An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [411]
“Yes, sir.”
“You heard him swear that he saw you and Miss X at a certain point overlooking Bear Lake and that she was in your arms and that you were kissing her. Was that true?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that exactly four days after you had left Roberta Alden under the waters of Big Bittern. Were you afraid of being arrested then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even when you were kissing her and holding her in your arms?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde drearily and hopelessly.
“Well, of all things!” bawled Mason. “Could you imagine such stuff being whimpered before a jury, if you hadn’t heard it with your own ears? Do you really sit there and swear to this jury that you could bill and coo with one deceived girl in your arms and a second one in a lake a hundred miles away, and yet be miserable because of what you were doing?”
“Just the same, that’s the way it was,” replied Clyde.
“Excellent! Incomparable,” shouted Mason.
And here he wearily and sighfully drew forth his large white handkerchief once more and surveying the courtroom at large proceeded to mop his face as much as to say: Well, this is a task indeed, then continuing with more force than ever:
“Griffiths, only yesterday on the witness stand you swore that you personally had no plan to go to Big Bittern when you left Lycurgus.”
“No, sir, I hadn’t.”
“But when you two got in that room at the Renfrew House in Utica and you saw how tired she looked, it was you that suggested that a vacation of some kind—a little one—something within the range of your joint purses at the time—would be good for her. Wasn’t that the way of it?”
“Yes, sir. That was the way of it,” replied Clyde.
“But up to that time you hadn’t even thought of the Adirondacks specifically.”
“Well, no sir—no particular lake, that is. I did think we might go to some summer place maybe—they’re mostly lakes around there— but not to any particular one that I knew of.”
“I see. And after you suggested it, it was she that said that you had better get some folders or maps, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then it was that you went downstairs and got them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“At the Renfrew House in Utica?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not anywhere else by any chance?”
“No, sir.”
“And afterwards, in looking over those maps, you saw Grass Lake and Big Bittern and decided to go up that way. Was that the way of it?”
“Yes, we did,” lied Clyde, most nervously, wishing now that he had not testified that it was in the Renfrew House that he had secured the folders. There might be some trap here again.
“You and Miss Alden?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you picked on Grass Lake as being the best because it was the cheapest. Wasn’t that the way of it?”
“Yes, sir. That was the way.”
“I see. And now do you remember these?” he added, reaching over and taking from his table a series of folders all properly identified as part and parcel of the contents of Clyde’s bag at Bear Lake at the time he was arrested and which he now placed in Clyde’s hands. “Look them over. Are those the folders I found in your bag at Bear Lake?”
“Well, they look like the ones I had there.”
“Are these the ones you found in the rack at the Renfrew House and took upstairs to show Miss Alden?”
Not a little terrified by the care with which this matter of folders was now being gone into by Mason, Clyde opened them and turned them over. Even now, because the label of the Lycurgus House (“Compliments of Lycurgus House, Lycurgus, N. Y.”) was stamped in red very much like the printed red lettering on the rest of the folder, he failed to notice it at first. He turned and turned them over, and then having decided that there was no trap here, replied:
“Yes, I think these are the ones.”
“Well, now,” went on Mason, slyly, “in which one of these was it that you found that notice of Grass Lake Inn and the rate they charged up there? Wasn’t it in this one?” And here he returned the identical stamped folder, on one page of which—and the same indicated by Mason’s left forefinger—was the exact notice to which Clyde had called Roberta