An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [344]
And when at last these two were ready to go, he was sorry. For with them near him, planning and plotting in regard to himself, he felt so much safer, stronger, more hopeful, more certain of being free, maybe, at some future date.
Chapter 16
The result of all this, however, was that it was finally decided that perhaps the easiest and safest defense that could be made, assuming that the Griffiths family of Lycurgus would submit to it, would be that of insanity or “brain storm”—a temporary aberration due to love and an illusion of grandeur aroused in Clyde by Sondra Finchley and the threatened disruption by Roberta of all his dreams and plans. But after consultation with Catchuman and Darrah Brookhart at Lycurgus, and these in turn conferring with Samuel and Gilbert Griffiths, it was determined that this would not do. For to establish insanity or “brain storm” would require previous evidence or testimony to the effect that Clyde was of none too sound mind, erratic his whole life long, and with certain specific instances tending to demonstrate how really peculiar he was— relatives (among them the Griffiths of Lycurgus themselves, perhaps), coming on to swear to it—a line of evidence, which, requiring as it would, outright lying and perjury on the part of many as well as reflecting on the Griffiths’ blood and brain, was sufficient to alienate both Samuel and Gilbert to the extent that they would have none of it. And so Brookhart was compelled to assure Belknap that this line of defense would have to be abandoned.
Such being the case, both Belknap and Jephson were once more compelled to sit down and consider. For any other defense which either could think of now seemed positively hopeless.
“I want to tell you one thing!” observed the sturdy Jephson, after thumbing through the letters of both Roberta and Sondra again. “These letters of this Alden girl are the toughest things we’re going to have to face. They’re likely to make any jury cry if they’re read right, and then to introduce those letters from that other girl on top of these would be fatal. It will be better, I think, if we do not mention hers at all, unless he does. It will only make it look as though he had killed that Alden girl to get rid of her. Mason couldn’t want anything better, as I see it.” And with this Belknap agreed most heartily.
At the same time, some plan must be devised immediately. And so, out of these various conferences, it was finally deduced by Jephson, who saw a great opportunity for himself in this matter, that the safest possible defense that could be made, and one to which Clyde’s own suspicious and most peculiar actions would most exactly fit, would be that he had never contemplated murder. On the contrary, being a moral if not a physical coward, as his own story seemed to suggest, and in terror of being exposed and driven out of Lycurgus and of the heart of Sondra, and never as yet having told Roberta of Sondra and thinking that knowledge of this great love for her (Sondra) might influence Roberta to wish to be rid of him, he had hastily and without any worse plan in mind, decided to persuade Roberta to accompany him to any near-by resort but not especially Grass Lake or Big Bittern, in order to tell her all this and so win his freedom—yet not without offering to pay her expenses as nearly as he could during her very trying period.
“All well and good,” commented Belknap. “But that involves his refusing to marry her, doesn’t it? And what jury is going to sympathize with him for that or believe that he didn’t want to kill her?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” replied Jephson, a little testily. “So far it does. Sure. But you haven’t heard me to the end yet. I said I had a plan.”
“All right, then what is it?” replied Belknap most interested.
“Well, I’ll tell you—my plan’s this—to leave all the facts just as they are, and just as he tells them, and just as Mason has discussed them so far, except, of course, his striking her—and then explain them—the letters, the wounds, the bag, the two hats, everything—not deny them in any way.”
And here he paused and ran his long, thin, freckled hands eagerly through his light hair and looked across the grass of the public square to the jail where Clyde was, then toward Belknap again.