“Yes. I’d taken the name of Corla Burke so I could wipe out the past and begin all over. You see, my father—”
“I understand about the name now,” I said. “Let’s go on from there.”
“At first, I—”
“You don’t need to go into that. Just come to the Helen Framley part.”
“I got this very queer letter from Helen Framley. She said that she had read in the paper I was planning to get married almost immediately, that she was friendly with Sidney, and had heard Sidney speak of me, that she wondered if I knew Sidney had never got a divorce. She went on to say that Sidney was very much changed from what he was when I had known him, that he had steadied down a lot and really wanted to make something of himself in the world. She didn’t think he had the money to get a divorce right away, but if I didn’t want to wait, she could fix things up so that I could go ahead with the marriage, and after I had married Philip, Sidney would go ahead and get a divorce. She said he’d had some bad luck, but within a few weeks he’d be in the money again. I could then pretend to my husband there had been some irregularity in stating my age or something of that sort in the license, and get him to marry me all over again, or just keep on living with him and it would be a common-law marriage.”
“ ‘Queer’ is right. How much money did he want?” I asked.
“She didn’t even mention anything like that. Not as coming from me. She simply said that she thought that if he could get enough to set himself up in some business, it would be all he’d want, and I’d never hear from him again.”
“Did you gather the impression that she was writing you at his request?”
“No. She told me that he didn’t know anything about the letter she was writing, that he was intending to write to Philip Whitewell if it appeared that the marriage was going through, that he didn’t want Philip to be placed in the position of making a bigamous marriage.”
“Very considerate about Philip, wasn’t he?”