“What do you mean?” Bertha asked.
“Suppose the whole thing is a beautiful frame-up. Suppose we’re to appear in the role of giving it authenticity and a touch of first-class respectability.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose Marco Cutler wanted to get a divorce. Suppose he knew that Edna Cutler would contest it. He didn’t want to get in the middle of a contested divorce action because he himself was living in a glass house, and, therefore, wasn’t able to throw stones. All right, he gets Roberta Fenn to go to New Orleans. She gets in touch with Edna Cutler. Edna is feeling pretty gloomy. Roberta skillfully plants in her mind the idea that it might be a swell stunt to disappear. Edna agrees. After the disappearance has been staged, Roberta passes the word on to Marco, and Marco gets his lawyers to file suit and send the papers to New Orleans for service. They serve Roberta as Edna Cutler. Edna actually never knows a single thing about the divorce action. They’ve wiped her off the slate without even giving her a chance.”
“Then what?” Bertha asked.
I said, “Everything lies dormant until Edna finds out about it. Then just as she’s getting ready to do something drastic, Hale comes to us on the theory that he wants us to find Roberta Fenn. We find her. Roberta is very coy. She arranges to be found at just the right time. In fact, if I hadn’t found her by a process of detective work, she’d probably have stumbled into me on the street or dropped in at Jack O’Leary’s Bar when I happened to be there.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “All that stuff is so elemental there’s no use wasting time on it. Give me the real lowdown.”
I said, “The game was that we’d find Roberta. She’d get very, very friendly. She might even encourage me to make a pass at her. Then she’d ‘tell me all,’ only the ‘all’ would be that Edna Cutler certainly acted strangely about having her take her name. It would be just enough to indicate that there was a big frame-up on Edna’s part to nick her husband. Edna would get thrown out of court.”
“Pickle me for a peach!” Bertha said. “What are we going to do now, lover?”
“Absolutely nothing-not until we find out whether we’re being played for suckers, or whether the whole thing is on the up and up.”