Not in Lycurgus. Not by any machine. No!
No — drowned!
In Big Bittern.
She was up there on an outing on Thursday, do you understand?
Do you hear? Thursday.
She was drowned in Big Bittern on Thursday in a boat.
It overturned.”
The excited gestures and words of Titus at this point so disturbed the district attorney that he found himself unable to explain as calmly as he would have liked the process by which even an assumed accidental drowning had come about.
From the moment the word death in connection with Roberta had been used by Mason, the mental state of Alden was that of one not a little demented.
After his first demands he now began to vent a series of animal-like groans as though the breath had been knocked from his body.
At the same time, he bent over, crumpled up as from pain — then struck his hands together and threw them to his temples.
“My Roberta dead!
My daughter!
Oh, no, no, Roberta!
Oh, my God!
Not drowned!
It can’t be.
And her mother speaking of her only an hour ago.
This will be the death of her when she hears it.
It will kill me, too.
Yes, it will.
Oh, my poor, dear, dear girl.
My darling!
I’m not strong enough to stand anything like this, Mr. District Attorney.”
He leaned heavily and wearily upon Mason’s arms while the latter sustained him as best he could.
Then, after a moment, he turned questioningly and erratically toward the front door of the house at which he gazed as one might who was wholly demented.
“Who’s to tell her?” he demanded.
“How is any one to tell her?”
“But, Mr. Alden,” consoled Mason, “for your own sake, for your wife’s sake, I must ask you now to calm yourself and help me consider this matter as seriously as you would if it were not your daughter.
There is much more to this than I have been able to tell you.
But you must be calm.
You must allow me to explain.
This is all very terrible and I sympathize with you wholly.
I know what it means.
But there are some dreadful and painful facts that you will have to know about.
Listen.
Listen.”
And then, still holding Titus by the arm he proceeded to explain as swiftly and forcefully as possible, the various additional facts and suspicions in connection with the death of Roberta, finally giving him her letter to read, and winding up with:
“A crime!
A crime, Mr. Alden!
That’s what we think over in Bridgeburg, or at least that’s what we’re afraid of — plain murder, Mr. Alden, to use a hard, cold word in connection with it.”
He paused while Alden, struck by this — the element of crime — gazed as one not quite able to comprehend.
And, as he gazed, Mason went on: “And as much as I respect your feelings, still as the chief representative of the law in my county, I felt it to be my personal duty to come here to-day in order to find out whether there is anything that you or your wife or any of your family know about this Clifford Golden, or Carl Graham, or whoever he is who lured your daughter to that lonely lake up there.
And while I know that the blackest of suffering is yours right now, Mr. Alden, I maintain that it should be your wish, as well as your duty, to do whatever you can to help us clear up this matter.
This letter here seems to indicate that your wife at least knows something concerning this individual — his name, anyhow.”
And he tapped the letter significantly and urgently.
The moment the suggested element of violence and wrong against his daughter had been injected into this bitter loss, there was sufficient animal instinct, as well as curiosity, resentment and love of the chase inherent in Titus to cause him to recover his balance sufficiently to give silent and solemn ear to what the district attorney was saying.
His daughter not only drowned, but murdered, and that by some youth who according to this letter she was intending to marry!
And he, her father, not even aware of his existence!
Strange that his wife should know and he not.