If only he had removed his trunk to another room, say, before he left.
Why hadn’t he thought of that?
Yet as instantly thinking, might not that have been a mistake, too, being seemingly a suspicious thing to have done then?
But how came they to know where he was from and what his name was?
Then, as instantly returning in mind to the letters in the trunk.
For, as he now recalled, in one of those letters from his mother she had mentioned that affair in Kansas City, and Mason would come to know of that.
If only he had destroyed them. Roberta’s, his mother’s, all!
Why hadn’t he?
But not being able to answer why — just an insane desire to keep things maybe — anything that related to him — a kindness, a tenderness toward him.
If only he had not worn that second straw hat — had not met those three men in the woods!
God!
He might have known they would be able to trace him in some way.
If only he had gone on in that wood at Bear Lake, taking his suit case and Sondra’s letters with him.
Perhaps, perhaps, who knows, in Boston, or New York, or somewhere he might have hidden away.
Unstrung and agonized, he was unable to sleep at all, but walked back and forth, or sat on the side of the hard and strange cot, thinking, thinking.
And at dawn, a bony, aged, rheumy jailer, in a baggy, worn, blue uniform, bearing a black, iron tray, on which was a tinful of coffee, some bread and a piece of ham with one egg.
And looking curiously and yet somehow indifferently at Clyde, while he forced it through an aperture only wide and high enough for its admission, though Clyde wanted nothing at all.
And then later Kraut and Sissel and Swenk, and eventually the sheriff himself, each coming separately, to look in and say:
“Well, Griffiths, how are you this morning?” or,
“Hello, anything we can do for you?”, while their eyes showed the astonishment, disgust, suspicion or horror with which his assumed crime had filled them.
Yet, even in the face of that, having one type of interest and even sycophantic pride in his presence here.
For was he not a Griffiths — a member of the well-known social group of the big central cities to the south of here.
Also the same to them, as well as to the enormously fascinated public outside, as a trapped and captured animal, taken in their legal net by their own superlative skill and now held as witness to it?
And with the newspapers and people certain to talk, enormous publicity for them — their pictures in the papers as well as his, their names persistently linked with his.
And Clyde, looking at them between the bars, attempted to be civil, since he was now in their hands and they could do with him as they would. ? Chapter 11
I n connection with the autopsy and its results there was a decided set-back. For while the joint report of the five doctors showed:
“An injury to the mouth and nose; the tip of the nose appears to have been slightly flattened, the lips swollen, one front tooth slightly loosened, and an abrasion of the mucous membrane within the lips”— all agreed that these injuries were by no means fatal.
The chief injury was to the skull (the very thing which Clyde in his first confession had maintained), which appeared to have been severely bruised by a blow of “some sharp instrument,” unfortunately in this instance, because of the heaviness of the blow of the boat, “signs of fracture and internal haemorrhage which might have produced death.”
But — the lungs when placed in water, sinking — an absolute proof that Roberta could not have been dead when thrown into the water, but alive and drowning, as Clyde had maintained.
And no other signs of violence or struggle, although her arms and fingers appeared to be set in such a way as to indicate that she might have been reaching or seeking to grasp something.
The wale of the boat?
Could that be?
Might Clyde’s story, after all, conceal a trace of truth?
Certainly these circumstances seemed to favor him a little.
Yet as Mason and the others agreed, all these circumstances most distinctly seemed to prove that although he might not have slain her outright before throwing her into the water, none the less he had struck her and then had thrown her, perhaps unconscious, into the water.
But with what?
If he could but make Clyde say that!
And then an inspiration!
He would take Clyde and, although the law specifically guaranteed accused persons against compulsions, compel him to retrace the scenes of his crime.
And although he might not be able to make him commit himself in any way, still, once on the ground and facing the exact scene of his crime, his actions might reveal something of the whereabouts of the suit, perhaps, or possibly some instrument with which he had struck her.
And in consequence, on the third day following Clyde’s incarceration, a second visit to Big Bittern, with Kraut, Heit, Mason, Burton, Burleigh, Earl Newcomb and Sheriff Slack as his companions, and a slow re-canvassing of all the ground he had first traveled on that dreadful day.
And with Kraut, following instructions from Mason, “playing up” to him, in order to ingratiate himself into his good graces, and possibly cause him to make a clean breast of it.
For Kraut was to argue that the evidence, so far was so convincing that you “never would get a jury to believe that you didn’t do it,” but that, “if you would talk right out to Mason, he could do more for you with the judge and the governor than any one could — get you off, maybe, with life or twenty years, while this way you’re likely to get the chair, sure.”
Yet Clyde, because of that same fear that had guided him at Bear Lake, maintaining a profound silence.
For why should he say that he had struck her, when he had not — intentionally at least?
Or with what, since no thought of the camera had come up as yet.
At the lake, after definite measurements by the county surveyor as to the distance from the spot where Roberta had drowned to the spot where Clyde had landed, Earl Newcomb suddenly returning to Mason with an important discovery.
For under a log not so far from the spot at which Clyde had stood to remove his wet clothes, the tripod he had hidden, a little rusty and damp, but of sufficient weight, as Mason and all these others were now ready to believe, to have delivered the blow upon Roberta’s skull which had felled her and so make it possible for him to carry her to the boat and later drown her.
Yet, confronted with this and turning paler than before, Clyde denying that he had a camera or a tripod with him, although Mason was instantly deciding that he would re-question all witnesses to find out whether any recalled seeing a tripod or camera in Clyde’s possession.
And before the close of this same day learning from the guide who had driven Clyde and Roberta over, as well as the boatman who had seen Clyde drop his bag into the boat, and a young waitress at Grass Lake who had seen Clyde and Roberta going out from the inn to the station on the morning of their departure from Grass Lake, that all now recalled a “yellow bundle of sticks,” fastened to his bag which must have been the very tripod.