Chapter 5. She wasn't what I expected. Don't get me wrong. A woman will blackmail you,

but she'll do it direct. I'd had men march into my office over the years and announced that they were

being blackmailed by their hobby women. It usually didn't seem like anything premeditated.

More often than not, there

were promises made, almost always in aid of stripping a lady of her virtue and anything else while

they were at it. And when the promises did not come to pass, the lady was angry and wanted to make

Mr. Suddenly Happily Married miserable. I never took the cases because there was nothing for me to do.

Something like that happens to you, there are two choices. Bite the bullet or pay the lady. She has no proof,

but Mrs. Happily Married will look Miss Formerly Enthusiastic Secretary up and down,

and know damn well what you did. Most of the men who found themselves in this situation were

in something of a high dudgeon about it.

They reckoned that there should be a third way and were not pleased to learn that this was not a service I provided.

If you can ruin a girl yourself, you ought to also be man enough to scare her if that was what you wanted.

And if you couldn't or wouldn't, don't come crying to the big bad Jack because I really didn't give a damn.

Most of them took my advice and paid up. They found out that I was right. When they paid,

that was the end of it. The girl was almost always so disgusted with what she had sunk to

that the matter was dropped. She hadn't really wanted the money. She had wanted to tell,

but she wanted you to sweat first.

To see it coming and be too stubborn to stop it. And when that didn't work, she just wanted to get

the hell away from you and get on with her life. It was not a happy ending. But it was an ending.

I did not approve of this kind of transaction, make no mistake, but I was far from qualified

on the subject of interpersonal morality and chose not to cast the first stone.

...