An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [297]
“What about this, chief? Will you take it away or open it here?”
“I think,” said Mason solemnly, “we’d better open that right here, Faunce. I’ll send for it afterwards, but I want to see what’s in it now.” And at once the detective extracted from his pocket a heavy chisel, while he began looking around for a hammer.
“It isn’t very strong,” he said, “I think I can kick it open if you say so.”
At this point, Mrs. Peyton, most astounded by these developments, and anxious to avoid any such rough procedure, exclaimed: “You can have a hammer if you wish, but why not wait and send for a key man? Why, I never heard of such a thing in all my life.”
However, the detective having secured the hammer and jarred the lock loose, there lay revealed in a small top crate various unimportant odds and ends of Clyde’s wardrobe—socks, collars, ties, a muffler, suspenders, a discarded sweater, a pair of not too good high-top winter shoes, a cigarette holder, a red lacquer ash tray, and a pair of skates. But in addition among these, in the corner in one compact bundle, the final fifteen letters of Roberta, written him from Biltz, together with a small picture of herself given him the year before, as well as another small bundle consisting of all the notes and invitations written him by Sondra up to the time she had departed for Pine Point, The letters written from there Clyde had taken with him—laid next his heart. And, even more incriminating, a third bundle, consisting of eleven letters from his mother, the first two addressed to Harry Tenet, care of general delivery, Chicago—a most suspicious circumstance on the surface—whereas the others of the bundle were addressed to Clyde Griffiths, not only care of the Union League, Chicago, but to Lycurgus.
Without waiting further to see what else the trunk might contain, the district attorney began opening these and reading—first three from Roberta, after which the reason she had gone to Biltz was made perfectly plain—then the three first letters from his mother, on most pathetically commonplace stationery, as he could see, hinting at the folly of the life as well as the nature of the accident that had driven him from Kansas City, and at the same time advising him most solicitously and tenderly as to the proper path for his feet in the future, the general effect of which was to convey to a man of Mason’s repressed temperament and limited social experience the impression that from the very beginning this individual had been of a loose, wayward and errant character.
At the same time, and to his surprise, he now learned that except for what his rich uncle might have done for him here, Clyde was obviously of a poor, as well as highly religious, branch of the Griffiths family, and while ordinarily this might have influenced him in Clyde’s favor a little, still now, in view of the notes of Sondra, as well as the pathetic letters of Roberta and his mother’s reference to some earlier crime in Kansas City, he was convinced that not only was Clyde of such a disposition as could plot such a crime but also one who could execute it in cold blood. That crime in Kansas City. He must wire the district attorney there for particulars.
And with this thought in mind, he now scanned more briefly but none the less sharply and critically the various notes or invitations or love messages from Sondra, all on heavily perfumed and monogrammed stationery, which grew more and more friendly and intimate as the correspondence progressed, until toward the last they invariably began: