An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

as a material witness to be lodged in the county jail at Bridgeburg. And then taking him, along with Burton, the sheriff and his deputies, to Bridgeburg, where he was promptly locked up.

And once there, Clyde throwing himself on the iron cot and holding his head in a kind of agony of despair. It was three o’clock in the morning, and just outside the jail as they approached he had seen a crowd of at least five hundred⁠—noisy, jeering, threatening. For had not the news been forwarded that because of his desire to marry a rich girl he had most brutally assaulted and murdered a young and charming working-girl whose only fault had been that she loved him too well. There had been hard and threatening cries of “There he is, the dirty bastard! You’ll swing for this yet, you young devil, wait and see!” This from a young woodsman not unlike Swenk in type⁠—a hard, destroying look in his fierce young eyes, leaning out from the crowd. And worse, a waspish type of small-town slum girl, dressed in a gingham dress, who in the dim light of the arcs, had leaned forward to cry: “Lookit, the dirty little sneak⁠—the murderer! You thought you’d get away with it, didnja?”

And Clyde, crowding closer to Sheriff Slack, and thinking: Why, they actually think I did kill her! And they may even lynch me! But so weary and confused and debased and miserable that at the sight of the outer steel jail door swinging open to receive him, he actually gave vent to a sigh of relief because of the protection it afforded.

But once in his cell, suffering none the less without cessation the long night through, from thoughts⁠—thoughts concerning all that had just gone. Sondra! the Griffiths! Bertine. All those people in Lycurgus when they should hear in the morning. His mother eventually, everybody. Where was Sondra now? For Mason had told her, of course, and all those others, when he had gone back to secure his things. And they knew him now for what he was⁠—a plotter of murder! Only, only, if somebody could only know how it had all come about! If Sondra, his mother, anyone, could truly see!

Perhaps if he were to explain all to this man Mason now, before it all went any further, exactly how it all had happened. But that meant a true explanation as to his plot, his real original intent, that camera, his swimming away. That unintended blow⁠—(and who was going to believe him as to that)⁠—his hiding the tripod afterwards. Besides once all that was known would he not be done for just the same in connection with Sondra, the Griffiths⁠—everybody. And very likely prosecuted and executed for murder just the same. Oh, heavens⁠—murder. And to be tried for that now; this terrible crime against her proved. They would electrocute him just the same⁠—wouldn’t they? And then the full horror of that coming upon him⁠—death, possibly⁠—and for murder⁠—he sat there quite still. Death! God! If only he had not left those letters written him by Roberta and his mother in his room there at Mrs. Peyton’s. If only he had removed his trunk to another room, say, before he left. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Yet as instantly thinking, might not that have been a mistake, too, being seemingly a suspicious thing to have done then? But how came they to know where he was from and what his name was? Then, as instantly returning in mind to the letters in the trunk. For, as he now recalled, in one of those letters from his mother she had mentioned that affair in Kansas City, and Mason would come to know of that. If only he had destroyed them. Roberta’s, his mother’s, all! Why hadn’t he? But not being able to answer why⁠—just an insane desire to keep things maybe⁠—anything that related to him⁠—a kindness, a tenderness toward him. If only he had not worn that second straw hat⁠—had not met those three men in the woods! God! He might have known they would be able to trace him in some way. If only he had gone on in that wood at Bear Lake, taking his suit case and Sondra’s letters with him. Perhaps, perhaps, who knows, in Boston, or New York, or somewhere he might have hidden away.

Unstrung and agonized, he was unable to sleep at all, but walked back and forth, or sat on the side of the hard and strange cot, thinking, thinking. And at dawn, a bony, aged, rheumy jailer, in a baggy, worn, blue uniform, bearing a black, iron tray, on which was a tinful of coffee, some bread and a piece of ham with one egg. And looking curiously and yet somehow indifferently at Clyde, while he forced it through an aperture only wide and high enough for its admission, though Clyde wanted nothing at all.

And then later Kraut and Sissel and Swenk, and eventually the sheriff himself, each coming separately, to look in and say: “Well, Griffiths, how are you this morning?” or, “Hello, anything we can do for you?”, while their eyes showed the astonishment, disgust, suspicion or horror with which his assumed crime had filled them. Yet, even in the face of that, having one type of interest and even sycophantic pride in his presence here. For was he not a Griffiths⁠—a member of the well-known social group of the big central cities to the south of here. Also the same to them, as well as to the enormously fascinated public outside, as a trapped and captured animal, taken in their legal net by their own superlative skill and now held as witness to it? And with the newspapers and people certain to talk, enormous publicity for them⁠—their pictures in the papers as well as his, their names persistently linked with his.

And Clyde, looking at them between the bars, attempted to be civil, since he was now in their hands and they could do with