An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

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,