I couldn’t be quite sure.”
“And now with you over there and the boat here, where was Miss Alden at that time?”
And Clyde now sensed that Mason must have some geometric or mathematic scheme in mind whereby he proposed to establish his guilt.
And at once he was on his guard, and looking in the direction of Jephson.
At the same time he could not see how he was to put Roberta too far away either.
He had said she couldn’t swim.
Wouldn’t she be nearer the boat than he was?
Most certainly.
He leaped foolishly — wildly — at the thought that it might be best to say that she was about half that distance — not more, very likely.
And said so.
And at once Mason proceeded with: “Well, then she was not more than fifteen feet or so from you or the boat.”
“No, sir, maybe not.
I guess not.”
“Well then, do you mean to say that you couldn’t have swum that little distance and buoyed her up until you could reach the boat just fifteen feet beyond her?”
“Well, as I say, I was a little dazed when I came up and she was striking about and screaming so.”
“But there was that boat — not more than thirty-five feet away, according to your own story — and a mighty long way for a boat to move in that time, I’ll say.
And do you mean to say that when you could swim five hundred feet to shore afterwards that you couldn’t have swum to that boat and pushed it to her in time for her to save herself?
She was struggling to keep herself up, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.
But I was rattled at first,” pleaded Clyde, gloomily, conscious of the eyes of all the jurors and all the spectators fixed upon his face, “and . . . and . . .” (because of the general strain of the suspicion and incredulity now focused as a great force upon him, his nerve was all but failing him, and he was hesitating and stumbling) . . . “I didn’t think quite quick enough I guess, what to do.
Besides I was afraid if I went near her . . .”
“I know. A mental and moral coward,” sneered Mason.
“Besides very slow to think when it’s to your advantage to be slow and swift when it’s to your advantage to be swift.
Is that it?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, if it isn’t, just tell me this, Griffiths, why was it, after you got out of the water a few moments later you had sufficient presence of mind to stop and bury that tripod before starting through the woods, whereas, when it came to rescuing her you got rattled and couldn’t do a thing?
How was it that you could get so calm and calculating the moment you set your foot on land?
What can you say to that?”
“Well . . . a . . . I told you that afterwards I realized that there was nothing else to do.”
“Yes, we know all about that.
But doesn’t it occur to you that it takes a pretty cool head after so much panic in the water to stop at a moment like that and take such a precaution as that — burying that tripod?
How was it that you could think so well of that and not think anything about the boat a few moments before?”
“Well . . . but . . .”
“You didn’t want her to live, in spite of your alleged change of heart!
Isn’t that it?” yelled Mason.
“Isn’t that the black, sad truth?
She was drowning, as you wanted her to drown, and you just let her drown!
Isn’t that so?”
He was fairly trembling as he shouted this, and Clyde, the actual boat before him and Roberta’s eyes and cries as she sank coming back to him with all their pathetic and horrible force, now shrank and cowered in his seat — the closeness of Mason’s interpretation of what had really happened terrifying him.
For never, even to Jephson and Belknap, had he admitted that when Roberta was in the water he had not wished to save her.
Changelessly and secretively he insisted he had wanted to but that it had all happened so quickly, and he was so dazed and frightened by her cries and movements, that he had not been able to do anything before she was gone.
“I . . . I wanted to save her,” he mumbled, his face quite gray, “but . . . but . . . as I said, I was dazed . . . and . . . and . . .”
“Don’t you know that you’re lying!” shouted Mason, leaning still closer, his stout arms aloft, his disfigured face glowering and scowling like some avenging nemesis or fury of gargoyle design — “that you deliberately and with cold-hearted cunning allowed that poor, tortured girl to die there when you might have rescued her as easily as you could have swum fifty of those five hundred feet you did swim in order to save yourself?”
For by now he was convinced that he knew just how Clyde had actually slain Roberta, something in his manner and mood convincing him, and he was determined to drag it out of him if he could.
And although Belknap was instantly on his feet with a protest that his client was being unfairly prejudiced in the eyes of the jury and that he was really entitled to — and now demanded — a mistrial — which complaint Justice Oberwaltzer eventually overruled — still Clyde had time to reply, but most meekly and feebly:
“No! No!
I didn’t.
I wanted to save her if I could.”
Yet his whole manner, as each and every juror noted, was that of one who was not really telling the truth, who was really all of the mental and moral coward that Belknap had insisted he was — but worse yet, really guilty of Roberta’s death.
For after all, asked each juror of himself as he listened, why couldn’t he have saved her if he was strong enough to swim to shore afterwards — or at least have swum to and secured the boat and helped her to take hold of it?