Only I’m going along with you, see?
I’ve decided to examine you myself.
I’ve drilled and drilled you, and I guess you won’t have any trouble in telling me, will you?”
He beamed on Clyde genially and encouragingly, and Clyde, because of Belknap’s strong plea as well as this newest and best development in connection with Jephson, now stood up and with almost a jaunty air, and one out of all proportion to his mood of but four hours before, now whispered:
“Gee!
I’m glad you’re going to do it.
I’ll be all right now, I think.”
But in the meantime the audience, hearing that an actual eye- witness was to be produced, and not by the prosecution but the defense, was at once upon its feet, craning and stirring.
And Justice Oberwaltzer, irritated to an exceptional degree by the informality characteristic of this trial, was now rapping with his gavel while his clerk cried loudly:
“Order!
Order!
Unless everybody is seated, all spectators will be dismissed!
The deputies will please see that all are seated.”
And then a hushed and strained silence falling as Belknap called:
“Clyde Griffiths, take the witness chair.”
And the audience — seeing to its astonishment, Clyde, accompanied by Reuben Jephson, making his way forward — straining and whispering in spite of all the gruff commands of the judge and the bailiffs.
And even Belknap, as he saw Jephson approaching, being a little astonished, since it was he who according to the original plan was to have led Clyde through his testimony.
But now Jephson drawing near to him as Clyde was being seated and sworn, merely whispered:
“Leave him to me, Alvin, I think it’s best.
He looks a little too strained and shaky to suit me, but I feel sure I can pull him through.”
And then the audience noting the change and whispering in regard to it. And Clyde, his large nervous eyes turning here and there, thinking: Well, I’m on the witness stand at last.
And now everybody’s watching me, of course.
I must look very calm, like I didn’t care so very much, because I didn’t really kill her.
That’s right, I didn’t.
Yet his skin blue and the lids of his eyes red and puffy and his hands trembling slightly in spite of himself.
And Jephson, his long, tensile and dynamic body like that of a swaying birch, turning toward him and looking fixedly into Clyde’s brown eyes with his blue ones, beginning:
“Now, Clyde, the first thing we want to do is make sure that the jury and every one else hears our questions and answers.
And next, when you’re all set, you’re going to begin with your life as you remember it — where you were born, where you came from, what your father did and your mother, too, and finally, what you did and why, from the time you went to work until now.
I may interrupt you with a few questions now and then, but in the main I’m going to let you tell it, because I know you can tell it better than any one.”
Yet in order to reassure Clyde and to make him know each moment that he was there — a wall, a bulwark, between him and the eager, straining, unbelieving and hating crowd — he now drew nearer, at times so close as to put one foot on the witness stand, or if not that to lean forward and lay a hand on the arm of the chair in which Clyde sat.
And all the while saying,
“Yay-uss — Yay-uss.”
“And then what?”
“And then?”
And invariably at the strong and tonic or protective sound of his voice Clyde stirring as with a bolstering force and finding himself able, and without shaking or quavering, to tell the short but straitened story of his youth.
“I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
My parents were conducting a mission there at that time and used to hold open air meetings. . .” ? Chapter 24
C lyde’s testimony proceeded to the point where the family had removed from Quincy, Illinois (a place resorted to on account of some Salvation Army work offered his father and mother), to Kansas City, where from his twelfth to his fifteenth year he had browsed about trying to find something to do while still resenting the combination of school and religious work expected of him.
“Were you up with your classes in the public schools?”
“No, sir.
We had moved too much.”
“In what grade were you when you were twelve years old?”
“Well, I should have been in the seventh but I was only in the sixth.
That’s why I didn’t like it.”
“And how about the religious work of your parents?”
“Well, it was all right — only I never did like going out nights on the street corners.”
And so on, through five-and-ten cent store, soda and newspaper carrier jobs, until at last he was a bell-hop at the Green- Davidson, the finest hotel in Kansas City, as he informed them.
“But now, Clyde,” proceeded Jephson who, fearful lest Mason on the cross-examination and in connection with Clyde’s credibility as a witness should delve into the matter of the wrecked car and the slain child in Kansas City and so mar the effect of the story he was now about to tell, was determined to be beforehand in this.
Decidedly, by questioning him properly he could explain and soften all that, whereas if left to Mason it could be tortured into something exceedingly dark indeed. And so now he continued:
“And how long did you work there?”