“Then what?”
“I was too paralyzed to do anything for a while; then I managed to get the receiver back on the hook. I was trembling.”
“If you were as innocent as you claim,” Bertha said, “you wouldn’t have taken it so hard.”
“Get this, Mrs. Cool. I’m going to be fair with you. Everett had been one of my chances at happiness. If I’d taken him when I had the chance, I could have kept him from degenerating into a fourflusher. I knew him. I knew his strength. I knew his weakness.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Bertha asked.
“Simply this, Mrs. Cool. I’d made up my mind that this was a world where dog eats dog, that I was going to look up Everett again.
If I found him the same, if I found that he still had the same appeal — well, I knew he was married, but I made up my mind that I was going to get him anyway.”
“Guilty conscience, eh?” Bertha asked.
“I suppose so.”
After a few moments’ silence Bertha said, “Of course, you’re not repeating this woman’s exact words. You’re giving your recollection of them.”