called his office, and learning that Roberta’s body had been
brought to Bridgeburg, he drove there with as much speed
as he could attain. And once there and in the presence of
the body along with Titus, Burton Burleigh, Heit and Earl
Newcomb, he was able to decide for himself, even while
Titus, half demented, gazed upon the features of his child,
first that she truly was Roberta Alden and next as to
whether he considered her of the type who would wantonly
yield herself to such a liaison as the registration at Grass
Lake seemed to indicate. He decided he did not. This was a
case of sly, evil seduction as well as murder. Oh, the
scoundrel! And still at large. Almost the political value of all
this was obscured by an angry social resentfulness against
men of means in general.
But this particular contact with the dead, made at ten
o’clock at night in the receiving parlors of the Lutz Brothers,
Undertakers, and with Titus Alden falling on his knees by
the side of his daughter and emotionally carrying her small,
cold hands to his lips while he gazed feverishly and
protestingly upon her waxy face, framed by her long brown
hair, was scarcely such as to promise an unbiased or even
legal opinion. The eyes of all those present were wet with
tears.
And now Titus Alden injected a new and most dramatic
note into the situation. For while the Lutz Brothers, with
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three of their friends who kept an automobile shop next
door, Everett Beeker, the present representative of the
Bridgeburg Republican, and Sam Tacksun, the editor and
publisher of the Democrat, awesomely gazed over or
between the heads of each other from without a side door
which gave into the Lutzs’ garage, he suddenly rose and
moving wildly toward Mason, exclaimed: “I want you to find
the scoundrel who did this, Mr. District Attorney. I want him
to be made to suffer as this pure, good girl has been made
to suffer. She’s been murdered—that’s all. No one but a
murderer would take a girl out on a lake like that and strike
her as any one can see she has been struck.” He gestured
toward his dead child. “I have no money to help prosecute a
scoundrel like that. But I will work. I will sell my farm.”
His voice broke and seemingly he was in danger of falling
as he turned toward Roberta again. And now, Orville
Mason, swept into this father’s stricken and yet retaliatory
mood, pressed forward to exclaim: “Come away, Mr. Alden.
We know this is your daughter. I swear all you gentlemen
as witnesses to this identification. And if it shall be proved
that this little girl of yours was murdered, as it now seems, I
promise you, Mr. Alden, faithfully and dutifully as the district
attorney of this county, that no time or money or energy on
my part will be spared to track down this scoundrel and hale
him before the proper authorities! And if the justice of
Cataraqui County is what I think it is, you can leave him to
any jury which our local court will summon. And you won’t
need to sell your farm, either.”
Mr. Mason, because of his deep, if easily aroused, emotion,
as well as the presence of the thrilled audience, was in his
most forceful as well as his very best oratorical mood.
And one of the Lutz Brothers—Ed—the recipient of all of
the county coroner’s business—was moved to exclaim:
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“That’s the ticket, Orville. You’re the kind of a district
attorney we like.” And Everett Beeker now called out: “Go
to it, Mr. Mason. We’re with you to a man when it comes to
that.” And Fred Heit, as well as his assistant, touched by
Mason’s dramatic stand, his very picturesque and even
heroic appearance at the moment, now crowded closer,
Heit to take his friend by the hand, Earl to exclaim: “More
power to you, Mr. Mason. We’ll do all we can, you bet. And
don’t forget that bag that she left at Gun Lodge is over at
your office. I gave it to Burton two hours ago.”
“That’s right, too. I was almost forgetting that,” exclaimed
Mason, most calmly and practically at the moment, the
previous burst of oratory and emotion having by now been
somehow merged in his own mind with the exceptional
burst of approval which up to this hour he had never
experienced in any case with which previously he had been
identified.
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Chapter 5
AS HE proceeded to his office, accompanied by Alden and
the officials in this case, his thought was running on the
motive of this heinous crime—the motive. And because of
his youthful sexual deprivations, his mind now tended
continually to dwell on that. And meditating on the beauty
and charm of Roberta, contrasted with her poverty and her
strictly moral and religious upbringing, he was convinced
that in all likelihood this man or boy, whoever he was, had
seduced her and then later, finding himself growing tired of
her, had finally chosen this way to get rid of her—this
deceitful, alleged marriage trip to the lake. And at once he
conceived an enormous personal hate for the man. The
wretched rich! The idle rich! The wastrel and evil rich—a
scion or representative of whom this young Clyde Griffiths
was. If he could but catch him.
At the same time it now suddenly occurred to him that
because of the peculiar circumstances attending this case—
this girl cohabiting with this man in this way—she might be
pregnant. And at once this suspicion was sufficient, not only
to make him sexually curious in regard to all the details of
the life and courtship that had led to this—but also very
anxious to substantiate for himself whether his suspicions
were true. Immediately he began to think of a suitable
doctor to perform an autopsy—if not here, then in Utica or
Albany—also of communicating to Heit his suspicions in the
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connection, and of having this, as well as the import of the
blows upon her face, determined.
But in regard to the bag and its contents, which was the
immediate matter before him, he was fortunate in finding
one additional bit of evidence of the greatest importance.
For, apart from the dresses and hats made by Roberta, her
lingerie, a pair of red silk garters purchased at Braunstein’s
in Lycurgus and still in their original box, there was the toilet
set presented by Clyde to her the Christmas before. And
with it the small, plain white card, on which Clyde had
written: “For Bert from Clyde—Merry Xmas.” But no family
name. And the writing a hurried scrawl, since it had been
written at a time when Clyde was most anxious to be
elsewhere than with her.
At once it occurred to Mason—how odd that the presence
of this toilet set in this bag, together with the card, should
not have been known to the slayer. But if it were, and he
had not removed the card, could it be possible that this
same Clyde was the slayer? Would a man contemplating
murder fail to see a card such as this, with his own
handwriting on it? What sort of a plotter and killer would
that be? Immediately afterward he thought: Supposing the
presence of this card could be concealed until the day of
the trial and then suddenly produced, assuming the criminal
denied any intimacy with the girl, or having given her any
toilet set? And for the present he took the card and put it in
his pocket, but not before Earl Newcomb, looking at it
carefully, had observed: “I’m not positive, Mr. Mason, but
that looks to me like the writing on the register up at Big
Bittern.” And at once Mason replied: “Well, it won’t take
long to establish the fact.”
He then signaled Heit to follow him into an adjoining
chamber, where once alone with him, free from the
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observation and hearing of the others, he began: “Well,
Fred, you see it was just as you thought. She did know who
she was going with.” (He was referring to his own advice
over the telephone from Biltz that Mrs. Alden had provided
him with definite information as to the criminal.) “But you
couldn’t guess in a thousand years unless I told you.” He
leaned over and looked at Heit shrewdly.
“I don’t doubt it, Orville. I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Well, you know of Griffiths & Company, of Lycurgus?”
“Not the collar people?”
“Yes, the collar people.”
“Not the son.” Fred Heit’s eyes opened wider than they had
in years. His wide, brown hand grasped the end of his
beard.
“No, not the son. A nephew!”
“Nephew! Of Samuel Griffiths? Not truly!” The old, moral-
religious, politic-commercial coroner stroked his beard