An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser [best business books of all time txt] 📗

“Griffiths,” went on Mason, “your lawyers didn’t tell you that they fished and fished for that camera you swore you didn’t have with you before they found that I had it, did they?”

“They never said anything to me about it,” replied Clyde.

“Well, that’s too bad. I could have saved them a lot of trouble. Well, these were the photos that were found in that camera and that were made just after that change of heart you experienced, you remember?”

“I remember when they were made,” replied Clyde, sullenly.

“Well, they were made before you two went out in that boat for the last time⁠—before you finally told her whatever it was you wanted to tell her⁠—before she was murdered out there⁠—at a time when, as you have testified, she was very sad.”

“No, that was the day before,” defied Clyde.

“Oh, I see. Well, anyhow, these pictures look a little cheerful for one who was as depressed as you say she was.”

“Well⁠—but⁠—she wasn’t nearly as depressed then as she was the day before,” flashed Clyde, for this was the truth and he remembered it.

“I see. But just the same, look at these other pictures. These three here, for instance. Where were they made?”

“At the Cranston Lodge on Twelfth Lake, I think.”

“Right. And that was June eighteenth or nineteenth, wasn’t it?”

“On the nineteenth, I think.”

“Well, now, do you recall a letter Roberta wrote you on the nineteenth?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t recall any particular one?”

“No, sir.”

“But they were all very sad, you have said.”

“Yes, sir⁠—they were.”

“Well, this is that letter written at the time these pictures were made.” He turned to the jury.

“I would like the jury to look at these pictures and then listen to just one passage from this letter written by Miss Alden to this defendant on the same day. He has admitted that he was refusing to write or telephone her, although he was sorry for her,” he said, turning to the jury. And here he opened a letter and read a long sad plea from Roberta. “And now here are four more pictures, Griffiths.” And he handed Clyde the four made at Bear Lake. “Very cheerful, don’t you think? Not much like pictures of a man who has just experienced a great change of heart after a most terrific period of doubt and worry and evil conduct⁠—and has just seen the woman whom he had most cruelly wronged, but whom he now proposed to do right by, suddenly drowned. They look as though you hadn’t a care in the world, don’t they?”

“Well, they were just group pictures. I couldn’t very well keep out of them.”

“But this one in the water here. Didn’t it trouble you the least bit to go in the water the second or third day after Roberta Alden had sunk to the bottom of Big Bittern, and especially when you had experienced such an inspiring change of heart in regard to her?”

“I didn’t want anyone to know I had been up there with her.”

“We know all about that. But how about this banjo picture here. Look at this!” And he held it out. “Very gay, isn’t it?” he snarled. And now Clyde, dubious and frightened, replied:

“But I wasn’t enjoying myself just the same!”

“Not when you were playing the banjo here? Not when you were playing golf and tennis with your friends the very next day after her death? Not when you were buying and eating thirteen-dollar lunches? Not when you were with Miss X again, and where you yourself testified that you preferred to be?”

Mason’s manner was snarling, punitive, sinister, bitterly sarcastic.

“Well, not just then, anyhow⁠—no, sir.”

“What do you mean⁠—‘not just then’? Weren’t you where you wanted to be?”

“Well, in one way I was⁠—certainly,” replied Clyde, thinking of what Sondra would think when she read this, as unquestionably she would. Quite everything of all this was being published in the papers every day. He could not deny that he was with her and that he wanted to be with her. At the same time he had not been happy. How miserably unhappy he had been, enmeshed in that shameful and brutal plot! But now he must explain in some way so that Sondra, when she should read it, and this jury, would understand. And so now he added, while he swallowed with his dry throat and licked his lips with his dry tongue: “But I was sorry about Miss Alden just the same. I couldn’t be happy then⁠—I couldn’t be. I was just trying to make people think that I hadn’t had anything to do with her going up there⁠—that’s all. I couldn’t see that there was any better way to do. I didn’t want to be arrested for what I hadn’t done.”

“Don’t you know that is false! Don’t you know you are lying!” shouted Mason, as though to the whole world, and the fire and the fury of his unbelief and contempt was sufficient to convince the jury, as well as the spectators, that Clyde was the most unmitigated of liars. “You heard the testimony of Rufus Martin, the second cook up there at Bear Lake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You heard him swear that he saw you and Miss X at a certain point overlooking Bear Lake and that she was in your arms and that you were kissing her. Was that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that exactly four days after you had left Roberta Alden under the waters of Big Bittern. Were you afraid of being arrested then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even when you were kissing her and holding her in your arms?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde drearily and hopelessly.

“Well, of all things!” bawled Mason. “Could you imagine such stuff being whimpered before a jury, if you hadn’t heard it with your own ears? Do you really sit there and swear to this jury that you could bill and coo with one deceived girl in your arms and a second one in a lake a hundred miles away, and yet be miserable because of what you were doing?”

“Just the same,