The Case of the Fenced-In Woman by Erle Stanley Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

no longer a girl. I was a woman.
    "That's one thing about divorce, Mr. Mason, that the books don't tell you about. You've changed from a girl to a woman. You're on your own. You have found out that matrimony isn't all a bed of roses, yet you're a human being with normal appetites and desires and you're marked. You're indelibly marked.
    "Any man who takes an interest in you is keenly conscious of the fact that you aren't a girl any longer, that you're a woman; that you've been married. He treats you accordingly. If you don't respond the way he thinks you should respond, you're 'holding out on him'.
    "Men go around bragging about their conquests. Married men have mistresses. It's all taken as a part of life by society. But a divorcee is neither fish, flesh, fowl nor herring. She's supposed to be a pushover.
    "And now comes this.. this unspeakable cad, with his private eye. I can't tell whether the private eye was too dumb to know the difference or not, but this much I do know. Loring Carson was, is and always will be a heel.
    "Norbert and I were very close friends. I think he was going to ask me to marry him and under those circumstances I probably would have said yes-but I wasn't going to walk into it with my eyes closed. I'd done that once. I wasn't going to do it again.
    "Now Norbert feels he's been made ridiculous. He…"
    "Has changed his mind about asking you to marry him?" Mason asked.
    "Changed his mind?" she said. "Heavens, no! Now the man is insistent. He calls me up, proposing marriage two and three times a day. I hang up on him. And why is he doing all that, Mr. Mason? Simply because he feels that it was through him that what people refer to as a 'girl's good name' was besmirched.
    "I'm over twenty – one, I'm divorced and I've got a right to live my own life. I just wish society would let me alone. And as far as Loring Carson is concerned I hope he drops dead…"
    She threw back her head with a little toss, as though shaking unpleasantness from her mind, and said, "Now I've unburdened myself and spat out my venom, Mr. Mason, and perhaps after having been guilty of inflicting my personal spleen on you, I'll be polite enough to let you explain the purpose of your visit."
    "It's quite all right," Mason said. "I came here to try and spare you some publicity."
    "How?"
    "This suit that I have filed against Loring Carson, or which is probably being filed at about this time, is rather spectacular. I don't know whether you're familiar with the real estate deal between Carson and Morley Eden."
    She shook her head.
    "Well," Mason said, "there were two adjoining lots. One of the lots was held to be the separate property of Mrs. Carson, one was community property which the court awarded to Loring Carson. It was purchased by Morley Eden for a fair consideration and to which Morley Eden therefore has a good title-and that includes title to the portion of the building resting on that lot.
    "Two persons had their reputations affected by Loring Carson's cross – complaint-you and Vivian Carson, his wife."
    "I have every sympathy for her," Nadine Palmer declared.
    "So, apparently, does Judge Goodwin," Mason said.
    "What has he done about it? I understood Carson had his financial affairs so badly tangled up the court couldn't even begin to get them straightened out."
    Mason said, "It's always a mistake to underestimate a judge's intelligence."
    "Meaning that Carson underestimated Judge Goodwin's intelligence?"
    "I think so."
    "Would it be fair for me to ask you what is happening?"
    "That's why I'm here," Mason said. "I felt you should know. Judge Goodwin feels that once a woman's good name has been sullied it is very, very difficult to get it unsullied."
    "He can say that again!" Nadine said fervently.
    "When a newspaper publishes a story," Mason went on, "it is given prominence in accordance with its reader interest. For instance, the story of a woman who has been stepping out and has been caught in the act rates considerable