took the invitations and then looked toward the trunk which
the detective was now contemplating.
“What about this, chief? Will you take it away or open it
here?”
“I think,” said Mason solemnly, “we’d better open that right
here, Faunce. I’ll send for it afterwards, but I want to see
what’s in it now.” And at once the detective extracted from
his pocket a heavy chisel, while he began looking around
for a hammer.
“It isn’t very strong,” he said, “I think I can kick it open if you
say so.”
At this point, Mrs. Peyton, most astounded by these
developments, and anxious to avoid any such rough
procedure, exclaimed: “You can have a hammer if you
wish, but why not wait and send for a key man? Why, I
never heard of such a thing in all my life.”
However, the detective having secured the hammer and
jarred the lock loose, there lay revealed in a small top crate
various unimportant odds and ends of Clyde’s wardrobe—
socks, collars, ties, a muffler, suspenders, a discarded
sweater, a pair of not too good high-top winter shoes, a
cigarette holder, a red lacquer ash tray, and a pair of
skates. But in addition among these, in the corner in one
compact bundle, the final fifteen letters of Roberta, written
him from Biltz, together with a small picture of herself given
him the year before, as well as another small bundle
consisting of all the notes and invitations written him by
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Sondra up to the time she had departed for Pine Point. The
letters written from there Clyde had taken with him—laid
next his heart. And, even more incriminating, a third bundle,
consisting of eleven letters from his mother, the first two
addressed to Harry Tenet, care of general delivery, Chicago
—a most suspicious circumstance on the surface—whereas
the others of the bundle were addressed to Clyde Griffiths,
not only care of the Union League, Chicago, but to
Lycurgus.
Without waiting further to see what else the trunk might
contain, the district attorney began opening these and
reading—first three from Roberta, after which the reason
she had gone to Biltz was made perfectly plain—then the
three first letters from his mother, on most pathetically
commonplace stationery, as he could see, hinting at the
folly of the life as well as the nature of the accident that had
driven him from Kansas City, and at the same time advising
him most solicitously and tenderly as to the proper path for
his feet in the future, the general effect of which was to
convey to a man of Mason’s repressed temperament and
limited social experience the impression that from the very
beginning this individual had been of a loose, wayward and
errant character.
At the same time, and to his surprise, he now learned that
except for what his rich uncle might have done for him here,
Clyde was obviously of a poor, as well as highly religious,
branch of the Griffiths family, and while ordinarily this might
have influenced him in Clyde’s favor a little, still now, in
view of the notes of Sondra, as well as the pathetic letters
of Roberta and his mother’s reference to some earlier crime
in Kansas City, he was convinced that not only was Clyde
of such a disposition as could plot such a crime but also
one who could execute it in cold blood. That crime in
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Kansas City. He must wire the district attorney there for
particulars.
And with this thought in mind, he now scanned more briefly
but none the less sharply and critically the various notes or
invitations or love messages from Sondra, all on heavily
perfumed and monogrammed stationery, which grew more
and more friendly and intimate as the correspondence
progressed, until toward the last they invariably began:
“Clydie-Mydie,” or “Sweetest Black Eyes,” or “My sweetest
boy,” and were signed “Sonda,” or “Your own Sondra.” And
some of them dated so recently as May 10th, May 15th,
May 26th, or up to the very time at which, as he instantly
noted, Roberta’s most doleful letters began to arrive.
It was all so plain, now. One secretly betrayed girl in the
background while he had the effrontery to ingratiate himself
into the affections of another, this time obviously one of
much higher social position here.
Although fascinated and staggered by this interesting
development, he at the same time realized that this was no
hour in which to sit meditating. Far from it. This trunk must
be transferred at once to his hotel. Later he must go forth to
find out, if he could, exactly where this individual was, and
arrange for his capture. And while he ordered the detective
to call up the police department and arrange for the transfer
of the trunk to his room at the Lycurgus House, he hurried
next to the residence of Samuel Griffiths, only to learn that
no member of the family was then in the city. They were all
at Greenwood Lake. But a telephone message to that place
brought the information that in so far as they knew, this
same Clyde Griffiths, their nephew, was at the Cranston
lodge on Twelfth Lake, near Sharon, adjoining the Finchley
lodge. The name Finchley, together with the town of
Sharon, being already identified in Mason’s mind with
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Clyde, he at once decided that if he were still anywhere in
this region, he would be there—at the summer home
perhaps of this girl who had written him the various notes
and invitations he had seen—this Sondra Finchley. Also
had not the captain of the “Cygnus” declared that he had
seen the youth who had come down from Three Mile Bay
debark there? Eureka! He had him!
And at once, after meditating sharply on the wisdom of his
course, he decided to proceed to Sharon and Pine Point
himself. But in the meantime being furnished with an
accurate description of Clyde, he now furnished this as well
as the fact that he was wanted for murder, not only to the
district attorney and the chief of police of Lycurgus, but to
Newton Slack, the sheriff at Bridgeburg, as well as to Heit
and his own assistant, urging all three to proceed at once to
Sharon, where he would meet them.
At the same time, speaking as though for Mrs. Peyton, he
now called upon the long distance telephone the Cranston
lodge at Pine Point, and getting the butler on the wire,
inquired whether Mr. Clyde Griffiths chanced to be there.
“Yes sir, he is, sir, but he’s not here now, sir. I think he’s on
a camping party farther up the lake, sir. Any message, sir?”
And in response to further inquiries, he replied that he could
not say exactly—a party had gone, presumably, to Bear
Lake some thirty miles farther up, but when it would return
he could not say—not likely before a day or two. But
distinctly this same Clyde was with that party.
And at once Mason recalled the sheriff at Bridgeburg,
instructing him to take four or five deputies with him so that
the searching party might divide at Sharon and seize this
same Clyde wherever he chanced to be. And throw him in
jail at Bridgeburg, where he could explain, with all due
process of law, the startling circumstances that thus far
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seemed to unescapably point to him as the murderer of
Roberta Alden.
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Chapter 6
IN THE interim the mental state of Clyde since that hour
when, the water closing over Roberta, he had made his
way to the shore, and then, after changing his clothes, had
subsequently arrived at Sharon and the lakeside lodge of
the Cranstons, was almost one of complete mental
derangement, mainly caused by fear and confusion in his
own mind as to whether he did or did not bring about her
untimely end. At the same time at the lakeside the
realization that if by any chance he were then and there
found, skulking south rather than returning north to the inn
at Big Bittern to report this seeming accident, there would
be sufficient hardness and cruelty to the look of it all to
convince any one that a charge of murder should be made
against him, had fiercely tortured him. For, as he now saw
it, he really was not guilty—was he, since at the last
moment he had experienced that change of heart?
But who was going to believe that now, since he did not go
back to explain? And it would never do to go back now! For
if Sondra should hear that he had been on this lake with
this factory girl—that he had registered with her as husband
and wife … God!
And then trying to explain to his uncle afterwards, or his
cold, hard cousin—or all those smart, cynical Lycurgus
people! No! No! Having gone so far he must go on. Disaster