An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [412]
“Don’t you know that it is?” insisted Mason, darkly and dourly. “Can’t you tell from reading that item there whether it is or not?”
“Well, it looks like it,” replied Clyde, evasively after examining the item which had inclined him toward Grass Lake in the first place. “I suppose maybe it is.”
“You suppose! You suppose! Getting a little more cautious now that we’re getting down to something practical. Well, just look at that map there again and tell me what you see. Tell me if you don’t see a road marked as leading south from Grass Lake.”
“Yes,” replied Clyde, a little sullenly and bitterly after a time, so flayed and bruised was he by this man who was so determined to harry him to his grave. He fingered the map and pretended to look as directed, but was seeing only all that he had seen long before there in Lycurgus, so shortly before he departed for Fonda to meet Roberta. And now here it was being used against him.
“And where does it run, please? Do you mind telling the jury where it runs—from where to where?”
And Clyde, nervous and fearful and physically very much reduced, now replied: “Well, it runs from Grass Lake to Three Mile Bay.”
“And to what or near what other places in between?” continued Mason, looking over his shoulder.
“Gun Lodge. That’s all.”
“What about Big Bittern? Doesn’t it run near that when it gets to the south of it?”
“Yes, sir, it does here.”
“Ever notice or study that map before you went to Grass Lake from Utica?” persisted Mason, tensely and, forcefully.
“No, sir—I did not.”
“Never knew the road was on there?”
“Well, I may have seen it,” replied Clyde, “but if so I didn’t pay any attention to it.”
“And, of course, by no possible chance could you have seen or studied this folder and that road before you left Utica?”
“No, sir. I never saw it before.”
“I see. You’re absolutely positive as to that?”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“Well then, explain to me, or to this jury, if you can, and under your solemn oath which you respect so much, how it comes that this particular folder chances to be marked, ‘Compliments of the Lycurgus House, Lycurgus, N. Y.’” And here he folded the folder and presenting the back, showed Clyde the thin red stamp in between the other red lettering. And Clyde, noting it, gazed as one in a trance. His ultra-pale face now blanched gray again, his long thin fingers opened and shut, the red and swollen and weary lids of his eyes blinked and blinked to break the strain of the damning fact before him.
“I don’t know,” he said, a little weakly, after a time. “It must have been in the Renfrew House rack.”
“Oh, must it? And if I bring two witnesses here to swear that on July third—three days before you left Lycurgus for Fonda—you were seen by them to enter the Lycurgus House and take four or five folders from the rack there, will you still say that it ‘musta been in the rack at the Renfrew House’ on July sixth?” As he said this, Mason paused and looked triumphantly about as much as to say: There, answer that if you can! and Clyde, shaken and stiff and breathless for the time being was compelled to wait at least fifteen seconds before he was able sufficiently to control his nerves and voice in order to reply: “Well, it musta been. I didn’t get it in Lycurgus.”
“Very good. But in the meantime we’ll just let these gentlemen here look at this,” and he now turned the folder over to the foreman of the jury, who in turn passed it to the juryman next to him, and so on, the while a distinct whisper and buzz passed over the entire courtroom.