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

February, especially after the defense has done its best to scatter them? No, sir! I will not agree to it. But, if within ten days or two weeks from now even, they can bring me something that will so much as make it look as though even some of the charges I have made are not true, I’ll be perfectly willing to go before the presiding judge with them, and if they can show him any evidence they have or hope to have, or that there are any distant known witnesses to be secured who can help prove this fellow’s innocence, why, then, well and good. I’ll be willing to ask the judge to grant them as much time as he may see fit, even if it throws the trial over until I am out of office. But if the trial comes up while I’m here, as I honestly hope it will, I’ll prosecute it to the best of my ability, not because I’m looking for an office of any kind but because I am now the district attorney and it is my duty to do so. And as for my being in politics, well, Mr. Belknap is in politics, isn’t he? He ran against me the last time, and I hear he desires to run again.”

Accordingly he proceeded to Albany further to impress upon the governor the very great need of an immediate special term of the Court so that Clyde might be indicted. And the Governor, hearing the personal arguments of both Mason and Belknap, decided in favor of Mason, on the ground that the granting of a special term did not militate against any necessary delay of the trial of the case, since nothing which the defense as yet had to offer seemed to indicate that the calling of a special term was likely in any way to prevent it from obtaining as much time wherein to try the case as needed. Besides, it would be the business of the Supreme Court justice appointed to consider such arguments⁠—not himself. And accordingly, a special term of the Supreme Court was ordered, with one Justice Frederick Oberwaltzer of the Eleventh Judicial District designated to preside. And when Mason appeared before him with the request that he fix the date of the Special Grand Jury by which Clyde might be indicted, this was set for August fifth.

And then that body sitting, it was no least trouble for Mason to have Clyde indicted.

And thereafter the best that Belknap and Jephson could do was to appear before Oberwaltzer, a Democrat, who owed his appointment to a previous governor, to argue for a change of venue, on the ground that by no possible stretch of the imagination could any twelve men residing in Cataraqui County be found who, owing to the public and private statements of Mason, were not already vitally opposed to Clyde and so convinced of his guilt that before ever such a jury could be addressed by a defense, he would be convicted.

“But where are you going then?” inquired Justice Oberwaltzer, who was impartial enough. “The same material has been published everywhere.”

“But, your Honor, this crime which the district attorney here has been so busy in magnifying⁠—” (a long and heated objection on the part of Mason).

“But we contend just the same,” continued Belknap, “that the public has been unduly stirred and deluded. You can’t get twelve men now who will try this man fairly.”

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Mason, angrily. “Mere twaddle! Why, the newspapers themselves have gathered and published more evidence than I have. It’s the publicly discovered facts in this case that have aroused prejudice, if any has been aroused. But no more than would be aroused anywhere, I maintain. Besides, if this case is to be transferred to a distant county when the majority of the witnesses are right here, this county is going to be saddled with an enormous expense, which it cannot afford and which the facts do not warrant.”

Justice Oberwaltzer, who was of a sober and moral turn, a slow and meticulous man inclined to favor conservative procedure in all things, was inclined to agree. And after five days, in which he did not more than muse idly upon the matter, he decided to deny the motion. If he were wrong, there was the Appellate Division to which the defense could resort. As for stays, having fixed the date of the trial for October fifteenth (ample time, as he judged, for the defense to prepare its case), he adjourned for the remainder of the summer to his cottage on Blue Mountain Lake, where both the prosecution and the defense, should any knotty or locally insoluble legal complication arise, would be able to find him and have his personal attention.

But with the entry of the Messrs. Belknap and Jephson into the case, Mason found it advisable to redouble his efforts to make positive, in so far as it were possible, the conviction of Clyde. He feared the young Jephson as much as he did Belknap. And for that reason, taking with him Burton Burleigh and Earl Newcomb, he now revisited Lycurgus, where among other things he was able to discover (1) where Clyde had purchased the camera; (2) that three days before his departure for Big Bittern he had said to Mrs. Peyton that he was thinking of taking his camera with him and that he must get some films for it; (3) that there was a haberdasher by the name of Orrin Short who had known Clyde well and that but four months before Clyde had applied to him for advice in connection with a factory hand’s pregnant wife⁠—also (and this in great confidence to Burton Burleigh, who had unearthed him) that he had recommended to Clyde a certain Dr. Glenn, near Gloversville; (4) Dr. Glenn himself being sought and pictures of Clyde and Roberta being submitted, he was able to identify Roberta, although not Clyde, and to describe the state of mind in which she had approached him,