An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [323]
“Oh, I see. Very convenient, I must say.” He was beginning to believe that he had a very slippery person to deal with indeed— that he must think of his traps more shrewdly, and at the same time determining to summon the Cranstons and every member of the Bear Lake party in order to discover, whether any recalled Clyde not wearing a straw hat on his arrival this time, also whether he had left a straw hat the time before. He was lying, of course, and he would catch him.
And so no real peace for Clyde at any time between there and Bridgeburg and the county jail. For however much he might refuse to answer, still Mason was forever jumping at him with such questions as: Why was it if all you wanted to do was to eat lunch on shore that you had to row all the way down to that extreme south end of the lake when it isn’t nearly so attractive there as it is at other points? And: Where was it that you spent the rest of that afternoon—surely not just there? And then, jumping back to Sondra’s letters discovered in his bag. How long had he known her? Was he as much in love with her as she appeared to be with him? Wasn’t it because of her promise to marry him in the fall that he had decided to kill Miss Alden?
But while Clyde vehemently troubled to deny this last charge, still for the most part he gazed silently and miserably before him with his tortured and miserable eyes.
And then a most wretched night spent in the garret of a farmhouse at the west end of the lake, and on a pallet on the floor, while Sissel, Swenk and Kraut, gun in hand, in turn kept watch over him, and Mason and the sheriff and the others slept below stairs. And some natives, because of information distributed somehow, coming toward morning to inquire: “We hear the feller that killed the girl over to Big Bittern is here—is that right?” And then waiting to see them off at dawn in the Fords secured by Mason.
And again at Little Fish Inlet as well as Three Mile Bay, actual crowds—farmers, storekeepers, summer residents, woodsmen, children—all gathered because of word telephoned on ahead apparently. And at the latter place, Burleigh, Heit and Newcomb, who, because of previously telephoned information, had brought before one Gabriel Gregg, a most lanky and crusty and meticulous justice of the peace, all of the individuals from Big Bittern necessary to identify him fully. And now Mason, before this local justice, charging Clyde with the death of Roberta and having him properly and legally held 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.