The Case of the Curious Bride by Erle Stanley Gardner Read Free Book Online

position are the two main things in life. He wants to go through life carried on the shoulders of his dead ancestors. He thinks family means everything. It's become a species of obsession."
    "Now," Mason told her, "we're commencing to get somewhere. You're telling me the things that are on your mind, and you're feeling better already."
    She shook her head in quick negation. "No," she said. "I can't tell you all. No matter how sympathetic you might be. After all, what I wanted to find out was about the legality of my marriage to Carl. I can stand anything if that marriage is only legal; but if he can walk away and leave me, or if his father can take him from me, it will break my heart."
    "If," Mason said slowly, "he's the type who would walk away and leave you, don't you think you're wasting your affection on him?"
    "That's just what I've been trying to make clear," she said. "It's because he is that type that he needs me and that makes me love him. He's weak, I love him and perhaps one reason is because he's weak. I've had enough of strong, purposeful, magnetic men who sweep me off my feet. I don't want to be swept off my feet. Perhaps it's a starved mother complex, perhaps it's just being goofy – I don't know. I can't explain it. It's the way I feel. You can't explain your feelings – you can only recognize them."
    "What," asked Perry Mason, "is it you're keeping from me?"
    "Something horrible," she told him.
    "You're going to tell me?"
    "No."
    "Wouldn't you have told me if I'd been more sympathetic when you called at my office?"
    "Good heavens, no!" she exclaimed. "I never intended to tell you this much. I thought you'd fall for that line about the friend who wanted the legal information. I'd rehearsed it in front of a mirror. I'd gone over it hundreds of times. I knew just what I was going to say and just what you were going to say. And then you saw that I was lying, and I was afraid. I was never so afraid in my life as I was when I left your office. I was so afraid, that I went down in the elevator and walked for half a block before I realized that I'd left my purse behind. That was a terrible shock. Then I didn't dare to go back after it. I started back, but I couldn't bear the thought of facing you. I decided to let it wait until afterwards."
    "Until after what?" Mason inquired.
    "Until after I'd found some way out of the mess."
    There was sympathy in the eyes of the lawyer. He said simply, "I wish you wouldn't look at me that way. Your husband disappeared. You married in good faith, after you thought he was dead. You can't be blamed. You can go ahead and get a divorce from him and re-marry Carl Montaine."
    She blinked tears from her eyes, but her lips were firm. "You don't understand Carl," she said. "If this marriage isn't good, I could never get a divorce and then re-marry Carl."
    "Not even if you took a chance on a Mexican divorce?" Mason asked.
    "Not even then." There was a moment of silence.
    "Are you going to confide in me?" the lawyer asked. She shook her head. "Promise me one thing, then," he told her.
    "What?"
    "That you'll come to my office first thing in the morning. Sleep on it and see if you don't feel differently tomorrow."
    "But," she said, "you don't understand. You don't…" A look of decision stamped itself upon her face. A cunning glint appeared in her eyes.
    "Very well," she said, "I'll make you that promise."
    "And now," Mason told her, "you can drive me back to my office."
    "No," she objected, "I can't. I've got to get back to my husband. He'll be expecting me. I was simply furious when I learned that you had gone to see Gregory. I didn't know what might happen. I came tearing out here to try and locate you. Now I've got to get back."
    Mason nodded. His cab driver, hopeful of picking up a fare back to town, having learned from experience that merely because a man enters a car with a woman doesn't mean that he may not get out again, was waiting at the curb. Perry Mason snapped back the catch on