Besides, it would be the business of the Supreme Court justice appointed to consider such arguments — not himself.
And accordingly, a special term of the Supreme Court was ordered, with one Justice Frederick Oberwaltzer of the eleventh judicial district designated to preside.
And when Mason appeared before him with the request that he fix the date of the Special Grand Jury by which Clyde might be indicted, this was set for August fifth.
And then that body sitting, it was no least trouble for Mason to have Clyde indicted.
And thereafter the best that Belknap and Jephson could do was to appear before Oberwaltzer, a Democrat, who owed his appointment to a previous governor, to argue for a change of venue, on the ground that by no possible stretch of the imagination could any twelve men residing in Cataraqui County be found who, owing to the public and private statements of Mason, were not already vitally opposed to Clyde and so convinced of his guilt that before ever such a jury could be addressed by a defense, he would be convicted.
“But where are you going then?” inquired Justice Oberwaltzer, who was impartial enough.
“The same material has been published everywhere.”
“But, your Honor, this crime which the district attorney here has been so busy in magnifying —” (a long and heated objection on the part of Mason).
“But we contend just the same,” continued Belknap, “that the public has been unduly stirred and deluded.
You can’t get twelve men now who will try this man fairly.”
“What nonsense!” exclaimed Mason, angrily.
“Mere twaddle!
Why, the newspapers themselves have gathered and published more evidence than I have.
It’s the publicly discovered facts in this case that have aroused prejudice, if any has been aroused.
But no more than would be aroused anywhere, I maintain.
Besides, if this case is to be transferred to a distant county when the majority of the witnesses are right here, this county is going to be saddled with an enormous expense, which it cannot afford and which the facts do not warrant.”
Justice Oberwaltzer, who was of a sober and moral turn, a slow and meticulous man inclined to favor conservative procedure in all things, was inclined to agree.
And after five days, in which he did not more than muse idly upon the matter, he decided to deny the motion.
If he were wrong, there was the Appellate Division to which the defense could resort.
As for stays, having fixed the date of the trial for October fifteenth (ample time, as he judged, for the defense to prepare its case), he adjourned for the remainder of the summer to his cottage on Blue Mountain Lake, where both the prosecution and the defense, should any knotty or locally insoluble legal complication arise, would be able to find him and have his personal attention.
But with the entry of the Messrs. Belknap and Jephson into the case, Mason found it advisable to redouble his efforts to make positive, in so far as it were possible, the conviction of Clyde.
He feared the young Jephson as much as he did Belknap. And for that reason, taking with him Burton Burleigh and Earl Newcomb, he now revisited Lycurgus, where among other things he was able to discover (1) where Clyde had purchased the camera; (2) that three days before his departure for Big Bittern he had said to Mrs. Peyton that he was thinking of taking his camera with him and that he must get some films for it; (3) that there was a haberdasher by the name of Orrin Short who had known Clyde well and that but four months before Clyde had applied to him for advice in connection with a factory hand’s pregnant wife — also (and this in great confidence to Burton Burleigh, who had unearthed him) that he had recommended to Clyde a certain Dr. Glenn, near Gloversville; (4) Dr. Glenn himself being sought and pictures of Clyde and Roberta being submitted, he was able to identify Roberta, although not Clyde, and to describe the state of mind in which she had approached him, as well as the story she had told — a story which in no way incriminated Clyde or herself, and which, therefore, Mason decided might best be ignored, for the present, anyhow.
And (5), via these same enthusiastic efforts, there rose to the surface the particular hat salesman in Utica who had sold Clyde the hat. For Burton Burleigh being interviewed while in Utica, and his picture published along with one of Clyde, this salesman chanced to see it and recalling him at once made haste to communicate with Mason, with the result that his testimony, properly typewritten and sworn to, was carried away by Mason.
And, in addition, the country girl who had been on the steamer “Cygnus” and who had noticed Clyde, wrote Mason that she remembered him wearing a straw hat, also his leaving the boat at Sharon, a bit of evidence which most fully confirmed that of the captain of the boat and caused Mason to feel that Providence or Fate was working with him.
And last, but most important of all to him, there came a communication from a woman residing in Bedford, Pennsylvania, who announced that during the week of July third to tenth, she and her husband had been camping on the east shore of Big Bittern, near the southern end of the lake.
And while rowing on the lake on the afternoon of July eighth, at about six o’clock, she had heard a cry which sounded like that of a woman or girl in distress — a plaintive, mournful cry.
It was very faint and had seemed to come from beyond the island which was to the south and west of the bay in which they were fishing.
Mason now proposed to remain absolutely silent regarding this information, and that about the camera and films and the data regarding Clyde’s offense in Kansas City, until nearer the day of trial, or during the trial itself, when it would be impossible for the defense to attempt either to refute or ameliorate it in any way.
As for Belknap and Jephson, apart from drilling Clyde in the matter of his general denial based on his change of heart once he had arrived at Grass Lake, and the explanation of the two hats and the bag, they could not see that there was much to do.
True, there was the suit thrown in Fourth Lake near the Cranstons’, but after much trolling on the part of a seemingly casual fisherman, that was brought up, cleaned and pressed, and now hung in a locked closet in the Belknap and Jephson office.
Also, there was the camera at Big Bittern, dived for but never found by them — a circumstance which led Jephson to conclude that Mason must have it, and so caused him to decide that he would refer to it at the earliest possible opportunity at the trial.
But as for Clyde striking her with it, even accidentally, well, it was decided at that time at least, to contend that he had not — although after exhuming Roberta’s body at Biltz it had been found that the marks on her face, even at this date, did correspond in some degree to the size and shape of the camera.
For, in the first place, they were exceedingly dubious of Clyde as a witness.
Would he or would he not, in telling of how it all happened, be sufficiently direct or forceful and sincere to convince any jury that he had so struck her without intending to strike her?
For on that, marks or no marks, would depend whether the jury was going to believe him.
And if it did not believe that he struck her accidentally, then a verdict of guilty, of course.
And so they prepared to await the coming of the trial, only working betimes and in so far as they dared, to obtain testimony or evidence as to Clyde’s previous good character, but being blocked to a degree by the fact that in Lycurgus, while pretending to be a model youth outwardly, he had privately been conducting himself otherwise, and that in Kansas City his first commercial efforts had resulted in such a scandal.
However, one of the most difficult matters in connection with Clyde and his incarceration here, as Belknap and Jephson as well as the prosecution saw it, was the fact that thus far not one single member of his own or his uncle’s family had come forward to champion him. And to no one save Belknap and Jephson had he admitted where his parents were.
Yet would it not be necessary, as both Belknap and Jephson argued from time to time, if any case at all were to be made out for him, to have his mother or father, or at least a sister or a brother, come forward to say a good word for him?
Otherwise, Clyde might appear to be a pariah, one who had been from the first a drifter and a waster and was now purposely being avoided by all who knew him.
For this reason, at their conference with Darrah Brookhart they had inquired after Clyde’s parents and had learned that in so far as the Griffiths of Lycurgus were concerned, there lay a deep objection to bringing on any member of this western branch of the family.
There was, as he explained, a great social gap between them, which it would not please the Lycurgus Griffiths to have exploited here.
Besides, who could say but that once Clyde’s parents were notified or discovered by the yellow press, they might not lend themselves to exploitation.
Both Samuel and Gilbert Griffiths, as Brookhart now informed Belknap, had suggested that it was best, if Clyde did not object, to keeping his immediate relatives in the background.
In fact, on this, in some measure at least, was likely to depend the extent of their financial aid to Clyde.
Clyde was in accord with this wish of the Griffiths, although no one who talked with him sufficiently or heard him express how sorry he was on his mother’s account that all this had happened, could doubt the quality of the blood and emotional tie that held him and his mother together.
The complete truth was that his present attitude toward her was a mixture of fear and shame because of the manner in which she was likely to view his predicament — his moral if not his social failure.
Would she be willing to believe the story prepared by Belknap and Jephson as to his change of heart?
But even apart from that, to have her come here now and look at him through these bars when he was so disgraced — to be compelled to face her and talk to her day after day!
Her clear, inquiring, tortured eyes!