An American Tragedy (120 page)

“Why can’t you answer it?” roared Mason. “Where do you think you are, anyhow? And what do you think we are here for? To say what you will or will not answer? You are on trial for your life—don’t forget that! You can’t play fast and loose with law, however much you may have lied to me. You are here before these twelve men and they are waiting to know. Now, what about it? Where did you get that money?”

“I borrowed it from a friend.”

“Well, give his name. What friend?”

“I don’t care to.”

“Oh, you don’t! Well, you’re lying about the amount of money you had when you left Lycurgus—that’s plain. And under oath, too. Don’t forget that! That sacred oath that you respect so much. Isn’t that true?”

“No, it isn’t,” finally observed Clyde, stung to reason by this charge. “I borrowed that money after I got to Twelfth Lake.”

“And from whom?”

“Well, I can’t say.”

“Which makes the statement worthless,” retorted Mason.

Clyde was beginning to show a disposition to balk. He had been sinking his voice and each time Mason commanded him to speak up and turn around so the jury could see his face, he had done so, only feeling more and more resentful toward this man who was thus trying to drag out of him every secret he possessed. He had touched on Sondra, and she was still too near his heart to reveal anything that would reflect on her. So now he sat staring down at the jurors somewhat defiantly, when Mason picked up some pictures.

“Remember these?” he now asked Clyde, showing him some of the dim and water-marked reproductions of Roberta besides some views of Clyde and some others—none of them containing the face of Sondra—which were made at the Cranstons’ on his first visit, as well as four others made at Bear Lake later, and with one of them showing him holding a banjo, his fingers in position. “Recall where these were made?” asked Mason, showing him the reproduction of Roberta first.

“Yes, I do.”

“Where was it?”

“On the south shore of Big Bittern the day we were there.” He knew that they were in the camera and had told Belknap and Jephson about them, yet now he was not a little surprised to think that they had been able to develop them.

“Griffiths,” went on Mason, “your lawyers didn’t tell you that they fished and fished for that camera you swore you didn’t have with you before they found that I had it, did they?”

“They never said anything to me about it,” replied Clyde.

“Well, that’s too bad. I could have saved them a lot of trouble. Well, these were the photos that were found in that camera and that were made just after that change of heart you experienced, you remember?”

“I remember when they were made,” replied Clyde, sullenly.

“Well, they were made before you two went out in that boat for the last time—before you finally told her whatever it was you wanted to tell her—before she was murdered out there—at a time when, as you have testified, she was very sad.”

“No, that was the day before,” defied Clyde.

“Oh, I see. Well, anyhow, these pictures look a little cheerful for one who was as depressed as you say she was.”

“Well—but—she wasn’t nearly as depressed then as she was the day before,” flashed Clyde, for this was the truth and he remembered it.

“I see. But just the same, look at these other pictures. These three here, for instance. Where were they made?”

“At the Cranston Lodge on Twelfth Lake, I think.”

“Right. And that was June eighteenth or nineteenth, wasn’t it?”

“On the nineteenth, I think.”

“Well, now, do you recall a letter Roberta wrote you on the nineteenth?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t recall any particular one?”

“No, sir.”

“But they were all very sad, you have said.”

“Yes, sir—they were.”

“Well, this is that letter written at the time these pictures were made.” He turned to the jury.

“I would like the jury to look at these pictures and then listen to just one passage from this letter written by Miss Alden to this defendant on the same day. He has admitted that he was refusing to write or telephone her, although he was sorry for her,” he said, turning to the jury. And here he opened a letter and read a long sad plea from Roberta. “And now here are four more pictures, Griffiths.” And he handed Clyde the four at Bear Lake. “Very cheerful, don’t you think? Not much like pictures of a man who has just experienced a great change of heart after a most terrific period of doubt and worry and evil conduct—and has just seen the woman whom he had most cruelly wronged, but whom he now proposed to do right by, suddenly drowned. They look as though you hadn’t a care in the world, don’t they?”

“Well, they were just group pictures. I couldn’t very well keep out of them.”

“But this one in the water here. Didn’t it trouble you the least bit to go in the water the second or third day after Roberta Alden had sunk to the bottom of Big Bittern, and especially when you had experienced such an inspiring change of heart in regard to her?”

“I didn’t want any one to know I had been up there with her.”

“We know all about that. But how about this banjo picture here. Look at this!” And he held it out. “Very gay, isn’t it?” he snarled. And now Clyde, dubious and frightened, replied:

“But I wasn’t enjoying myself just the same!”

“Not when you were playing the banjo here? Not when you were playing golf and tennis with your friends the very next day after her death? Not when you were buying and eating thirteen-dollar lunches? Not when you were with Miss X again, and where you yourself testified that you preferred to be?”

Mason’s manner was snarling, punitive, sinister, bitterly sarcastic.

“Well, not just then, anyhow—no, sir.”

“What do you mean—‘not just then’? Weren’t you where you wanted to be?”

“Well, in one way I was—certainly,” replied Clyde, thinking of what Sondra would think when she read this, as unquestionably she would. Quite everything of all this was being published in the papers every day. He could not deny that he was with her and that he wanted to be with her. At the same time he had not been happy. How miserably unhappy he had been, enmeshed in that shameful and brutal plot! But now he must explain in some way so that Sondra, when she should read it, and this jury, would understand. And so now he added, while he swallowed with his dry throat and licked his lips with his dry tongue: “But I was sorry about Miss Alden just the same. I couldn’t be happy then—I couldn’t be. I was just trying to make people think that I hadn’t had anything to do with her going up there—that’s all. I couldn’t see that there was any better way to do. I didn’t want to be arrested for what I hadn’t done.”

“Don’t you know that is false! Don’t you know you are lying!” shouted Mason, as though to the whole world, and the fire and the fury of his unbelief and contempt was sufficient to convince the jury, as well as the spectators, that Clyde was the most unmitigated of liars. “You heard the testimony of Rufus Martin, the second cook up there at Bear Lake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You heard him swear that he saw you and Miss X at a certain point overlooking Bear Lake and that she was in your arms and that you were kissing her. Was that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that exactly four days after you had left Roberta Alden under the waters of Big Bittern. Were you afraid of being arrested then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even when you were kissing her and holding her in your arms?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde drearily and hopelessly.

“Well, of all things!” bawled Mason. “Could you imagine such stuff being whimpered before a jury, if you hadn’t heard it with your own ears? Do you really sit there and swear to this jury that you could bill and coo with one deceived girl in your arms and a second one in a lake a hundred miles away, and yet be miserable because of what you were doing?”

“Just the same, that’s the way it was,” replied Clyde.

“Excellent! Incomparable,” shouted Mason.

And here he wearily and sighfully drew forth his large white handkerchief once more and surveying the courtroom at large proceeded to mop his face as much as to say: Well, this is a task indeed, then continuing with more force than ever:

“Griffiths, only yesterday on the witness stand you swore that you personally had no plan to go to Big Bittern when you left Lycurgus.”

“No, sir, I hadn’t.”

“But when you two got in that room at the Renfrew House in Utica and you saw how tired she looked, it was you that suggested that a vacation of some kind—a little one—something within the range of your joint purses at the time—would be good for her. Wasn’t that the way of it?”

“Yes, sir. That was the way of it,” replied Clyde.

“But up to that time you hadn’t even thought of the Adirondacks specifically.”

“Well, no sir—no particular lake, that is. I did think we might go to some summer place maybe—they’re mostly lakes around there—but not to any particular one that I knew of.”

“I see. And after you suggested it, it was she that said that you had better get some folders or maps, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then it was that you went downstairs and got them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At the Renfrew House in Utica?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not anywhere else by any chance?”

“No, sir.”

“And afterwards, in looking over those maps, you saw Grass Lake and Big Bittern and decided to go up that way. Was that the way of it?”

“Yes, we did,” lied Clyde, most nervously, wishing now that he had not testified that it was in the Renfrew House that he had secured the folders. There might be some trap here again.

“You and Miss Alden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you picked on Grass Lake as being the best because it was the cheapest. Wasn’t that the way of it?”

“Yes, sir. That was the way.”

“I see. And now do you remember these?” he added, reaching over and taking from his table a series of folders all properly identified as part and parcel of the contents of Clyde’s bag at Bear Lake at the time he was arrested and which he now placed in Clyde’s hands. “Look them over. Are those the folders I found in your bag at Bear Lake?”

“Well, they look like the ones I had there.”

“Are these the ones you found in the rack at the Renfrew House and took upstairs to show Miss Alden?”

Not a little terrified by the care with which this matter of folders was now being gone into by Mason, Clyde opened them and turned them over. Even now, because the label of the Lycurgus House (“Compliments of Lycurgus House, Lycurgus, N. Y.”) was stamped in red very much like the printed red lettering on the rest of the folder, he failed to notice it at first. He turned and turned them over, and then having decided that there was no trap here, replied: “Yes, I think these are the ones.”

“Well, now,” went on Mason, slyly, “in which one of these was it that you found that notice of Grass Lake Inn and the rate they charged up there? Wasn’t it in this one?” And here he returned the identical stamped folder, on one page of which—and the same indicated by Mason’s left forefinger—was the exact notice to which Clyde had called Roberta’s attention. Also in the center was a map showing the Indian Chain together with Twelfth, Big Bittern, and Grass Lakes, as well as many others, and at the bottom of this map a road plainly indicated as leading from Grass Lake and Gun Lodge south past the southern end of Big Bittern to Three Mile Bay. Now seeing this after so long a time again, he suddenly decided that it must be his knowledge of this road that Mason was seeking to establish, and a little quivery and creepy now, he replied: “Yes, it may be the one. It looks like it. I guess it is, maybe.”

“Don’t you know that it is?” insisted Mason, darkly and dourly. “Can’t you tell from reading that item there whether it is or not?”

“Well, it looks like it,” replied Clyde, evasively after examining the item which had inclined him toward Grass Lake in the first place. “I suppose maybe it is.”

“You suppose! You suppose! Getting a little more cautious now that we’re getting down to something practical. Well, just look at that map there again and tell me what you see. Tell me if you don’t see a road marked as leading south from Grass Lake.”

“Yes,” replied Clyde, a little sullenly and bitterly after a time, so flayed and bruised was he by this man who was so determined to harry him to his grave. He fingered the map and pretended to look as directed, but was seeing only all that he had seen long before there in Lycurgus, so shortly before he departed for Fonda to meet Roberta. And now here it was being used against him.

“And where does it run, please? Do you mind telling the jury where it runs—from where to where?”

And Clyde, nervous and fearful and physically very much reduced, now replied: “Well, it runs from Grass Lake to Three Mile Bay.”

“And to what or near what other places in between?” continued Mason, looking over his shoulder.

“Gun Lodge. That’s all.”

“What about Big Bittern? Doesn’t it run near that when it gets to the south of it?”

“Yes, sir, it does here.”

“Ever notice or study that map before you went to Grass Lake from Utica?” persisted Mason, tensely and forcefully.

“No, sir—I did not.”

“Never knew the road was on there?”

“Well, I may have seen it,” replied Clyde, “but if so I didn’t pay any attention to it.”

“And, of course, by no possible chance could you have seen or studied this folder and that road before you left Utica?”

“No, sir. I never saw it before.”

“I see. You’re absolutely positive as to that?”

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“Well then, explain to me, or to this jury, if you can, and under your solemn oath which you respect so much, how it comes that this particular folder chances to be marked, ‘Compliments of Lycurgus House, Lycurgus, N. Y.’ ” And here he folded the folder and presenting the back, showed Clyde the thin red stamp in between the other red lettering. And Clyde, noting it, gazed as one in a trance. His ultra-pale face now blanched gray again, his long thin fingers opened and shut, the red and swollen and weary lids of his eyes blinked and blinked to break the strain of the damning fact before him.