He was silent and Jeannette had to plead again for enlightenment.
“I don’t understand this,” he said, troubled.
“But tell me. I want to know.”
“Well, you know I was damned sore at you,” he began at length. “I wanted to get married; Ruthie, Tinker and the baby needed me. She was up against it and was having a tough time trying to make ends meet. I wanted to help out but she wouldn’t let me and the only thing for it was to get married. So I went to a lawyer there in Scranton and asked him if he’d fix it so I could get a divorce from you. He got in touch with a firm in New York and they dug up all that rot about you and Corey——”
“Oh, my God!” gasped Jeannette in a whisper.
“Oh, I knew it was the bunk; you’d told me the story and I knew you’d given me the straight dope. But there was the evidence and the sworn affidavits of the hotel employees that Corey’s wife had secured. It made enough of a case. I’m damned ashamed of it now, Jan. I wish to God, I’d never done it, but I was sore, remember, and I wanted to get married to Ruthie.”
There was painful silence in the swaying car. Jeannette sat very still, two fingers of each hand pressed against either cheek.
“I was pretty certain you’d let it go by default,” Martin went on after awhile in a distressed voice. “It was no case you’d want to contest, and I thought you probably wanted your freedom as much as I did.... I thought surely you’d married long ago.”
Silence reigned again, Jeannette struggling with herself, Martin concerned at her voicelessness.
“By God, Jan, I thought you knew all about it,—I swear to God I did! The process server stated in court he’d handed you the summons, and saw you pick it up; I heard him say it with my own ears. The referee warned him about perjury, thought he smelled collusion, or something of that sort; he ragged me something fierce.... It was rotten the way it turned out, for the case came up right after your friend Corey died, and I felt pretty mean blackening a man’s character when he wasn’t more ’an cold in his grave, ’specially as I knew it was a frame-up.”