An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

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