“Amelia started to play around. The doctor didn’t know that, but he was fed up. He told her he wanted a divorce. She agreed and asked him to get it on grounds of mental cruelty. He filed suit. Amelia didn’t play fair. She never did. She waited until I went to San Francisco on some business for the doctor, and then filed a cross-complaint naming me as co-respondent, apparently because she thought by beating him to the punch and hitting at me she could get all the doctor’s property, and marry the man with whom she was infatuated at the moment.”
“Who was that?” I asked.
Her glance asked permission of Dr. Alftmont.
He nodded. She said, “Steve Dunton, a young chap who was editing the Oakview Blade.”
I held expression from my face and asked, “Does he run it now?”
“I think so, yes. We’ve pretty much lost track of Oakview, but I believe he’s still there. His niece was working with him on the paper the last I heard.”
Dr. Alftmont said. “That was the niece who met me in the corridor of the apartment house, you know.”
I dropped ashes from my cigarette into an ash-tray, and said, “Go ahead.”
“At that time,” Mrs. Alftmont said, with just a trace of bitterness in her voice, “there had never been the slightest indiscretion, and Charles had no idea of how I felt towards him. I think Amelia was hardly herself. Her temperament, her irrational mode of living, and the liquor she was drinking made her exceedingly erratic.
“When she filed that cross-complaint, Charles rushed to San Francisco to explain things. I saw right away that he was in an awful spot. Oakview would seethe with gossip. The person who was really the most interested in Mrs. Lintig’s divorce was employed on the paper. He was going to see that any circumstances which could be tortured into evidence against Charles were given plenty of publicity. His trip to San Francisco was, of course, the worst move he could have made. At that, we would have returned and fought things out if it hadn’t been—” She became silent.