up there near the Cranstons’—describe the spot to me as
near as you can where you threw it—how far from the
house was it?” He waited until Clyde haltingly attempted to
recapture the various details of the hour and the scene as
he could recall it.
“If I could go up there, I could find it quick enough.”
“Yes, I know, but they won’t let you go up there without
Mason being along,” he returned. “And maybe not even
then. You’re in prison now, and you can’t be taken out
without the state’s consent, you see. But we must get that
suit.” Then turning to Belknap and lowering his voice, he
added: “We want to get it and have it cleaned and submit it
as having been sent away to be cleaned by him—not
hidden, you see.”
“Yes, that’s so,” commented Belknap idly while Clyde stood
listening curiously and a little amazed by this frank program
of trickery and deception on his behalf.
“And now in regard to that camera that fell in the lake—we
have to try and find that, too. I think maybe Mason may
know about it or suspect that it’s there. At any rate it’s very
important that we should find it before he does. You think
that about where that pole was that day you were up there
is where the boat was when it overturned?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we must see if we can get that,” he continued,
turning to Belknap. “We don’t want that turning up in the
trial, if we can help it. For without that, they’ll have to be
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swearing that he struck her with that tripod or something
that he didn’t, and that’s where we may trip ’em up.”
“Yes, that’s true, too,” replied Belknap.
“And now in regard to the bag that Mason has. That’s
another thing I haven’t seen yet, but I will see it to-morrow.
Did you put that suit, as wet as it was, in the bag when you
came out of the water?”
“No, sir, I wrung it out first. And then I dried it as much as I
could. And then I wrapped it up in the paper that we had the
lunch in and then put some dry pine needles underneath it
in the bag and on top of it.”
“So there weren’t any wet marks in the bag after you took it
out, as far as you know?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Not exactly sure now that you ask me—no, sir.”
“Well, I’ll see for myself to-morrow. And now as to those
marks on her face, you have never admitted to any one
around here or anywhere that you struck her in any way?”
“No, sir.”
“And the mark on the top of her head was made by the
boat, just as you said?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But the others you think you might have made with the
camera?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose they were.”
“Well, then, this is the way it looks to me,” said Jephson,
again turning to Belknap. “I think we can safely say when
the time comes that those marks were never made by him
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at all, see?—but by the hooks and the poles with which they
were scraping around up there when they were trying to
find her. We can try it, anyhow. And if the hooks and poles
didn’t do it,” he added, a little grimly and dryly, “certainly
hauling her body from that lake to that railroad station and
from there to here on the train might have.”
“Yes, I think Mason would have a hard time proving that
they weren’t made that way,” replied Belknap.
“And as for that tripod, well, we’d better exhume the body
and make our own measurements, and measure the
thickness of the edge of that boat, so that it may not be so
easy for Mason to make any use of the tripod now that he
has it, after all.”
Mr. Jephson’s eyes were very small and very clear and very
blue, as he said this. His head, as well as his body, had a
thin, ferrety look. And it seemed to Clyde, who had been
observing and listening to all this with awe, that this
younger man might be the one to aid him. He was so
shrewd and practical, so very direct and chill and indifferent
and yet confidence-inspiring, quite like an uncontrollable
machine of a kind which generates power.
And when at last these two were ready to go, he was sorry.
For with them near him, planning and plotting in re gard to
himself, he felt so much safer, stronger, more hopeful, more
certain of being free, maybe, at some future date.
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Chapter 16
THE result of all this, however, was that it was finally
decided that perhaps the easiest and safest defense that
could be made, assuming that the Griffiths family of
Lycurgus would submit to it, would be that of insanity or
“brain storm”—a temporary aberration due to love and an
illusion of grandeur aroused in Clyde by Sondra Finchley
and the threatened disruption by Roberta of all his dreams
and plans. But after consultation with Catchuman and
Darrah Brookhart at Lycurgus, and these in turn conferring
with Samuel and Gilbert Griffiths, it was determined that
this would not do. For to establish insanity or “brain storm”
would require previous evidence or testimony to the effect
that Clyde was of none too sound mind, erratic his whole
life long, and with certain specific instances tending to
demonstrate how really peculiar he was—relatives (among
them the Griffiths of Lycurgus themselves, perhaps),
coming on to swear to it—a line of evidence, which,
requiring as it would, outright lying and perjury on the part
of many as well as reflecting on the Griffiths’ blood and
brain, was sufficient to alienate both Samuel and Gilbert to
the extent that they would have none of it. And so
Brookhart was compelled to assure Belknap that this line of
defense would have to be abandoned.
Such being the case, both Belknap and Jephson were once
more compelled to sit down and consider. For any other
defense which either could think of now seemed positively
hopeless.
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“I want to tell you one thing!” observed the sturdy Jephson,
after thumbing through the letters of both Roberta and
Sondra again. “These letters of this Alden girl are the
toughest things we’re going to have to face. They’re likely to
make any jury cry if they’re read right, and then to introduce
those letters from that other girl on top of these would be
fatal. It will be better, I think, if we do not mention hers at
all, unless he does. It will only make it look as though he
had killed that Alden girl to get rid of her. Mason couldn’t
want anything better, as I see it.” And with this Belknap
agreed most heartily.
At the same time, some plan must be devised immediately.
And so, out of these various conferences, it was finally
deduced by Jephson, who saw a great opportunity for
himself in this matter, that the safest possible defense that
could be made, and one to which Clyde’s own suspicious
and most peculiar actions would most exactly fit, would be
that he had never contemplated murder. On the contrary,
being a moral if not a physical coward, as his own story
seemed to suggest, and in terror of being exposed and
driven out of Lycurgus and of the heart of Sondra, and
never as yet having told Roberta of Sondra and thinking
that knowledge of this great love for her (Sondra) might
influence Roberta to wish to be rid of him, he had hastily
and without any worse plan in mind, decided to persuade
Roberta to accompany him to any near-by resort but not
especially Grass Lake or Big Bittern, in order to tell her all
this and so win his freedom—yet not without offering to pay
her expenses as nearly as he could during her very trying
period.
“All well and good,” commented Belknap. “But that involves
his refusing to marry her, doesn’t it? And what jury is going
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to sympathize with him for that or believe that he didn’t
want to kill her?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” replied Jephson, a little
testily. “So far it does. Sure. But you haven’t heard me to
the end yet. I said I had a plan.”
“All right, then what is it?” replied Belknap most interested.
“Well, I’ll tell you—my plan’s this—to leave all the facts just
as they are, and just as he tells them, and just as Mason
has discussed them so far, except, of course, his striking her
—and then explain them—the letters, the wounds, the bag,
the two hats, everything—not deny them in any way.”
And here he paused and ran his long, thin, freckled hands