MR. REUBEN JEPHSON was decidedly different from
Belknap, Catchuman, Mason, Smillie—in fact any one, thus
far, who had seen Clyde or become legally interested in this
case. He was young, tall, thin, rugged, brown, cool but not
cold spiritually, and with a will and a determination of the
tensile strength of steel. And with a mental and legal
equipment which for shrewdness and self-interest was not
unlike that of a lynx or a ferret. Those shrewd, steel, very
light blue eyes in his brown face. The force and curiosity of
the long nose. The strength of the hands and the body. He
had lost no time, as soon as he discovered there was a
possibility of their (Belknap & Jephson) taking over the
defense of Clyde, in going over the minutes of the coroner’s
inquest as well as the doctors’ reports and the letters of
Roberta and Sondra. And now being faced by Belknap who
was explaining that Clyde did now actually admit to having
plotted to kill Roberta, although not having actually done so,
since at the fatal moment, some cataleptic state of mind or
remorse had intervened and caused him to unintentionally
strike her—he merely stared without the shadow of a smile
or comment of any kind.
“But he wasn’t in such a state when he went out there with
her, though?”
“No.”
“Nor when he swam away afterwards?”
“No.”
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“Nor when he went through those woods, or changed to
another suit and hat, or hid that tripod?”
“No.”
“Of course you know, constructively, in the eyes of the law,
if we use his own story, he’s just as guilty as though he had
struck her, and the judge would have to so instruct.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve thought of all that.”
“Well, then——”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Jephson, it’s a tough case and no
mistake. It looks to me now as though Mason has all the
cards. If we can get this chap off, we can get anybody off.
But as I see it. I’m not so sure that we want to mention that
cataleptic business yet—at least not unless we want to
enter a plea of insanity or emotional insanity, or something
like that—about like that Harry Thaw case, for instance.” He
paused and scratched his slightly graying temple dubiously.
“You think he’s guilty, of course?” interpolated Jephson,
dryly.
“Well, now, as astonishing as it may seem to you, no. At
least, I’m not positive that I do. To tell you the truth, this is
one of the most puzzling cases I have ever run up against.
This fellow is by no means as hard as you think, or as cold
—quite a simple, affectionate chap, in a way, as you’ll see
for yourself—his manner, I mean. He’s only twenty-one or
two. And for all his connections with these Griffiths, he’s
very poor—just a clerk, really. And he tells me that his
parents are poor, too. They run a mission of some kind out
west—Denver, I believe—and before that in Kansas City.
He hasn’t been home in four years. In fact, he got into
some crazy boy scrape out there in Kansas City when he
was working for one of the hotels as a bell-boy, and had to
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run away. That’s something we’ve got to look out for in
connection with Mason—whether he knows about that or
not. It seems he and a bunch of other bell-hops took some
rich fellow’s car without his knowing it, and then because
they were afraid of being late, they ran over and killed a
little girl. We’ve got to find out about that and prepare for it,
for if Mason does know about it, he’ll spring it at the trial,
and just when he thinks we’re least expecting it.”
“Well, he won’t pull that one,” replied Jephson, his hard,
electric, blue eyes gleaming, “not if I have to go to Kansas
City to find out.”
And Belknap went on to tell Jephson all that he knew about
Clyde’s life up to the present time—how he had worked at
dish-washing, waiting on table, soda-clerking, driving a
wagon, anything and everything, before he had arrived in
Lycurgus—how he had always been fascinated by girls—
how he had first met Roberta and later Sondra. Finally how
he found himself trapped by one and desperately in love
with the other, whom he could not have unless he got rid of
the first one.
“And notwithstanding all that, you feel a doubt as to
whether he did kill her?” asked Jephson, at the conclusion
of all this.
“Yes, as I say, I’m not at all sure that he did. But I do know
that he is still hipped over this second girl. His manner
changed whenever he or I happened to mention her. Once,
for instance, I asked him about his relations with her—and
in spite of the fact that he’s accused of seducing and killing
this, other girl, he looked at me as though I had said
something I shouldn’t have—insulted him or her.” And here
Belknap smiled a wry smile, while Jephson, his long, bony
legs propped against the walnut desk before him, merely
stared at him.
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“You don’t say,” he finally observed.
“And not only that,” went on Belknap, “but he said, ‘Why,
no, of course not. She wouldn’t allow anything like that, and
besides,’ and then he stopped. ‘And besides what, Clyde,’ I
asked. ‘Well, you don’t want to forget who she is.’‘Oh, I
see,’ I said. And then, will you believe it, he wanted to know
if there wasn’t some way by which her name and those
letters she wrote him couldn’t be kept out of the papers and
this case—her family prevented from knowing so that she
and they wouldn’t be hurt too much.”
“Not really? But what about the other girl?”
“That’s just the point I’m trying to make. He could plot to kill
one girl and maybe even did kill her, for all I know, after
seducing her, but because he was being so sculled around
by his grand ideas of this other girl, he didn’t quite know
what he was doing, really. Don’t you see? You know how it
is with some of these young fellows of his age, and
especially when they’ve never had anything much to do
with girls or money, and want to be something grand.”
“You think that made him a little crazy, maybe?” put in
Jephson.
“Well, it’s possible—confused, hypnotized, loony—you know
—a brain storm as they say down in New York. But he
certainly is still cracked over that other girl. In fact, I think
most of his crying in jail is over her. He was crying, you
know, when I went in to see him, sobbing as if his heart
would break.”
Meditatively Belknap scratched his right ear. “But just the
same, there certainly is something to this other idea—that
his mind was turned by all this—that Alden girl forcing him
on the one hand to marry her while the other girl was
offering to marry him. I know. I was once in such a scrape
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myself.” And here he paused to relate that to Jephson. “By
the way,” he went on, “he says we can find that item about
that other couple drowning in The Times-Union of about
June 18th or 19th.”
“All right,” replied Jephson, “I’ll get it.”
“What I want you to do to-morrow,” continued Belknap, “is
to go over there with me and see what impression you get
of him. I’ll be there to see if he tells it all to you in the same
way. I want your own individual viewpoint of him.”
“You most certainly will get it,” snapped Jephson.
Belknap and Jephson proceeded the next day to visit Clyde
in jail. And Jephson, after interviewing him and meditating
once more on his strange story, was even then not quite
able to make up his mind whether Clyde was as innocent of
intending to strike Roberta as he said, or not. For if he
were, how could he have swum away afterward, leaving her
to drown? Decidedly it would be more difficult for a jury than
for himself, even, to be convinced.
At the same time, there was that contention of Belknap’s as
to the possibility of Clyde’s having been mentally upset or
unbalanced at the time that he accepted The Times-Union
plot and proceeded to act on it. That might be true, of
course, yet personally, to Jephson at least, Clyde appeared
to be wise and sane enough now. As Jephson saw him, he
was harder and more cunning than Belknap was willing to
believe—a cunning, modified of course, by certain soft and
winning social graces for which one could hardly help liking
him. However, Clyde was by no means as willing to confide
in Jephson as he had been in Belknap—an attitude which
did little to attract Jephson to him at first. At the same time,