“But a common one,” Mason said.
She shook her head impatiently. “You don’t get me at all. I’m not referring to that. I went to Orville and put the cards on the table. I told him I had met someone whom I cared for, that I wanted to divorce him, and that I wanted to do it on a friendly basis.”
“That was a mistake?”
“Definitely. I should have gone to him and told him that when I married him I hadn’t been sure I meant to make it permanent; that now I had decided I really cared for him and was going to stay with him the rest of his life. I knew, of course, that he had other interests; you can’t expect a man of his type to be a one-woman man. It’s not that he didn’t care for me — it was simply the challenge that other women would naturally fling at him. If I had used my head and my knowledge of his character, I could have been free.”
“So you went and told him the real truth? And what happened?”
“If you knew him you could guess what would inevitably happen. I was his wife, I was his personal possession, and he didn’t intend to lose me. He was the great Orville Reedley. I must love him. I could not love anyone else. It was a crime to think that, with the privilege of his affection, I would even consider anyone else. Well, as I said, the inevitable resulted. He suddenly showed fierce hostility against me and against the man who was threatening to deprive him of his property.”
“He knew who the man was?”
Her lips came together tightly. She shook her head. “He will never know,” she said. “He must never know.”
“Yet, if you were asking for a divorce,” Mason said, “and if you went to him and told him frankly you loved this man, it would certainly seem that he must have known who it was.”
“I am not entirely stupid, Mr. Mason. I made that one mistake in dealing with him, but I didn’t make the greater mistake of telling him the name of the man with whom I had fallen in love. I tried to play square with Orville, and I learned that that was just the one way you could not play with him. But I knew him well enough to realize the danger of divulging the other man’s identity.”
“The danger?” Mason asked. “Physical, you mean?”
“I don’t know... probably not. I have no idea what sort of weapon my husband would choose, whether physical or — well, some other kind. For the man I love is vulnerable on many sides. He’s no Samson physically, while financially he’s none too well off.”
“But you do love him?”
“I certainly do! Maybe it’s because I know he needs me — the mother instinct perhaps. A part of my love for him is a fierce longing to help him because he is weak and I am strong. For, as I just said, he isn’t strong physically, and it’s conceivable that he might — somehow — be goaded into a nervous breakdown. He is very sensitive, to things big and little. Not only to small details but to important things like injustice. Conflict makes him shrink. Because he’s a thinker — even a dreamer. But he has a wonderful imagination, which gives him a vision that impels him to build for the future. Right now his finances are shaky, but I am confident that he’ll eventually be a rich man — and just as confident that some day he’ll be a really great man!”
“In short,” Mason said with a smile, “and to put it in three words, you love him. And it is this man whose identity your husband has been trying to discover?”
“Trying to discover with every means in his power. Lately, as a final resource, he decided to employ detectives. When he did that, I was desperate. I doubted whether I could keep the secret very long after private detectives got started on a systematic investigation. I decided there was only one avenue of escape.”
“To hire somebody to take your place?”
“More than that. I would have to establish a completely synthetic background for myself. I knew my husband was too proud to approach me directly — it was part of his plan that I should come cringing home to him. He thought I’d eventually have to do just that, through lack of money — as though I valued money enough to prostitute my self-respect! I would have starved before I’d go back to him!”
“You don’t look starved,” said Mason with another smile.
Paying no attention to the interruption, she went on. “When I left my husband I didn’t have much money of my own. He knew it — and I knew he knew it. But I decided not to be conservative, not to dole out what little I had, spending just so much a month and watching the money dwindle gradually. So I started to... ”
“You started to gamble.”
“Yes — I gambled.”
“Speculative investments, or just plain gambling?”
“Gambling — plain and fancy gambling. And I won. And then I quit. That is, I didn’t leave off gambling entirely, but I quit gambling for big money. I had won a big enough stake to provide me with something to invest. I saw that there was a good market in real estate, and I started— Well, I’m not going to tell you too much about that, because I’m somewhat vulnerable myself, you see. If my husband found out what I’d been doing... ”
“I’m not interested in your financial affairs, but I am interested in how you happened to know that your husband intended to put detectives on your trail.”
She smiled. “After all, that’s simple. I told you I won my money gambling — the initial stake; and then I quit playing for big money. When I did that, I earned the friendship and the respect of the very men I had gambled with. Because they see lots of people try to beat the game, but only a few of them do. Most people who make big money throw it all back before they’re done.”
“Does your husband gamble?” Mason asked.
“Yes, but not in the places I go to. He is an inveterate poker player, and he likes to play for high stakes with a select crowd — some of them professional gamblers, the sort who are honest but shrewd. Well, at a poker session he asked one of them the name of a good detective agency that he could count on to give him service and not sell out his interests to the other side. The man recommended the Interstate Investigators. And that’s all there was to it — just that one question. But a friend of mine happened to be sitting in that game, and he overheard my husband. So he came to me and said he suspected that my husband intended to put detectives on my trail.”
“And Hines?” Mason asked. “How did he come into it?”
“Hines,” she said, “is, or rather was, a small-time gambler. He wasn’t a bookie but he would place bets for you and things of that sort. I got acquainted with him through a girl friend of his in the building where I had my apartment. He would do anything for money and was fairly competent within limits.”
“And you approached him with your proposition?”
“That’s right. He had no idea what was behind it, knew only that I wanted to disappear for a while and to leave someone in my place while I was gone. Because Hines had an entree to the apartment house, yet wasn’t actually registered there, he was ideal for my purpose. He assured me he’d have no trouble getting a brunette who could double for me so far as an ordinary physical description was concerned. If any of my friends should come to the apartment to see me — which was unlikely because I had told all my friend? never to come without telephoning first — the report would be that I was out, and whoever telephoned would be told that I’d call back inside of half an hour. Then the call was reported to Hines, and he in turn called me here and told me who had called up. I would call back direct from the hotel, and the person at the other end had no way of knowing that I wasn’t calling from my apartment, of course.”
“How long did you intend to keep this up?” Mason asked.
“Until my husband was presented with the picture of a very discreet young woman living with a chaperone in perfect propriety, occasionally going to dinner with Bob Hines, but being very discreet about it. He would get a picture of Caesar’s wife!”