"Then I got an idea. There were a lot of charity patients applying for hospitalization. Many of them couldn't be accommodated, many of them were suffering from fatal maladies. A man of about the size, build and age of Gregory Lorton was trying to get admission to the hospital. I saw that he was suffering from pneumonia and knew that the case would be almost certain to terminate fatally. I told him that if he would consent to use the name of Gregory Lorton, and answer questions as to his father's and his mother's name and address in a certain way, I could get him into the hospital, because Gregory Lorton had an unused credit on the books of the hospital.
"The man did it. He answered all the questions so that the records of the hospital showed just the same as they did on the application for a marriage license. We did everything we could for the man. I'll swear to that. I didn't try to hasten the end, in fact, I tried my best to save his life, because I thought that if he lived I could do the same thing over again with some other unfortunate, until one of them did die. But, despite everything I could do, this man died. I made a death certificate, and then Rhoda had her attorney stumble on the fact of death a few weeks later by writing to the Bureau of Vital Statistics. The attorney acted in good faith. He put the matter up to the insurance company and they paid the policies."
"How much were the policies?"
"Not very much, otherwise we couldn't have worked it as easily as we did. I think they were around fifteen hundred dollars in all."
"Were they policies that Lorton took out in favor of his wife?"
"Yes. He persuaded Rhoda that they should each take out some insurance in favor of the other. He told her that he was negotiating for a fifty thousand dollar insurance policy in her favor, but that there was some hitch in it and the company would only write fifteen hundred dollars temporarily, until an investigation had been completed. He got her to take out a policy in his favor for ten thousand dollars. Undoubtedly, he intended to kill her and collect the insurance if he hadn't been able to get what money she had and skip out with it."
"Of course, he quit paying the premiums on the policies just as soon as he left her?" Perry Mason said.
"Yes," Doctor Millsap said. "That fifteen hundred policy was just a blind. The probabilities are he's forgotten about it. He just paid one premium on it and then left. Rhoda went on paying for the fifteen hundred policy. The airplane accident took place within a few months of the time the first premium was paid. The death certificate was filed within a year. If Rhoda had gone about it right in the first place, I don't think she'd have had any trouble getting the payment made on the strength of the airplane disaster. As it was, she got up against some officious clerk in the insurance company who tried to make things difficult for her."
"Then what happened?"
"Then, there was that period of waiting, and Rhoda collected the policy from my death certificate."
"You've known Rhoda some little time?"
"Yes."
"Tried to get her to marry you?"
Doctor Millsap's face flushed. "Is all this necessary?" he asked.
"Yes," said Mason.
"Yes," Doctor Millsap admitted with defiance in his voice, "I've asked her to marry me."
"Why didn't she?"
"She swore that she'd never marry again. She had lost her faith in men. She'd been a simple, unspoiled girl when Gregory Lorton tricked her into going through a marriage ceremony, and his perfidy had numbed her emotional nature. She dedicated her life to nursing the sick. She had no room for love."
"Then out of a clear sky she married this millionaire's son?" asked Perry Mason.
"I don't like the way you say that."
"What don't you like and why?"
"The way you describe him as a millionaire's son."
"He is, isn't he?"
"Yes, but that isn't the reason Rhoda married him."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know her and I know her motives."
"Why did she marry him?"
"It was a starved maternal complex. She wanted something to mother. She found just what she was looking for in this weak son of rich parents, a young man whose character was commencing to disintegrate. He looked up to Rhoda as a pupil looks up to his teacher, as a child to his mother. He thought it was love. She didn't know what it was. She only knew that all of a sudden she wanted something she could hold tightly to her and care for."
"Naturally you objected to the match?"
Doctor Millsap's face was white. "Naturally," he said in a voice that was edged with suffering.
"Why?"
"Because I love her."
"You don't think she's going to be happy?"
Doctor Millsap shook his head.
"She can't be happy," he said. "She isn't fair with herself. She isn't recognizing the psychological significance of her feelings. What she really wants is a man she can love and respect. Having a child would give her the natural outlet for her maternal affections. What she's done is to suppress her natural sex feelings over a period of years, until, finally, the starved mother complex has given her the irresistible desire to pick up some man who is weak and unfit, and try to protect that man from the world, gradually nursing him back to a normal place in life."
"Did you tell her that?"
"I tried to."
"Get any place with that line of argument?"
"No."
"What did she say?"
"That I could never be more than a friend to her, and that I was jealous."
"What did you do?"
Doctor Millsap took a deep breath. "I don't like to discuss these matters with a stranger," he said.
"Never mind what you like," Perry Mason told him, without taking his eyes from the man's face, "go ahead and spill it, and make it snappy."
"I care more for Rhoda than I do for life itself," Doctor Millsap said slowly, with obvious reluctance. "Anything that will make her happy is the thing I want. I love her so much that it's an unselfish love. I'm not going to confuse her happiness with mine. If she could be more happy with me than with any one else that would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to me. If, on the other hand, she could be more happy with some one else, than with me, I want her to have that some one else, because her happiness comes first."
"So you stepped out of the picture?" Mason inquired.
"So I stepped out of the picture."
"Then what?"
"Then she married Carl Montaine."
"Did it interfere with your friendship with Rhoda?"
"Not in the least."
"And then Lorton showed up."
"Yes, Lorton, or Moxley, whichever you want to call him."
"What did he want?"
"Money."
"Why?"
"Because some one was threatening to send him to jail for a swindle he'd worked."
"Do you know what the swindle was?"
"No."
"Do you know who the person was who threatened to send him to jail?"
"No."
"Do you know how much money he wanted?"
"Two thousand dollars at once and ten thousand dollars later."
"He demanded it of Rhoda?"
"Yes."
"What did she do?"
"Poor child, she didn't know what to do."
"Why not?"
"She was a bride. The suppressed emotional nature of years was commencing to reassert itself. She thought that she was in love with her husband. She thought that her life was entirely wrapped up in his. Then, suddenly this detestable cad appeared on the scene. He demanded money. It was money that she didn't have to give him. He insisted that if she didn't get it for him he would have her arrested for working a fraud on the life insurance company; also for bigamy. She knew that before he did any of those things, he'd appeal directly to Carl Montaine and try and get money from him. Montaine had a horror of having his name dragged through the newspapers. Moxley was very clever. He knew something about Montaine's absurd complex about family and the snobbish attitude of Montaine's father."