open air meetings …”
An American Tragedy
991
Chapter 24
CLYDE’S testimony proceeded to the point where the family
had removed from Quincy, Illinois (a place resorted to on
account of some Salvation Army work offered his father and
mother), to Kansas City, where from his twelfth to his
fifteenth year he had browsed about trying to find
something to do while still resenting the combination of
school and religious work expected of him.
“Were you up with your classes in the public schools?”
“No, sir. We had moved too much.”
“In what grade were you when you were twelve years old?”
“Well, I should have been in the seventh but I was only in
the sixth. That’s why I didn’t like it.”
“And how about the religious work of your parents?”
“Well, it was all right—only I never did like going out nights
on the street corners.”
And so on, through five-and-ten cent store, soda and
newspaper carrier jobs, until at last he was a bell-hop at the
Green-Davidson, the finest hotel in Kansas City, as he
informed them.
“But now, Clyde,” proceeded Jephson who, fearful lest
Mason on the cross-examination and in connection with
Clyde’s credibility as a witness should delve into the matter
of the wrecked car and the slain child in Kansas City and so
mar the effect of the story he was now about to tell, was
An American Tragedy
992
determined to be beforehand in this. Decidedly, by
questioning him properly he could explain and soften all
that, whereas if left to Mason it could be tortured into
something exceedingly dark indeed. And so now he
continued:
“And how long did you work there?”
“A little over a year.”
“And why did you leave?”
“Well, it was on account of an accident”
“What kind of an accident?”
And here Clyde, previously prepared and drilled as to all
this plunged into the details which led up to and included
the death of the little girl and his flight—which Mason, true
enough, had been intending to bring up. But, now, as he
listened to all this, he merely shook his head and grunted
ironically, “He’d better go into all that,” he commented. And
Jephson, sensing the import of what he was doing—how
most likely he was, as he would have phrased it, “spiking”
one of Mr. Mason’s best guns, continued with:
“How old were you then, Clyde, did you say?”
“Between seventeen and eighteen.”
“And do you mean to tell me,” he continued, after he had
finished with all of the questions he could think of in
connection with all this, “that you didn’t know that you might
have gone back there, since you were not the one who took
the car, and after explaining it all, been paroled in the
custody of your parents?”
“Object!” shouted Mason. “There’s no evidence here to
show that he could have returned to Kansas City and been
paroled in the custody of his parents.”
An American Tragedy
993
“Objection sustained!” boomed the judge from his high
throne. “The defense will please confine itself a little more
closely to the letter of the testimony.”
“Exception,” noted Belknap, from his seat.
“No, sir. I didn’t know that,” replied Clyde, just the same.
“Anyhow was that the reason after you got away that you
changed your name to Tenet as you told me?” continued.
Jephson.
“Yes, sir.”
“By the way, just where did you get that name of Tenet,
Clyde?”
“It was the name of a boy I used to play with in Quincy.”
“Was he a good boy?”
“Object!” called Mason, from his chair. “Incompetent,
immaterial, irrelevant.”
“Oh, he might have associated with a good boy in spite of
what you would like to have the jury believe, and in that
sense it is very relevant,” sneered Jephson.
“Objection sustained!” boomed Justice Oberwaltzer.
“But didn’t it occur to you at the time that he might object or
that you might be doing him an injustice in using his name
to cover the identity of a fellow who was running away?”
“No, sir—I thought there were lots of Tenets.”
An indulgent smile might have been expected at this point,
but so antagonistic and bitter was the general public toward
Clyde that such levity was out of the question in this
courtroom.
An American Tragedy
994
“Now listen, Clyde,” continued Jephson, having, as he had
just seen, failed to soften the mood of the throng, “you
cared for your mother, did you?—or didn’t you?”
Objection and argument finally ending in the question being
allowed.
“Yes, sir, certainly I cared for her,” replied Clyde—but after
a slight hesitancy which was noticeable—a tightening of the
throat and a swelling and sinking of the chest as he exhaled
and inhaled.
“Much?”
“Yes, sir—much.” He didn’t venture to look at any one now.
“Hadn’t she always done as much as she could for you, in
her way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, Clyde, how was it, after all that, and even
though that dreadful accident had occurred, you could run
away and stay away so long without so much as one word
to tell her that you were by no means as guilty as you
seemed and that she shouldn’t worry because you were
working and trying to be a good boy again?”
“But I did write her—only I didn’t sign my name.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. I sent her a little money. Ten dollars once.”
“But you didn’t think of going back at all?”
“No, sir. I was afraid that if I went back they might arrest
me.”
“In other words,” and here Jephson emphasized this with
great clearness, “you were a moral and mental coward, as
Mr. Belknap, my colleague, said.”
An American Tragedy
995
“I object to this interpretation of this defendant’s testimony
for the benefit of the jury!” interrupted Mason.
“This defendant’s testimony really needs no interpretation. It
is very plain and honest, as any one can see,” quickly
interjected Jephson.
“Objection sustained!” called the judge. “Proceed. Proceed.”
“And it was because you were a moral and mental coward
as I see it, Clyde—not that I am condemning you for
anything that you cannot help. (After all, you didn’t make
yourself, did you?)”
But this was too much, and the judge here cautioned him to
use more discretion in framing his future questions.
“Then you went about in Alton, Peoria, Bloomington,
Milwaukee, and Chicago—hiding away in small rooms in
back streets and working as a dishwasher or soda fountain
man, or a driver, and changing your name to Tenet when
you really might have gone back to Kansas City and
resumed your old place?” continued Jephson.
“I object! I object!” yelled Mason. “There is no evidence
here to show that he could have gone there and resumed
his old place.”
“Objection sustained,” ruled Oberwaltzer, although at the
time in Jephson’s pocket was a letter from Francis X.
Squires, formerly captain of the bell-hops of the Green-
Davidson at the time Clyde was there, in which he
explained that apart from the one incident in connection
with the purloined automobile, he knew nothing derogatory
to Clyde; and that always previously, he had found him
prompt, honest, willing, alert and well-mannered. Also that
at the time the accident occurred, he himself had been
satisfied that Clyde could have been little else than one of
An American Tragedy
996
those led and that if he had returned and properly explained
matters he would have been reinstated. It was irrelevant.
Thereafter followed Clyde’s story of how, having fled from
the difficulties threatening him in Kansas City and having
wandered here and there for two years, he had finally
obtained a place in Chicago as a driver and later as a bell-
boy at the Union League, and also how while still employed
at the first of these places he had written his mother and
later at her request was about to write his uncle, when,
accidentally meeting him at the Union League, he was
invited by him to come to Lycurgus. And thereupon, in their
natural order, followed all of the details, of how he had gone
to work, been promoted and instructed by his cousin and
the foreman as to the various rules, and then later how he
had met Roberta and still later Miss X. But in between came
all the details as to how and why he had courted Roberta
Alden, and how and why, having once secured her love he
felt and thought himself content—but how the arrival of
Miss X, and her overpowering fascination for him, had
served completely to change all his notions in regard to
Roberta, and although he still admired her, caused him to
feel that never again as before could he desire to marry her.
But Jephson, anxious to divert the attention of the jury from
the fact that Clyde was so very fickle—a fact too trying to be
so speedily introduced into the case—at once interposed
with: