“Yes, sir.”
“And then didn’t you buy that lunch that you carried out in that lake with you up there?”
“Yes, sir.
I think that was about sixty cents.”
“And how much did it cost you to get to Big Bittern?”
“It was a dollar on the train to Gun Lodge and a dollar on the bus for the two of us to Big Bittern.”
“You know these figures pretty well, I see.
Naturally, you would.
You didn’t have much money and it was important.
And how much was your fare from Three Mile Bay to Sharon afterwards?”
“My fare was seventy-five cents.”
“Did you ever stop to figure this all up exactly?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, will you?”
“Well, you know how much it is, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I do.
It was twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents.
You said you spent twenty dollars.
But here is a discrepancy of four dollars and sixty-five cents.
How do you account for it?”
“Well, I suppose I didn’t figure just exactly right,” said Clyde, irritated by the accuracy of figures such as these.
But now Mason slyly and softly inquiring:
“Oh, yes, Griffiths, I forgot, how much was the boat you hired at Big Bittern?”
He was eager to hear what Clyde would have to say as to this, seeing that he had worked hard and long on this pitfall.
“Oh — ah — ah — that is,” began Clyde, hesitatingly, for at Big Bittern, as he now recalled, he had not even troubled to inquire the cost of the boat, feeling as he did at the time that neither he nor Roberta were coming back.
But now here and in this way it was coming up for the first time.
And Mason, realizing that he had caught him here, quickly interpolated a
“Yes?” to which Clyde replied, but merely guessing at that:
“Why, thirty-five cents an hour — just the same as at Grass Lake — so the boatman said.”
But he had spoken too quickly.
And he did not know that in reserve was the boatman who was still to testify that he had not stopped to ask the price of the boat.
And Mason continued:
“Oh, it was, was it?
The boatman told you that, did he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well now, don’t you recall that you never asked the boatman at all?
It was not thirty-five cents an hour, but fifty cents.
But of course you do not know that because you were in such a hurry to get out on the water and you did not expect to have to come back and pay for it anyway.
So you never even asked, you see.
Do you see?
Do you recall that now?”
And here Mason produced a bill that he had gotten from the boatman and waved it in front of Clyde.
“It was fifty cents an hour,” he repeated.
“They charge more than at Grass Lake.
But what I want to know is, if you are so familiar with these other figures, as you have just shown that you are, how comes it that you are not familiar with this figure?
Didn’t you think of the expense of taking her out in a boat and keeping the boat from noon until night?”
The attack came so swiftly and bitterly that at once Clyde was confused.
He twisted and turned, swallowed and looked nervously at the floor, ashamed to look at Jephson who had somehow failed to coach him as to this.
“Well,” bawled Mason, “any explanation to make as to that?
Doesn’t it strike even you as strange that you can remember every other item of all your expenditures — but not that item?”