it?”
“Yes.”
“I want to know about that,” I said.
“Well, I had it coming to me. I deserved everything I got. I don’t suppose I can ever explain it to you. I could never explain it to anyone, not even myself. But — well, I just had crossed those three months when I had been married to Sidney Jannix out of my life. I wrote them off as a bad experience, and—”
“By that you mean you didn’t tell Philip anything about them?”
She nodded.
“And Philip knew nothing whatever about Sidney Jannix or about your having been married?”
“That’s right.”
“So this letter from Helen Framley dropped on you like a one-ton bomb making a direct hit?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do?”
“I took the letter and went to see Philip.”
“Where?”
“At his office. We had a date for that night.”
“But you didn’t see Philip?”
“No. He’d been called out on a deal that was very important, and he left a note telling me he was awfully sorry but he just had to ask me to forget about the evening, that he’d been trying to reach me on the telephone, and couldn’t. He said he’d give me a ring around eleven o’clock and see if I could have lunch with him the next day.”
“Arthur Whitewell was in the office?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And knew from the look on your face that something was wrong?”
“No. I don’t think so. He was considerate and very nice. He’d reconciled himself to the marriage. I’d known, of course, that he didn’t exactly approve of it, but he’d been very tactful.”
“But you did tell Arthur Whitewell the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“And,” I said, watching her narrowly, “I suppose it knocked him right off the Christmas tree?”
“It was a terrible shock to him,” she said. “But he was perfectly splendid. He told me that at first he hadn’t approved of me, but that he finally realized Philip was desperately in love with me, and that he had cared enough about his son so that he wanted him to have whatever would make him happy; that if Philip wanted me, then he had planned to take me into the family and had made up his mind that neither of us would ever know that he hadn’t exactly approved. He was frank enough to tell me that. I was more attracted to him then than I ever had been. He was simply splendid. He comforted me, and — well, he was so wise and understanding and tolerant, and yet he looked at the thing from such a common-sense angle.”
“What was his angle?”
“He said, of course, that now we couldn’t go ahead with the marriage, and he told me what I’d known already, that if Philip realized I’d been married, that there was another man living who had been — the first in my affections, who had been my husband, who had lived with me, who — well, if you know Philip, you understand how he might feel about that. He’s abnormally sensitive, and — his father confirmed my worst fears on that point.”
“Go ahead with the rest of it,” I told her.
“I showed him Helen Framley’s letter. He told me how much he appreciated my being perfectly honest about it all. He said that many a woman would have been tempted to go through with the marriage and do exactly as this Miss Framley had suggested. But he said that I’d better write her and tell her that now the marriage was absolutely out of the question, so that Jannix wouldn’t get in touch with Philip.”
“Why did he want to keep Jannix from getting in touch with Philip?”
“He didn’t want Philip to be disillusioned so brutally. That was the idea back of the whole thing. I was to save face, but it wasn’t on my own account. It was to protect Philip.”
“Who suggested it?”
“Why, it was something we worked out together, sort of a collaboration. He said that for the time being, at least, I must step out of the picture in some way so that Philip would never know what had happened until after he had accustomed himself to my absence, and then we could let it come out. He said that sometime in the future, if I secured a divorce from Jannix and there was no reason why I couldn’t marry, I could meet Philip again and explain everything to him.”