An American Tragedy (112 page)

“And how long did you work there?”

“A little over a year.”

“And why did you leave?”

“Well, it was on account of an accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

And here Clyde, previously prepared and drilled as to all this plunged into the details which led up to and included the death of the little girl and his flight—which Mason, true enough, had been intending to bring up. But, now, as he listened to all this, he merely shook his head and grunted ironically, “He’d better go into all that,” he commented. And Jephson, sensing the import of what he was doing—how most likely he was, as he would have phrased it, “spiking” one of Mr. Mason’s best guns, continued with:

“How old were you then, Clyde, did you say?”

“Between seventeen and eighteen.”

“And do you mean to tell me,” he continued, after he had finished with all of the questions he could think of in connection with all this, “that you didn’t know that you might have gone back there, since you were not the one who took the car, and after explaining it all, been paroled in the custody of your parents?”

“Object!” shouted Mason. “There’s no evidence here to show that he could have returned to Kansas City and been paroled in the custody of his parents.”

“Objection sustained!” boomed the judge from his high throne. “The defense will please confine itself a little more closely to the letter of the testimony.”

“Exception,” noted Belknap, from his seat.

“No, sir. I didn’t know that,” replied Clyde, just the same.

“Anyhow was that the reason after you got away that you changed your name to Tenet as you told me?” continued Jephson.

“Yes, sir.”

“By the way, just where did you get that name of Tenet, Clyde?”

“It was the name of a boy I used to play with in Quincy.”

“Was he a good boy?”

“Objection!” called Mason, from his chair. “Incompetent, immaterial, irrelevant.”

“Oh, he might have associated with a good boy in spite of what you would like to have the jury believe, and in that sense it is very relevant,” sneered Jephson.

“Objection sustained!” boomed Justice Oberwaltzer.

“But didn’t it occur to you at the time that he might object or that you might be doing him an injustice in using his name to cover the identity of a fellow who was running away?”

“No, sir—I thought there were lots of Tenets.”

An indulgent smile might have been expected at this point, but so antagonistic and bitter was the general public toward Clyde that such levity was out of the question in this courtroom.

“Now listen, Clyde,” continued Jephson, having, as he had just seen, failed to soften the mood of the throng, “you cared for your mother, did you?—or didn’t you?”

Objection and argument finally ending in the question being allowed.

“Yes, sir, certainly I cared for her,” replied Clyde—but after a slight hesitancy which was noticeable—a tightening of the throat and a swelling and sinking of the chest as he exhaled and inhaled.

“Much?”

“Yes, sir—much.” He didn’t venture to look at any one now.

“Hadn’t she always done as much as she could for you, in her way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, Clyde, how was it, after all that, and even though that dreadful accident had occurred, you could run away and stay away so long without so much as one word to tell her that you were by no means as guilty as you seemed and that she shouldn’t worry because you were working and trying to be a good boy again?”

“But I did write her—only I didn’t sign my name.”

“I see. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. I sent her a little money. Ten dollars once.”

“But you didn’t think of going back at all?”

“No, sir. I was afraid that if I went back they might arrest me.”

“In other words,” and here Jephson emphasized this with great clearness, “you were a moral and mental coward, as Mr. Belknap, my colleague, said.”

“I object to this interpretation of this defendant’s testimony for the benefit of the jury!” interrupted Mason.

“This defendant’s testimony really needs no interpretation. It is very plain and honest, as any one can see,” quickly interjected Jephson.

“Objection sustained!” called the judge. “Proceed. Proceed.”

“And it was because you were a moral and mental coward as I see it, Clyde—not that I am condemning you for anything that you cannot help. (After all, you didn’t make yourself, did you?)”

But this was too much, and the judge here cautioned him to use more discretion in framing his future questions.

“Then you went about in Alton, Peoria, Bloomington, Milwaukee, and Chicago—hiding away in small rooms in back streets and working as a dishwasher or soda fountain man, or a driver, and changing your name to Tenet when you really might have gone back to Kansas City and resumed your old place?” continued Jephson.

“I object! I object!” yelled Mason. “There is no evidence here to show that he could have gone there and resumed his old place.”

“Objection sustained,” ruled Oberwaltzer, although at the time in Jephson’s pocket was a letter from Francis X. Squires, formerly captain of the bell-hops of the Green-Davidson at the time Clyde was there, in which he explained that apart from the one incident in connection with the purloined automobile, he knew nothing derogatory to Clyde; and that always previously, he had found him prompt, honest, willing, alert and well-mannered. Also that at the time the accident occurred, he himself had been satisfied that Clyde could have been little else than one of those led and that if he had returned and properly explained matters he would have been reinstated. It was irrelevant.

Thereafter followed Clyde’s story of how, having fled from the difficulties threatening him in Kansas City and having wandered here and there for two years, he had finally obtained a place in Chicago as a driver and later as a bell-boy at the Union League, and also how while still employed at the first of these places he had written his mother and later at her request was about to write his uncle, when, accidentally meeting him at the Union League, he was invited by him to come to Lycurgus. And thereupon, in their natural order, followed all of the details, of how he had gone to work, been promoted and instructed by his cousin and the foreman as to the various rules, and then later how he had met Roberta and still later Miss X. But in between came all the details as to how and why he had courted Roberta Alden, and how and why, having once secured her love he felt and thought himself content—but how the arrival of Miss X, and her overpowering fascination for him, had served completely to change all his notions in regard to Roberta, and although he still admired her, caused him to feel that never again as before could he desire to marry her.

But Jephson, anxious to divert the attention of the jury from the fact that Clyde was so very fickle—a fact too trying to be so speedily introduced into the case—at once interposed with:

“Clyde! You really loved Roberta Alden at first, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, you must have known, or at least you gathered from her actions, from the first, didn’t you, that she was a perfectly good and innocent and religious girl.”

“Yes, sir, that’s how I felt about her,” replied Clyde, repeating what he had been told to say.

“Well, then, just roughly now, without going into detail, do you suppose you could explain to yourself and this jury how and why and where and when those changes came about which led to that relationship which we all of us” (and here he looked boldly and wisely and coldly out over the audience and then afterwards upon the jurors) “deplore. How was it, if you thought so highly of her at first that you could so soon afterwards descend to this evil relationship? Didn’t you know that all men, and all women also, view it as wrong, and outside of marriage unforgivable—a statutory crime?”

The boldness and ironic sting of this was sufficient to cause at first a hush, later a slight nervous tremor on the part of the audience which, Mason as well as Justice Oberwaltzer noting, caused both to frown apprehensively. Why, this brazen young cynic! How dared he, via innuendo and in the guise of serious questioning, intrude such a thought as this, which by implication at least picked at the very foundations of society—religious and moral! At the same time there he was, standing boldly and leoninely, the while Clyde replied:

“Yes, sir, I suppose I did—certainly—but I didn’t try to seduce her at first or at any time, really. I was in love with her.”

“You were in love with her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very much?”

“Very much.”

“And was she as much in love with you at that time?”

“Yes, sir, she was.”

“From the very first?”

“From the very first.”

“She told you so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At the time she left the Newtons—you have heard all the testimony here in regard to that—did you induce or seek to induce her in any way, by any trick or agreement, to leave there?”

“No, sir, I didn’t. She wanted to leave there of her own accord. She wanted me to help her find a place.”

“She wanted you to help her find a place?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And just why?”

“Because she didn’t know the city very well and she thought maybe I could tell her where there was a nice room she could get—one that she could afford.”

“And did you tell her about the room she took at the Gilpins’?”

“No, sir, I didn’t. I never told her about any room. She found it herself.” (This was the exact answer he had memorized.)

“But why didn’t you help her?”

“Because I was busy, days and most evenings. And besides I thought she knew better what she wanted than I did—the kind of people and all.”

“Did you personally ever see the Gilpin place before she went there?”

“No, sir.”

“Ever have any discussion with her before she moved there as to the kind of a room she was to take—its position as regards to entrance, exit, privacy, or anything of that sort?”

“No, sir, I never did.”

“Never insisted, for instance, that she take a certain type of room which you could slip in and out of at night or by day without being seen?”

“I never did. Besides, no one could very well slip in or out of that house without being seen.”

“And why not?”

“Because the door to her room was right next to the door to the general front entrance where everybody went in and out and anybody that was around could see.” That was another answer he had memorized.

“But you slipped in and out, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, sir—that is, we both decided from the first that the less we were seen together anywhere, the better.”

“On account of that factory rule?”

“Yes, sir—on account of that factory rule.”

And then the story of his various difficulties with Roberta, due to Miss X coming into his life.

“Now, Clyde, we will have to go into the matter of this Miss X a little. Because of an agreement between the defense and the prosecution which you gentlemen of the jury fully understand, we can only touch on this incidentally, since it all concerns an entirely innocent person whose real name can be of no service here anyhow. But some of the facts must be touched upon, although we will deal with them as light as possible, as much for the sake of the innocent living as the worthy dead. And I am sure Miss Alden would have it so if she were alive. But now in regard to Miss X,” he continued, turning to Clyde, “it is already agreed by both sides that you met her in Lycurgus some time in November or December of last year. That is correct, is it not?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct,” replied Clyde, sadly.

“And that at once you fell very much in love with her?”

“Yes, sir. That’s true.”

“She was rich?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Beautiful?”

“I believe it is admitted by all that she is,” he said to the court in general without requiring or anticipating a reply from Clyde, yet the latter, so thoroughly drilled had he been, now replied: “Yes, sir.”

“Had you two—yourself and Miss Alden, I mean—at that time when you first met Miss X already established that illicit relationship referred to?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, now, in view of all that—but no, one moment, there is something else I want to ask you first—now, let me see—at the time that you first met this Miss X you were still in love with Roberta Alden, were you—or were you not?”

“I was still in love with her—yes, sir.”

“You had not, up to that time at least, in any way become weary of her? Or had you?”

“No, sir. I had not.”

“Her love and her companionship were just as precious and delightful to you as ever?”

“Yes, sir, they were.”

And as Clyde said that, he was thinking back and it seemed to him that what he had just said was really true. It was true that just before meeting Sondra he was actually at the zenith of content and delight with Roberta.

“And what, if any, were your plans for your future with Miss Alden—before you met this Miss X? You must have thought at times of that, didn’t you?”

“Well, not exactly,” (and as he said this he licked his lips in sheer nervousness). “You see, I never had any real plan to do anything—that is, to do anything that wasn’t quite right with her. And neither did she, of course. We just drifted kinda, from the first. It was being alone there so much, maybe. She hadn’t taken up with anybody yet and I hadn’t either. And then there was that rule that kept me from taking her about anywhere, and once we were together, of course we just went on without thinking very much about it, I suppose—either of us.”

“You just drifted because nothing had happened as yet and you didn’t suppose anything would. Is that the way?”