observably.
"And the feel of it, too, didn't you?" persisted Mason. "In those
very loving days of yours before Miss X came along--you must have
touched it often enough."
"I don't know whether I did or not," replied Clyde, catching a
glance from Jephson.
"Well, roughly. You must know whether it was coarse or fine--silky
or coarse. You know that, don't you?"
"It was silky, yes."
"Well, here's a lock of it," he now added more to torture Clyde
than anything else--to wear him down nervously--and going to his
table where was an envelope and from it extracting a long lock of
light brown hair. "Don't that look like her hair?" And now he
shoved it forward at Clyde who shocked and troubled withdrew from
it as from some unclean or dangerous thing--yet a moment after
sought to recover himself--the watchful eyes of the jury having
noted all. "Oh, don't be afraid," persisted Mason, sardonically.
"It's only your dead love's hair."
And shocked by the comment--and noting the curious eyes of the
jury, Clyde took it in his hand. "That looks and feels like her
hair, doesn't it?" went on Mason.
"Well, it looks like it anyhow," returned Clyde shakily.
"And now here," continued Mason, stepping quickly to the table and
returning with the camera in which between the lid and the taking
mechanism were caught the two threads of Roberta's hair put there
by Burleigh, and then holding it out to him. "Just take this
camera. It's yours even though you did swear that it wasn't--and
look at those two hairs there. See them?" And he poked the camera
at Clyde as though he might strike him with it. "They were caught
in there--presumably--at the time you struck her so lightly that it
made all those wounds on her face. Can't you tell the jury whether
those hairs are hers or not?"
"I can't say," replied Clyde most weakly.
"What's that? Speak up. Don't be so much of a moral and mental
coward. Are they or are they not?"
"I can't say," repeated Clyde--but not even looking at them.
"Look at them. Look at them. Compare them with these others. We
know these are hers. And you know that these in this camera are,
don't you? Don't be so squeamish. You've often touched her hair
in real life. She's dead. They won't bite you. Are these two
hairs--or are they not--the same as these other hairs here--which
we know are hers--the same color--same feel--all? Look! Answer!
Are they or are they not?"
But Clyde, under such pressure and in spite of Belknap, being
compelled to look and then feel them too. Yet cautiously replying,
"I wouldn't be able to say. They look and feel a little alike, but
I can't tell."
"Oh, can't you? And even when you know that when you struck her
that brutal vicious blow with that camera--these two hairs caught
there and held."
"But I didn't strike her any vicious blow," insisted Clyde, now
observing Jephson--"and I can't say." He was saying to himself
that he would not allow himself to be bullied in this way by this
man--yet, at the same time, feeling very weak and sick. And Mason,
triumphant because of the psychologic effect, if nothing more,
returning the camera and lock to the table and remarking, "Well,
it's been amply testified to that those two hairs were in that
camera when found in the water. And you yourself swear that it was
last in your hands before it reached the water."
He turned to think of something else--some new point with which to
rack Clyde and now began once more:
"Griffiths, in regard to that trip south through the woods, what
time was it when you got to Three Mile Bay?"
"About four in the morning, I think--just before dawn."
"And what did you do between then and the time that boat down there
left?"
"Oh, I walked around."
"In Three Mile Bay?"
"No, sir--just outside of it."
"In the woods, I suppose, waiting for the town to wake up so you
wouldn't look so much out of place. Was that it?"
"Well, I waited until after the sun came up. Besides I was tired
and I sat down and rested for a while."
"Did you sleep well and did you have pleasant dreams?"
"I was tired and I slept a little--yes."
"And how was it you knew so much about the boat and the time and
all about Three Mile Bay? Hadn't you familiarized yourself with
this data beforehand?"
"Well, everybody knows about the boat from Sharon to Three Mile Bay
around there."
"Oh, do they? Any other reason?"
"Well, in looking for a place to get married, both of us saw it,"
returned Clyde, shrewdly, "but we didn't see that any train went to
it. Only to Sharon."
"But you did notice that it was south of Big Bittern?"
"Why, yes--I guess I did," replied Clyde.
"And that that road west of Gun Lodge led south toward it around
the lower edge of Big Bittern?"
"Well, I noticed after I got up there that there was a road of some
kind or a trail anyhow--but I didn't think of it as a regular
road."
"I see. How was it then that when you met those three men in the
woods you were able to ask them how far it was to Three Mile Bay?"
"I didn't ask 'em that," replied Clyde, as he had been instructed
by Jephson to say. "I asked 'em if they knew any road to Three
Mile Bay, and how far it was. I didn't know whether that was the
road or not."
"Well, that wasn't how they testified here."
"Well, I don't care what they testified to, that's what I asked 'em
just the same."
"It seems to me that according to you all the witnesses are liars
and you are the only truthful one in the bunch.... Isn't that
it? But, when you reached Three Mile Bay, did you stop to eat?
You must have been hungry, weren't you?"
"No, I wasn't hungry," replied Clyde, simply.
"You wanted to get away from that place as quickly as possible,
wasn't that it? You were afraid that those three men might go up
to Big Bittern and having heard about Miss Alden, tell about having
seen you--wasn't that it?"
"No, that wasn't it. But I didn't want to stay around there. I've
said why."
"I see. But after you got down to Sharon where you felt a little
more safe--a little further away, you didn't lose any time in
eating, did you? It tasted pretty good all right down there,
didn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know about that. I had a cup of coffee and a
sandwich."
"And a piece of pie, too, as we've already proved here," added
Mason. "And after that you joined the crowd coming up from the
depot as though you had just come up from Albany, as you afterwards
told everybody. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes, that was it."
"Well, now for a really innocent man who only so recently
experienced a kindly change of heart, don't you think you were
taking an awful lot of precaution? Hiding away like that and
waiting in the dark and pretending that you had just come up from
Albany."
"I've explained all that," persisted Clyde.
Mason's next tack was to hold Clyde up to shame for having been
willing, in the face of all she had done for him, to register
Roberta in three different hotel registers as the unhallowed
consort of presumably three different men in three different days.
"Why didn't you take separate rooms?"
"Well, she didn't want it that way. She wanted to be with me.
Besides I didn't have any too much money."
"Even so, how could you have so little respect for her there, and
then be so deeply concerned about her reputation after she was dead
that you had to run away and keep the secret of her death all to
yourself, in order, as you say, to protect her name and reputation?"
"Your Honor," interjected Belknap, "this isn't a question. It's an
oration."
"I withdraw the question," countered Mason, and then went on. "Do
you admit, by the way, that you are a mental and moral coward,
Griffiths--do you?"
"No, sir. I don't."
"You do not?"
"No, sir."
"Then when you lie, and swear to it, you are just the same as any
other person who is not a mental and moral coward, and deserving of
all the contempt and punishment due a person who is a perjurer and
a false witness. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir. I suppose so."
"Well, if you are not a mental and moral coward, how can you
justify your leaving that girl in that lake--after as you say you
accidentally struck her and when you knew how her parents would
soon be suffering because of her loss--and not say one word to
anybody--just walk off--and hide the tripod and your suit and sneak
away like an ordinary murderer? Wouldn't you think that that was
the conduct of a man who had plotted and executed murder and was
trying to get away with it--if you had heard of it about some one
else? Or would you think it was just the sly, crooked trick of a
man who was only a mental and moral coward and who was trying to
get away from the blame for the accidental death of a girl whom he
had seduced and news of which might interfere with his prosperity?
Which?"
"Well, I didn't kill her, just the same," insisted Clyde.
"Answer the question!" thundered Mason.
"I ask the court to instruct the witness that he need not answer
such a question," put in Jephson, rising and fixing first Clyde and
then Oberwaltzer with his eye. "It is purely an argumentative one
and has no real bearing on the facts in this case."
"I so instruct," replied Oberwaltzer. "The witness need not
answer." Whereupon Clyde merely stared, greatly heartened by this
unexpected aid.
"Well, to go on," proceeded Mason, now more nettled and annoyed
than ever by this watchful effort on the part of Belknap and
Jephson to break the force and significance of his each and every
attack, and all the more determined not to be outdone--"you say you
didn't intend to marry her if you could help it, before you went up
there?"
"Yes, sir."
"That she wanted you to but you hadn't made up your mind?"
"Yes."
"Well, do you recall the cook-book and the salt and pepper shakers
and the spoons and knives and so on that she put in her bag?"
"Yes, sir. I do."
"What do you suppose she had in mind when she left Biltz--with
those things in her trunk--that she was going out to live in some
hall bedroom somewhere, unmarried, while you came to see her once a
week or once a month?"
Before Belknap could object, Clyde shot back the proper answer.
"I can't say what she had in her mind about that."
"You couldn't possibly have told her over the telephone there at
Biltz, for instance--after she wrote you that if you didn't come
for her she was coming to Lycurgus--that you would marry her?"
"No, sir--I didn't."
"You weren't mental and moral coward enough to be bullied into
anything like that, were you?"
"I never said I was a mental and moral coward."
"But you weren't to be bullied by a girl you had seduced?"
"Well, I couldn't feel then that I ought to marry her."
"You didn't think she'd make as good a match as Miss X?"
"I didn't think I ought to marry her if I didn't love her any
more."
"Not even to save her honor--and your own decency?"
"Well, I didn't think we could be happy together then."
"That was before your great change of heart, I suppose."
"It was before we went to Utica, yes."
"And while you were still so enraptured with Miss X?"
"I was in love with Miss X--yes."
"Do you recall, in one of those letters to you that you never
answered" (and here Mason proceeded to take up and read from one of
the first seven letters), "her writing this to you; 'I feel upset
and uncertain about everything although I try not to feel so--now
that we have our plan and you are going to come for me as you
said.' Now just what was she referring to there when she wrote--
'now that we have our plan'?"
"I don't know unless it was that I was coming to get her and take
her away somewhere temporarily."
"Not to marry her, of course."
"No, I hadn't said so."
"But right after that in this same letter she says: 'On the way
up, instead of coming straight home, I decided to stop at Homer to
see my sister and brother-in-law, since I am not sure now when I'll
see them again, and I want so much that they shall see me
respectable or never at all any more.' Now just what do you
suppose, she meant by that word 'respectable'? Living somewhere in
secret and unmarried and having a child while you sent her a little
money, and then coming back maybe and posing as single and innocent
or married and her husband dead--or what? Don't you suppose she
saw herself married to you, for a time at least, and the child
given a name? That 'plan' she mentions couldn't have contemplated
anything less than that, could it?"
"Well, maybe as she saw it it couldn't," evaded Clyde. "But I
never said I would marry her."
"Well, well--we'll let that rest a minute," went on Mason doggedly.
"But now take this," and here he began reading from the tenth
letter: "'It won't make any difference to you about your coming a
few days sooner than you intended, will it, dear? Even if we have
got to get along on a little less, I know we can, for the time I
will be with you anyhow, probably no more than six or eight months
at the most. I agreed to let you go by then, you know, if you want
to. I can be very saving and economical. It can't be any other
way now, Clyde, although for your own sake I wish it could.' What
do you suppose all that means--'saving and economical'--and not
letting you go until after eight months? Living in a hall bedroom
and you coming to see her once a week? Or hadn't you really agreed
to go away with her and marry her, as she seems to think here?"
"I don't know unless she thought she could make me, maybe," replied
Clyde, the while various backwoodsmen and farmers and jurors
actually sniffed and sneered, so infuriated were they by the phrase
"make me" which Clyde had scarcely noticed. "I never agreed to."
"Unless she could make you. So that was the way you felt about it,
was it, Griffiths?"
"Yes, sir."
"You'd swear to that as quick as you would to anything else?"
"Well, I have sworn to it."
And Mason as well as Belknap and Jephson and Clyde himself now felt
the strong public contempt and rage that the majority of those
present had for him from the start--now surging and shaking all.
It filled the room. Yet before him were all the hours Mason needed
in which he could pick and choose at random from the mass of
testimony as to just what he would quiz and bedevil and torture
Clyde with next. And so now, looking over his notes--arranged fan-
wise on the table by Earl Newcomb for his convenience--he now began
once more with:
"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 automobile 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, now 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?"
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