And I don’t want them to feel any such thing about you now, and especially when I know that you’re really not guilty.
I know that now.
I believe it. See!
So keep a stiff upper lip before Mason and everybody.
“In fact, from now on I want you to try and laugh a little — or at any rate, smile and pass the time of day with these fellows around here.
There’s an old saying in law, you know, that the consciousness of innocence makes any man calm.
Think and look innocent.
Don’t sit and brood and look as though you had lost your last friend, because you haven’t.
I’m here, and so is my partner, Mr. Jephson.
I’ll bring him around here in a day or two, and you’re to look and act toward him exactly as you have toward me.
Trust him, because in legal matters he’s even smarter than I am in some ways.
And to- morrow I’m going to bring you a couple of books and some magazines and papers, and I want you to read them or look at the pictures.
They’ll help keep your mind off your troubles.”
Clyde achieved a rather feeble smile and nodded his head.
“From now on, too — I don’t know whether you’re at all religious — but whether you are or not, they hold services here in the jail on Sundays, and I want you to attend ’em regularly — that is, if they ask you to.
For this is a religious community and I want you to make as good an impression as you can.
Never mind what people say or how they look — you do as I tell you.
And if this fellow Mason or any of those fellows around here get to pestering you any more, send me a note.
“And now I’ll be going, so give me a cheerful smile as I go out — and another one as I come in.
And don’t talk, see?”
Then shaking Clyde briskly by the shoulders and slapping him on the back, he strode out, actually thinking to himself:
“But do I really believe that this fellow is as innocent as he says?
Would it be possible for a fellow to strike a girl like that and not know that he was doing it intentionally?
And then swimming away afterwards, because, as he says, if he went near her he thought he might drown too.
Bad.
Bad!
What twelve men are going to believe that?
And that bag, those two hats, that missing suit!
And yet he swears he didn’t intentionally strike her.
But what about all that planning — the intent — which is just as bad in the eyes of the law.
Is he telling the truth or is he lying even now — perhaps trying to deceive himself as well as me?
And that camera — we ought to get hold of that before Mason finds it and introduces it.
And that suit.
I ought to find that and mention it, maybe, so as to offset the look of its being hidden — say that we had it all the time — send it to Lycurgus to be cleaned.
But no, no — wait a minute — I must think about that.”
And so on, point by point, while deciding wearily that perhaps it would be better not to attempt to use Clyde’s story at all, but rather to concoct some other story — this one changed or modified in some way which would make it appear less cruel or legally murderous. ? Chapter 15
M r. Reuben Jephson was decidedly different from Belknap, Catchuman, Mason, Smillie — in fact any one, thus far, who had seen Clyde or become legally interested in this case.
He was young, tall, thin, rugged, brown, cool but not cold spiritually, and with a will and a determination of the tensile strength of steel.
And with a mental and legal equipment which for shrewdness and self-interest was not unlike that of a lynx or a ferret.
Those shrewd, steel, very light blue eyes in his brown face. The force and curiosity of the long nose.
The strength of the hands and the body.
He had lost no time, as soon as he discovered there was a possibility of their (Belknap & Jephson) taking over the defense of Clyde, in going over the minutes of the coroner’s inquest as well as the doctors’ reports and the letters of Roberta and Sondra.
And now being faced by Belknap who was explaining that Clyde did now actually admit to having plotted to kill Roberta, although not having actually done so, since at the fatal moment, some cataleptic state of mind or remorse had intervened and caused him to unintentionally strike her — he merely stared without the shadow of a smile or comment of any kind.
“But he wasn’t in such a state when he went out there with her, though?”
“No.”
“Nor when he swam away afterwards?”
“No.”
“Nor when he went through those woods, or changed to another suit and hat, or hid that tripod?”
“No.”
“Of course you know, constructively, in the eyes of the law, if we use his own story, he’s just as guilty as though he had struck her, and the judge would have to so instruct.”