“Yes, sir — I thought I was.”
“Then why did you pack everything in your room in your trunk and lock it?”
“Well . . . well . . . that is,” hesitated Clyde, the charge coming so quickly and so entirely apart from what had just been spoken of before that he had scarcely time to collect his wits —“well, you see — I wasn’t absolutely sure. I didn’t know but what I might have to go whether I wanted to or not.”
“I see.
And so if you had decided up there unexpectedly as you did —” (and here Mason smirked on him as much as to say — you think any one believes that?) “you wouldn’t have had time to come back and decently pack your things and depart?”
“Well, no, sir — that wasn’t the reason either.”
“Well then, what was the reason?”
“Well, you see,” and here for lack of previous thought on this subject as well as lack of wit to grasp the essentiality of a suitable and plausible answer quickly, Clyde hesitated — as every one — first and foremost Belknap and Jephson — noted — and then went on: “Well, you see — if I had to go away, even for a short time as I thought I might, I decided that I might need whatever I had in a hurry.”
“I see.
You’re quite sure it wasn’t that in case the police discovered who Clifford Golden or Carl Graham were, that you might wish to leave quickly?”
“No, sir.
It wasn’t.”
“And so you didn’t tell Mrs. Peyton you were giving up the room either, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“In your testimony the other day you said something about not having money enough to go up there and take Miss Alden away on any temporary marriage scheme — even one that would last so long as six months.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you left Lycurgus to start on the trip, how much did you have?”
“About fifty dollars.”
“‘About’ fifty?
Don’t you know exactly how much you had?”
“I had fifty dollars — yes, sir.”
“And while you were in Utica and Grass Lake and getting down to Sharon afterwards, how much did you spend?”
“I spent about twenty dollars on the trip, I think.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Not exactly — no, sir — somewhere around twenty dollars, though.”
“Well, now let’s see about that exactly if we can,” went on Mason, and here, once more, Clyde began to sense a trap and grew nervous — for there was all that money given him by Sondra and some of which he had spent, too.
“How much was your fare from Fonda to Utica for yourself?”
“A dollar and a quarter.”
“And what did you have to pay for your room at the hotel at Utica for you and Roberta?”
“That was four dollars.”
“And of course you had dinner that night and breakfast the next morning, which cost you how much?”
“It was about three dollars for both meals.”
“Was that all you spent in Utica?”
Mason was taking a side glance occasionally at a slip of paper on which he had figures and notes, but which Clyde had not noticed.
“Yes, sir.”
“How about the straw hat that it has been proved you purchased while there?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I forgot about that,” said Clyde, nervously.
“That was two dollars — yes, sir.”
He realized that he must be more careful.
“And your fares to Grass Lake were, of course, five dollars. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you hired a boat at Grass Lake.
How much was that?”
“That was thirty-five cents an hour.”
“And you had it how long?”
“Three hours.”
“Making one dollar and five cents.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then that night at the hotel, they charged you how much?
Five dollars, wasn’t it?”