An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

man is the captain of that little steamboat that runs from

Three Mile Bay to Sharon. You know the man, I guess,

Captain Mooney. I left word with Earl to subpoena him too.

According to him, about eight-thirty, Friday morning, or just

before his boat started for Sharon on its first trip, this same

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young man, or some one very much like the description

furnished, carrying a suitcase and wearing a cap—he had

on a straw hat when those three men met him—came on

board and paid his way to Sharon and got off there. Good-

looking young chap, the captain says. Very spry and well-

dressed, more like a young society man than anything else,

and very stand-offish.”

“Yes, yes,” commented Mason.

“I also had Earl telephone the people at Sharon—whoever

he could reach—to see if he had been seen there getting

off, but up to the time I left last night no one seemed to

remember him. But I left word for Earl to telegraph a

description of him to all the resort hotels and stations

hereabouts so that if he’s anywhere around, they’ll be on

the lookout for him. I thought you’d want me to do that. But

I think you’d better give me a writ for that bag at Gun Lodge

station. That may contain something we ought to know. I’ll

go up and get it myself. Then I want to go to Grass Lake

and Three Mile Bay and Sharon yet to-day, if I can, and see

what else I can find. But I’m afraid, Orville, it’s a plain case

of murder. The way he took that young girl to that hotel up

there at Grass Lake and then registered under another

name at Big Bittern, and the way he had her leave her bag

and took his own with him!” He shook his head most

solemnly. “Those are not the actions of an honest young

man, Orville, and you know it. What I can’t understand is

how her parents could let her go off like that anywhere with

a man without knowing about him in the first place.”

“That’s true,” replied Mason, tactfully, but made intensely

curious by the fact that it had at least been partially

established that the girl in the case was not as good as she

should have been. Adultery! And with some youth of

means, no doubt, from some one of the big cities to the

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south. The prominence and publicity with which his own

activities in connection with this were very likely to be laden!

At once he got up, energetically stirred. If he could only

catch such a reptilian criminal, and that in the face of all the

sentiment that such a brutal murder was likely to inspire!

The August convention and nominations. The fall election.

“Well, I’ll be switched,” he exclaimed, the presence of Heit,

a religious and conservative man, suppressing anything

more emphatic. “I do believe we’re on the trail of something

important, Fred. I really think so. It looks very black to me—

a most damnable outrage. I suppose the first thing to do,

really, is to telephone over there and see if there is such a

family as Alden and exactly where they live. It’s not more

than fifty miles direct by car, if that much. Poor roads,

though,” he added. Then: “That poor woman. I dread that

scene. It will be a painful one, I know.”

Then he called Zillah and asked her to ascertain if there

was such a person as Titus Alden living near Biltz. Also,

exactly how to get there. Next he added: “The first thing to

do will be to get Burton back here” (Burton being Burton

Burleigh, his legal assistant, who had gone away for a week-

end vacation) “and put him in charge so as to furnish you

whatever you need in the way of writs and so on, Fred,

while I go right over to see this poor woman. And then, if

you’ll have Earl go back up there and get that suitcase, I’ll

be most obliged to you. I’ll bring the father back with me,

too, to identify the body. But don’t say anything at all about

this letter now or my going over there until I see you later,

see.” He grasped the hand of his friend. “In the meantime,”

he went on, a little grandiosely, now feeling the tang of

great affairs upon him, “I want to thank you, Fred. I certainly

do, and I won’t forget it, either, you know that, don’t you?”

He looked his old friend squarely in the eye. “This may turn

out better than we think. It looks to be the biggest and most

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important case in all my term of office, and if we can only

clean it up satisfactorily and quickly, before things break

here this fall, it may do us all some good, eh?”

“Quite so, Orville, quite so,” commented Fred Heit. “Not, as

I said before, that I think we ought to mix politics in with a

thing like this, but since it has come about so——” he

paused, meditatively.

“And in the meantime,” continued the district attorney “if

you’ll have Earl have some pictures made of the exact

position where the boat, oars, and hat were found, as well

as mark the spot where the body was found, and subpcena

as many witnesses as you can, I’ll have vouchers for it all

put through with the auditor. And to-morrow or Monday I’ll

pitch in and help myself.”

And here he gripped Heit’s right hand—then patted him on

the shoulder. And Heit, much gratified by his various moves

so far—and in consequence hopeful for the future—now

took up his weird straw hat and buttoning his thin, loose

coat, returned to his office to get his faithful Earl on the long

distance telephone to instruct him and to say that he was

returning to the scene of the crime himself.

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Chapter 4

ORVILLE MASON could readily sympathize with a family

which on sight struck him as having, perhaps, like himself

endured the whips, the scorns and contumelies of lift. As he

drove up in his official car from Bridgeburg at about four

o’clock that Saturday afternoon, there was the old

tatterdemalion farmhouse and Titus Alden himself in his

shirt-sleeves and overalls coming up from a pig-pen at the

foot of the hill, his face and body suggesting a man who is

constantly conscious of the fact that he has made out so

poorly. And now Mason regretted that he had not

telephoned before leaving Bridge-burg, for he could see

that the news of his daughter’s death would shock such a

man as this most terribly. At the same time, Titus, noting his

approach and assuming that it might be some one who was

seeking a direction, civilly approached him.

“Is this Mr. Titus Alden?”

“Yes, sir, that’s my name.”

“Mr. Alden, my name is Mason. I am from Bridgeburg,

district attorney of Cataraqui County.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Titus, wondering by what strange chance

the district attorney of so distant a county should be

approaching and inquiring of him. And Mason now looked

at Titus, not knowing just how to begin. The bitterness of

the news he had to impart—the crumpling power of it upon

such an obviously feeble and inadequate soul. They had

paused under one of the large, dark fir trees that stood in

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front of the house. The wind in its needles was whispering

its world-old murmur.

“Mr. Alden,” began Mason, with more solemnity and

delicacy than ordinarily characterized him, “you are the

father of a girl by the name of Bert, or possibly Alberta, are

you not? I’m not sure that I have the name right.”

“Roberta,” corrected Titus Alden, a titillating sense of

something untoward affecting his nerves as he said it.

And Mason, before making it impossible, probably, for this

man to connectedly inform him concerning all that he

wished to know, now proceeded to inquire: “By the way, do

you happen to know a young man around here by the name

of Clifford Golden?”

“I don’t recall that I ever hard of any such person,” replied

Titus, slowly.

“Or Carl Graham?”

“No, sir. No one by that name either that I recall now.”

“I thought so,” exclaimed Mason, more to himself than to

Titus. “By the way,” this shrewdly and commandingly,

“where is your daughter now?”

“Why, she’s in Lycurgus at present. She works there. But

why do you ask? Has she done anything she shouldn’t—

been to see you about anything?” He achieved a wry smile

while his gray-blue eyes were by now perturbed by puzzled

inquiry.

“One moment, Mr. Alden,” proceeded Mason, tenderly and

yet most firmly and effectively. “I will explain everything to

you in a moment. Just now I want to ask a few necessary