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

as well as the story she had told⁠—a story which in no way incriminated Clyde or herself, and which, therefore, Mason decided might best be ignored, for the present, anyhow.

And (5), via these same enthusiastic efforts, there rose to the surface the particular hat salesman in Utica who had sold Clyde the hat. For Burton Burleigh being interviewed while in Utica, and his picture published along with one of Clyde, this salesman chanced to see it and recalling him at once made haste to communicate with Mason, with the result that his testimony, properly typewritten and sworn to, was carried away by Mason.

And, in addition, the country girl who had been on the steamer Cygnus and who had noticed Clyde, wrote Mason that she remembered him wearing a straw hat, also his leaving the boat at Sharon, a bit of evidence which most fully confirmed that of the captain of the boat and caused Mason to feel that Providence or Fate was working with him. And last, but most important of all to him, there came a communication from a woman residing in Bedford, Pennsylvania, who announced that during the week of July third to tenth, she and her husband had been camping on the east shore of Big Bittern, near the southern end of the lake. And while rowing on the lake on the afternoon of July eighth, at about six o’clock, she had heard a cry which sounded like that of a woman or girl in distress⁠—a plaintive, mournful cry. It was very faint and had seemed to come from beyond the island which was to the south and west of the bay in which they were fishing.

Mason now proposed to remain absolutely silent regarding this information, and that about the camera and films and the data regarding Clyde’s offense in Kansas City, until nearer the day of trial, or during the trial itself, when it would be impossible for the defense to attempt either to refute or ameliorate it in any way.

As for Belknap and Jephson, apart from drilling Clyde in the matter of his general denial based on his change of heart once he had arrived at Grass Lake, and the explanation of the two hats and the bag, they could not see that there was much to do. True, there was the suit thrown in Fourth Lake near the Cranstons’, but after much trolling on the part of a seemingly casual fisherman, that was brought up, cleaned and pressed, and now hung in a locked closet in the Belknap and Jephson office. Also, there was the camera at Big Bittern, dived for but never found by them⁠—a circumstance which led Jephson to conclude that Mason must have it, and so caused him to decide that he would refer to it at the earliest possible opportunity at the trial. But as for Clyde striking her with it, even accidentally, well, it was decided at that time at least, to contend that he had not⁠—although after exhuming Roberta’s body at Biltz it had been found that the marks on her face, even at this date, did correspond in some degree to the size and shape of the camera.

For, in the first place, they were exceedingly dubious of Clyde as a witness. Would he or would he not, in telling of how it all happened, be sufficiently direct or forceful and sincere to convince any jury that he had so struck her without intending to strike her? For on that, marks or no marks, would depend whether the jury was going to believe him. And if it did not believe that he struck her accidentally, then a verdict of guilty, of course.

And so they prepared to await the coming of the trial, only working betimes and in so far as they dared, to obtain testimony or evidence as to Clyde’s previous good character, but being blocked to a degree by the fact that in Lycurgus, while pretending to be a model youth outwardly, he had privately been conducting himself otherwise, and that in Kansas City his first commercial efforts had resulted in such a scandal.

However, one of the most difficult matters in connection with Clyde and his incarceration here, as Belknap and Jephson as well as the prosecution saw it, was the fact that thus far not one single member of his own or his uncle’s family had come forward to champion him. And to no one save Belknap and Jephson had he admitted where his parents were. Yet would it not be necessary, as both Belknap and Jephson argued from time to time, if any case at all were to be made out for him, to have his mother or father, or at least a sister or a brother, come forward to say a good word for him? Otherwise, Clyde might appear to be a pariah, one who had been from the first a drifter and a waster and was now purposely being avoided by all who knew him.

For this reason, at their conference with Darrah Brookhart they had inquired after Clyde’s parents and had learned that in so far as the Griffiths of Lycurgus were concerned, there lay a deep objection to bringing on any member of this western branch of the family. There was, as he explained, a great social gap between them, which it would not please the Lycurgus Griffiths to have exploited here. Besides, who could say but that once Clyde’s parents were notified or discovered by the yellow press, they might not lend themselves to exploitation. Both Samuel and Gilbert Griffiths, as Brookhart now informed Belknap, had suggested that it was best, if Clyde did not object, to keeping his immediate relatives in the background. In fact, on this, in some measure at least, was likely to depend the extent of their financial aid to Clyde.

Clyde was in accord with this wish of the Griffiths, although no one who talked with him sufficiently or heard him express how sorry he was