“Why didn’t you go ahead anyway?”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “In the year that we had been living here as husband and wife. I had built up a fairly good practice among the respectable, conservative people. If it had come out that Vivian and I were living together without benefit of clergy, it would have been fatal.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Years passed,” he said. “We heard nothing more. I tried to trace her and couldn’t. I felt certain that she’d either died or divorced me and remarried. Some ten years ago, Vivian and I quietly slipped across to Mexico and were married. I thought the ceremony would give her a legal standing in the event it should become necessary.”
“All right,” I said. “Tell me about the political angle.”
Dr. Alftmont said, “This city is standing in its own light. Our police force is corrupt. The city administration is honeycombed with graft. We have a wealthy city, good business, and a fine tourist trade. Those tourists are forced to nib elbows with every form of racket. The citizens were tired of it. They wanted a clean-up. I had been instrumental in getting some of the citizens organized. They insisted I should run for mayor. I thought that old scandal was dead and buried, so I agreed to run.”
“And then what?”
“Then, out of a clear sky, I received a letter from her, stating that until I made terms with her, I could never be elected, that at the last minute she would, as she expressed it, blow the lid off. She charged that I had cast her into the junk pile and left her a social and financial outcast — although I had done nothing of the sort. I had stripped myself of my property, and—”
“Charles,” Mrs. Alftmont interrupted, “that isn’t going to help any now. Mr. Lam wants the facts.”
“The facts,” he said, “were that she wrote this letter.”