miss X?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And trying to get her to marry you?”
“I wanted her to—yes, sir.”
“Yet continuing relations with Miss Alden when your other
interests left you any time.”
“Well … yes, sir,” once more hesitated Clyde, enormously
troubled by the shabby picture of his character which these
disclosures seemed to conjure, yet somehow feeling that
he was not as bad, or at least had not intended to be, as all
this made him appear. Other people did things like that too,
didn’t they—those young men in Lycurgus society—or they
had talked as though they did.
“Well, don’t you think your learned counsel found a very
mild term for you when they described you as a mental and
moral coward?” sneered Mason—and at the same time
from the rear of the long narrow courtroom, a profound
silence seeming to precede, accompany and follow it,—yet
not without an immediate roar of protest from Belknap,
came the solemn, vengeful voice of an irate woodsman:
“Why don’t they kill the God-damned bastard and be done
with him?”—And at once Oberwaltzer gaveling for order
and ordering the arrest of the offender at the same time that
An American Tragedy
1064
he ordered all those not seated driven from the courtroom—
which was done. And then the offender arrested and
ordered arraigned on the following morning. And after that,
silence, with Mason once more resuming:
“Griffiths, you say when you left Lycurgus you had no
intention of marrying Roberta Alden unless you could not
arrange in any other way.”
“Yes, sir. That was my intention at that time.”
“And accordingly you were fairly certain of coming back?”
“Yes, sir—I thought I was.”
“Then why did you pack everything in your room in your
trunk and lock it?”
“Well … well … that is,” hesitated Clyde, the charge coming
so quickly and so entirely apart from what had just been
spoken of before that he had scarcely time to collect his wits
—“well, you see—I wasn’t absolutely sure. I didn’t know but
what I might have to go whether I wanted to or not.”
“I see. And so if you had decided up there unexpectedly—
as you did—” (and here Mason smirked on him as much as
to say—you think any one believes that?) “you wouldn’t
have had time to come back and decently pack your things
and depart?”
“Well, no, sir—that wasn’t the reason either.”
“Well then, what was the reason?”
“Well, you see,” and here for lack of previous thought on
this subject as well as lack of wit to grasp the essentiality of
a suitable and plausible answer quickly, Clyde hesitated—
as every one—first and foremost Belknap and Jephson—
noted—and then went on: “Well, you see—it I had to go
An American Tragedy
1065
away, even for a short time as I thought I might, I decided
that I might need whatever I had in a hurry.”
“I see. You’re quite sure it wasn’t that in case the police
discovered who Clifford Golden or Carl Graham were, that
you might wish to leave quickly?”
“No, sir. It wasn’t.”
“And so you didn’t tell Mrs. Peyton you were giving up the
room either, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“In your testimony the other day you said something about
not having money enough to go up there and take Miss
Alden away on any temporary marriage scheme—even one
that would last so long as six months.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you left Lycurgus to start on the trip, how much did
you have?”
“About fifty dollars.”
“‘About’ fifty? Don’t you know exactly how much you had?”
“I had fifty dollars—yes, sir.”
“And while you were in Utica and Grass Lake and getting
down to Sharon afterwards, how much did you spend?”
“I spent about twenty dollars on the trip, I think.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Not exactly—no, sir—somewhere around twenty dollars,
though.”
“Well, now let’s see about that exactly if we can,” went on
Mason, and here, once more, Clyde began to sense a trap
and grew nervous—for there was all that money given him
An American Tragedy
1066
by Sondra and some of which he had spent, too. “How
much was your fare from Fonda to Utica for yourself?”
“A dollar and a quarter.”
“And what did you have to pay for your room at the hotel at
Utica for you and Roberta?”
“That was four dollars.”
“And of course you had dinner that night and breakfast the
next morning, which cost you how much?”
“It was about three dollars for both meals.”
“Was that all you spent in Utica?” Mason was taking a side
glance occasionally at a slip of paper on which he had
figures and notes, but which Clyde had not noticed.
“Yes, sir.”
“How about the straw hat that it has been proved you
purchased while there?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I forgot about that,” said Clyde, nervously.
“That was two dollars—yes, sir.” He realized that he must
be more careful.
“And your fares to Grass Lake were, of course, five dollars.
Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you hired a boat at Grass Lake. How much was that?”
“That was thirty-five cents an hour.”
“And you had it how long?”
“Three hours.”
“Making one dollar and five cents.”
“Yes, sir.”
An American Tragedy
1067
“And then that night at the hotel, they charged you how
much? Five dollars, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then didn’t you buy that lunch that you carried out in
that lake with you up there?”
“Yes, sir. I think that was about sixty cents.”
“And how much did it cost you to get to Big Bittern?”
“It was a dollar on the train to Gun Lodge and a dollar on
the bus for the two of us to Big Bittern.”
“You know these figures pretty well, I see. Naturally, you
would. You didn’t have much money and it was important.
And how much was your fare from Three Mile Bay to
Sharon afterwards?”
“My fare was seventy-five cents.”
“Did you ever stop to figure this all up exactly?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, will you?”
“Well, you know how much it is, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I do. It was twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents.
You said you spent twenty dollars. But here is a
discrepancy of four dollars and sixty-five cents. How do you
account for it?”
“Well, I suppose I didn’t figure just exactly right,” said Clyde,
irritated by the accuracy of figures such as these.
But now Mason slyly and softly inquiring: “Oh, yes, Griffiths,
I forgot, how much was the boat you hired at Big Bittern?”
He was eager to hear what Clyde would have to say as to
this, seeing that he had worked hard and long on this pitfall.
An American Tragedy
1068
“Oh—ah—ah—that is,” began Clyde, hesitatingly, for at Big
Bittern, as he now recalled, he had not even troubled to
inquire the cost of the boat, feeling as he did at the time
that neither he nor Roberta were coming back. But now
here and in this way it was coming up for the first time. And
Mason, realizing that he had caught him here, quickly
interpolated a “Yes?” to which Clyde replied, but merely
guessing at that: “Why, thirty-five cents an hour—just the
same as at Grass Lake—so the boatman said.”
But he had spoken too quickly. And he did not know that in
reserve was the boatman who was still to testify that he had
not stopped to ask the price of the boat. And Mason
continued:
“Oh, it was, was it? The boatman told you that, did he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well now, don’t you recall that you never asked the
boatman at all? It was not thirty-five cents an hour, but fifty
cents. But of course you do not know that because you
were in such a hurry to get out on the water and you did not
expect to have to come back and pay for it anyway. So you
never even asked, you see. Do you see? Do you recall that
now?” And here Mason produced a bill that he had gotten
from the boatman and waved it in front of Clyde. “It was fifty
cents an hour,” he repeated. “They charge more than at
Grass Lake. But what I want to know is, if you are so
familiar with these other figures, as you have just shown
that you are, how comes it that you are not familiar with this
figure? Didn’t you think of the expense of taking her out in a
boat and keeping the boat from noon until night?” The
attack came so swiftly and bitterly that at once Clyde was
confused. He twisted and turned, swallowed and looked
An American Tragedy
1069
nervously at the floor, ashamed to look at Jephson who had
somehow failed to coach him as to this.
“Well,” bawled Mason, “any explanation to make as to that?
Doesn’t it strike even you as strange that you can