An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

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