At the mention of Carson’s name her eyes flashed, her mouth tightened. Halfway to the bedroom she paused, whirled to face him. “Just what do you have to do with Loring Carson?” she asked ominously.
“At the moment,” Mason said, “I am not violating any confidence in telling you that I am about to file suit against him for something over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damages on the ground of fraud, asking for triple compensatory damages, and for exemplary damages.”
“I hope you collect every last red cent,” she said.
Mason smiled. “Evidently he is no great friend of yours.”
“That louse!” she said, spitting the words out contemptuously. “He’s torn my reputation to shreds and hung the tatters up before every gossip columnist in the city.”
“I understood there was some mistake,” Mason said, “and—”
“Mistake!” she snapped. “There wasn’t any mistake. That man deliberately tried to blacken the name of his wife, and the fact that he dragged me down in the process made not one bit of difference to him.”
“I believe your name was mentioned?” Mason asked.
“Mentioned?” she said. “He screamed it all over the city. He filed a cross-complaint stating that his wife was carrying on an affair with one Norbert Jennings, that they had made trips together over weekends, his wife registering under the fictitious name of Nadine Palmer.
“Then, after his wife stood by her guns and contested the suit, the heel had the audacity to state that it was all a mistake, that his private detective had shadowed the wrong person; that he had inadvertently pointed me out to the detective instead of his wife; that his wife was not the person who had registered in various weekend resorts, but that it was I, one Nadine Palmer, a person whom his private detective had been shadowing under the misapprehension that the woman was his wife. You can imagine where that has left me.”
Mason nodded sympathetically.
Abruptly she seated herself. “You’re a lawyer, Mr. Mason. You’ve seen women in bathrobes before. You don’t have much time and neither do I. Okay, let’s talk it over and get it settled right now.
“People make me sick! There’s more hypocrisy about our civilization and our so-called code of morals than anyone wants to admit. When I married Harvey Palmer, I was what is referred to generally as a ‘good girl.’ That was the trouble with me. I didn’t know enough about men. I didn’t know enough about life and I knew virtually nothing about sex.
“I went through five years of all the degrading hell to which a woman could be subjected, and then I decided that since there weren’t any children I certainly owed Harvey Palmer nothing more. I walked out. Just to show you how dumb I was, I waived all claim to alimony. I had been a working girl before I was married and I went back to being a working girl — only I was no longer a girl. I was a woman.
“That’s one thing about divorce, Mr. Mason, that the books don’t tell you about. You’ve changed from a girl to a woman. You’re on your own. You have found out that matrimony isn’t all a bed of roses, yet you’re a human being with normal appetites and desires and you’re marked. You’re indelibly marked.
“Any man who takes an interest in you is keenly conscious of the fact that you aren’t a girl any longer, that you’re a woman; that you’ve been married. He treats you accordingly. If you don’t respond the way he thinks you should respond, you’re ‘holding out on him’.
“Men go around bragging about their conquests. Married men have mistresses. It’s all taken as a part of life by society. But a divorcee is neither fish, flesh, fowl nor herring. She’s supposed to be a pushover.
“And now comes this... this unspeakable cad, with his private eye. I can’t tell whether the private eye was too dumb to know the difference or not, but this much I do know. Loring Carson was, is and always will be a heel.
“Norbert and I were very close friends. I think he was going to ask me to marry him and under those circumstances I probably would have said yes — but I wasn’t going to walk into it with my eyes closed. I’d done that once. I wasn’t going to do it again.
“Now Norbert feels he’s been made ridiculous. He...”
“Has changed his mind about asking you to marry him?” Mason asked.
“Changed his mind?” she said. “Heavens, no! Now the man is insistent. He calls me up, proposing marriage two and three times a day. I hang up on him. And why is he doing all that, Mr. Mason? Simply because he feels that it was through him that what people refer to as a ‘girl’s good name’ was besmirched.
“I’m over twenty-one, I’m divorced and I’ve got a right to live my own life. I just wish society would let me alone. And as far as Loring Carson is concerned I hope he drops dead...”
She threw back her head with a little toss, as though shaking unpleasantness from her mind, and said, “Now I’ve unburdened myself and spat out my venom, Mr. Mason, and perhaps after having been guilty of inflicting my personal spleen on you, I’ll be polite enough to let you explain the purpose of your visit.”
“It’s quite all right,” Mason said. “I came here to try and spare you some publicity.”
“How?”
“This suit that I have filed against Loring Carson, or which is probably being filed at about this time, is rather spectacular. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the real estate deal between Carson and Morley Eden.”
She shook her head.
“Well,” Mason said, “there were two adjoining lots. One of the lots was held to be the separate property of Mrs. Carson, one was community property which the court awarded to Loring Carson. It was purchased by Morley Eden for a fair consideration and to which Morley Eden therefore has a good title — and that includes title to the portion of the building resting on that lot.
“Two persons had their reputations affected by Loring Carson’s cross-complaint — you and Vivian Carson, his wife.”
“I have every sympathy for her,” Nadine Palmer declared.
“So, apparently, does Judge Goodwin,” Mason said.
“What has he done about it? I understood Carson had his financial affairs so badly tangled up the court couldn’t even begin to get them straightened out.”
Mason said, “It’s always a mistake to underestimate a judge’s intelligence.”
“Meaning that Carson underestimated Judge Goodwin’s intelligence?”
“I think so.”
“Would it be fair for me to ask you what is happening?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Mason said. “I felt you should know. Judge Goodwin feels that once a woman’s good name has been sullied it is very, very difficult to get it unsullied.”
“He can say that again!” Nadine said fervently.
“When a newspaper publishes a story,” Mason went on, “it is given prominence in accordance with its reader interest. For instance, the story of a woman who has been stepping out and has been caught in the act rates considerable publicity. Later on, the fact that it was all a mistake rates no publicity at all.”
“Are you talking about my case now?” she asked.
“In reverse,” Mason said. “Judge Goodwin is thinking about Vivian Carson. He would like to have Carson’s mistake publicized. So he has placed my client in such a position that we have to take action. I think Judge Goodwin was very shrewd in his reasoning, but I think he overlooked one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The effect on you.”
“And what about the effect on me?”
“The step I am taking,” Mason said, “is going to result in the newspapers giving great publicity to the comedy of errors, to the fact that you were pointed out to Carson’s detective in place of Vivian Carson.”