An American Tragedy (119 page)

“Griffiths, in your testimony here yesterday, through which you were being led by your counsel, Mr. Jephson” (at this Jephson bowed sardonically). “You talked about that change of heart that you experienced after you encountered Roberta Alden once more at Fonda and Utica back there in July—just as you were starting on this death trip.”

Clyde’s “yes, sir,” came before Belknap could object, but the latter managed to have “death trip” changed to “trip.”

“Before going up there with her you hadn’t been liking her as much as you might have. Wasn’t that the way of it?”

“Not as much as I had at one time—no, sir.”

“And just how long—from when to when—was the time in which you really did like her, before you began to dislike her, I mean?”

“Well, from the time I first met her until I met Miss X.”

“But not afterwards?”

“Oh, I can’t say not entirely afterwards. I cared for her some—a good deal, I guess—but still not as much as I had. I felt more sorry for her than anything else, I suppose.”

“And now, let’s see—that was between December first last say, and last April or May—or wasn’t it?”

“About that time, I think—yes, sir.”

“Well, during that time—December first to April or May first you were intimate with her, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though you weren’t caring for her so much.”

“Why—yes, sir,” replied Clyde, hesitating slightly, while the rurals jerked and craned at this introduction of the sex crime.

“And yet at nights, and in spite of the fact that she was alone over there in her little room—as faithful to you, as you yourself have testified, as any one could be—you went off to dances, parties, dinners, and automobiles rides, while she sat there.”

“Oh, but I wasn’t off all the time.”

“Oh, weren’t you? But you heard the testimony of Tracy and Jill Trumbull, and Frederick Sells, and Frank Harriet, and Burchard Taylor, on this particular point, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, were they all liars, or were they telling the truth?”

“Well, they were telling the truth as near as they could remember, I suppose.”

“But they couldn’t remember very well—is that it?”

“Well, I wasn’t off all the time. Maybe I was gone two or three times a week—maybe four sometimes—not more.”

“And the rest you gave to Miss Alden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that what she meant in this letter here?” And here he took up another letter from the pile of Roberta’s letters, and opening it and holding it before him, read: “ ‘Night after night, almost every night after that dreadful Christmas day when you left me, I was alone nearly always.’ Is she lying, or isn’t she?” snapped Mason fiercely, and Clyde, sensing the danger of accusing Roberta of lying here, weakly and shamefacedly replied: “No, she isn’t lying. But I did spend some evenings with her just the same.”

“And yet you heard Mrs. Gilpin and her husband testify here that night after night from December first on Miss Alden was mostly always alone in her room and that they felt sorry for her and thought it so unnatural and tried to get her to join them, but she wouldn’t. You heard them testify to that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And yet you insist that you were with her some?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet at the same time loving and seeking the company of Miss X?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And trying to get her to marry you?”

“I wanted her to—yes, sir.”

“Yet continuing relations with Miss Alden when your other interests left you any time.”

“Well . . . yes, sir,” once more hesitated Clyde, enormously troubled by the shabby picture of his character which these disclosures seemed to conjure, yet somehow feeling that he was not as bad, or at least had not intended to be, as all this made him appear. Other people did things like that too, didn’t they—those young men in Lycurgus society—or they had talked as though they did.

“Well, don’t you think your learned counsel found a very mild term for you when they described you as a mental and moral coward?” sneered Mason—and at the same time from the rear of the long narrow courtroom, a profound silence seeming to precede, accompany and follow it,—yet not without an immediate roar of protest from Belknap, came the solemn, vengeful voice of an irate woodsman: “Why don’t they kill the God-damned bastard and be done with him?”—And at once

Oberwaltzer gaveling for order and ordering the arrest of the offender at the same time that he ordered all those not seated driven from the courtroom—which was done. And then the offender arrested and ordered arraigned on the following morning. And after that, silence, with Mason once more resuming:

“Griffiths, you say when you left Lycurgus you had no intention of marrying Roberta Alden unless you could not arrange in any other way.”

“Yes, sir. That was my intention at that time.”

“And accordingly you were fairly certain of coming back?”

“Yes, sir—I thought I was.”

“Then why did you pack everything in your room in your trunk and lock it?”

“Well . . . well . . . that is,” hesitated Clyde, the charge coming so quickly and so entirely apart from what had just been spoken of before that he had scarcely time to collect his wits—“well, you see—I wasn’t absolutely sure. I didn’t know but what I might have to go whether I wanted to or not.”

“I see. And so if you had decided up there unexpectedly—as you did—” (and here Mason smirked on him as much as to say—you think any one believes that?) “you wouldn’t have had time to come back and decently pack your things and depart?”

“Well, no, sir—that wasn’t the reason either.”

“Well then, what was the reason?”

“Well, you see,” and here for lack of previous thought on this subject as well as lack of wit to grasp the essentiality of a suitable and plausible answer quickly, Clyde hesitated—as every one—first and foremost Belknap and Jephson—noted—and then went on: “Well, you see—if I had to go away, even for a short time as I thought I might, I decided that I might need whatever I had in a hurry.”

“I see. You’re quite sure it wasn’t that in case the police discovered who Clifford Golden or Carl Graham were, that you might wish to leave quickly?”

“No, sir. It wasn’t.”

“And so you didn’t tell Mrs. Peyton you were giving up the room either, did you?”

“No, sir.”

“In your testimony the other day you said something about not having money enough to go up there and take Miss Alden away on any temporary marriage scheme—even one that would last so long as six months.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you left Lycurgus to start on the trip, how much did you have?”

“About fifty dollars.”

“ ‘About’ fifty? Don’t you know exactly how much you had?”

“I had fifty dollars—yes, sir.”

“And while you were in Utica and Grass Lake and getting down to Sharon afterwards, how much did you spend?”

“I spent about twenty dollars on the trip, I think.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Not exactly—no, sir—somewhere around twenty dollars, though.”

“Well, not let’s see about that exactly if we can,” went on Mason and here, once more, Clyde began to sense a trap and grew nervous—for there was all that money given him by Sondra and some of which he had spent, too. “How much was your fare from Fonda to Utica for yourself?”

“A dollar and a quarter.”

“And what did you have to pay for your room at the hotel at Utica for you and Roberta?”

“That was four dollars.”

“And of course you had dinner that night and breakfast the next morning, which cost you how much?”

“It was about three dollars for both meals.”

“Was that all you spent in Utica?” Mason was taking a side glance occasionally at a slip of paper on which he had figures and notes, but which Clyde had not noticed.

“Yes, sir.”

“How about the straw hat that it has been proved you purchased while there?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I forgot about that,” said Clyde, nervously.

“That was two dollars—yes, sir.” He realized that he must be more careful.

“And your fares to Grass Lake were, of course, five dollars. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you hired a boat at Grass Lake. How much was that?”

“That was thirty-five cents an hour.”

“And you had it how long?”

“Three hours.”

“Making one dollar and five cents.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then that night at the hotel, they charged you how much? Five dollars, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then didn’t you buy that lunch that you carried out in that lake with you up there?”

“Yes, sir. I think that was about sixty cents.”

“And how much did it cost you to get to Big Bittern?”

“It was a dollar on the train to Gun Lodge and a dollar on the bus for the two of us to Big Bittern.”

“You know these figures pretty well, I see. Naturally, you would. You didn’t have much money and it was important. And how much was your fare from Three Mile Bay to Sharon afterwards?”

“My fare was seventy-five cents.”

“Did you ever stop to figure this all up exactly?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, will you?”

“Well, you know how much it is, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I do. It was twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents. You said you spent twenty dollars. But here is a discrepancy of four dollars and sixty-five cents. How do you account for it?”

“Well, I suppose I didn’t figure just exactly right,” said Clyde, irritated by the accuracy of figures such as these.

But now Mason slyly and softly inquiring: “Oh, yes, Griffiths, I forgot, how much was the boat you hired at Big Bittern?” He was eager to hear what Clyde would have to say as to this, seeing that he had worked hard and long on this pitfall.

“Oh—ah—ah—that is,” began Clyde, hesitatingly, for at Big Bittern, as he now recalled, he had not even troubled to inquire the cost of the boat, feeling as he did at the time that neither he nor Roberta were coming back. But now here and in this way it was coming up for the first time. And Mason, realizing that he had caught him here, quickly interpolated a “Yes?” to which Clyde replied, but merely guessing at that: “Why, thirty-five cents an hour—just the same as at Grass Lake—so the boatman said.”

But he had spoken too quickly. And he did not know that in reserve was the boatman who was still to testify that he had not stopped to ask the price of the boat. And Mason continued:

“Oh, it was, was it? The boatman told you that, did he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well now, don’t you recall that you never asked the boatman at all? It was not thirty-five cents an hour, but fifty cents. But of course you do not know that because you were in such a hurry to get out on the water and you did not expect to have to come back and pay for it anyway. So you never even asked, you see. Do you see? Do you recall that now?” And here Mason produced a bill that he had gotten from the boatman and waved it in front of Clyde. “It was fifty cents an hour,” he repeated. “They charge more than at Grass Lake. But what I want to know is, if you are so familiar with these other figures, as you have just shown that you are, how comes it that you are not familiar with this figure? Didn’t you think of the expense of taking her out in a boat and keeping the boat from noon until night?” The attack came so swiftly and bitterly that at once Clyde was confused. He twisted and turned, swallowed and looked nervously at the floor, ashamed to look at Jephson who had somehow failed to coach him as to this.

“Well,” bawled Mason, “any explanation to make as to that? Doesn’t it strike even you as strange that you can remember every other item of all your expenditures—but not that item?” And now each juror was once more tense and leaning forward. And Clyde noting their interest and curiosity, and most likely suspicion, now returned:

“Well, I don’t know just how I came to forget that.”

“Oh, no, of course you don’t,” snorted Mason. “A man who is planning to kill a girl on a lone lake has a lot of things to think of, and it isn’t any wonder if you forget a few of them. But you didn’t forget to ask the purser the fare to Sharon, once you got to Three Mile Bay, did you?”

“I don’t remember if I did or not.”

“Well, he remembers. He testified to it here. You bothered to ask the price of the room at Grass Lake. You asked the price of the boat there. You even asked the price of the bus fare to Big Bittern. What a pity you couldn’t think to ask the price of the boat at Big Bittern? You wouldn’t be so nervous about it now, would you?” and here Mason looked at the jurors as much as to say: You see!

“I just didn’t think of it, I guess,” repeated Clyde.

“A very satisfactory explanation, I’m sure,” went on Mason, sarcastically. And then as swiftly as possible: “I don’t suppose you happen to recall an item of thirteen dollars and twenty cents paid for a lunch at the Casino on July ninth—the day after Roberta Alden’s death—do you or do you not?” Mason was dramatic, persistent, swift—scarcely giving him time to think or breathe, as he saw it.

At this Clyde almost jumped, so startled was he by this question and charge, for he did not know that they had found out about the lunch. “And do you remember, too,” went on Mason, “that over eighty dollars was found on you when you were arrested?”

“Yes, I remember it now,” he replied.

As for the eighty dollars he had forgotten. Yet now he said nothing, for he could not think what to say.

“How about that?” went on Mason, doggedly and savagely. “If you only had fifty dollars when you left Lycurgus and over eighty dollars when you were arrested, and you spent twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents plus thirteen for a lunch, where did you get that extra money from?”

“Well, I can’t answer that just now,” replied Clyde, sullenly, for he felt cornered and hurt. That was Sondra’s money and nothing would drag out of him where he had gotten it.