Clyde was beginning to show a disposition to balk.
He had been sinking his voice and each time Mason commanded him to speak up and turn around so the jury could see his face, he had done so, only feeling more and more resentful toward this man who was thus trying to drag out of him every secret he possessed.
He had touched on Sondra, and she was still too near his heart to reveal anything that would reflect on her.
So now he sat staring down at the jurors somewhat defiantly, when Mason picked up some pictures.
“Remember these?” he now asked Clyde, showing him some of the dim and water-marked reproductions of Roberta besides some views of Clyde and some others — none of them containing the face of Sondra — which were made at the Cranstons’ on his first visit, as well as four others made at Bear Lake later, and with one of them showing him holding a banjo, his fingers in position.
“Recall where these were made?” asked Mason, showing him the reproduction of Roberta first.
“Yes, I do.”
“Where was it?”
“On the south shore of Big Bittern the day we were there.”
He knew that they were in the camera and had told Belknap and Jephson about them, yet now he was not a little surprised to think that they had been able to develop them.
“Griffiths,” went on Mason, “your lawyers didn’t tell you that they fished and fished for that camera you swore you didn’t have with you before they found that I had it, did they?”
“They never said anything to me about it,” replied Clyde.
“Well, that’s too bad.
I could have saved them a lot of trouble.
Well, these were the photos that were found in that camera and that were made just after that change of heart you experienced, you remember?”
“I remember when they were made,” replied Clyde, sullenly.
“Well, they were made before you two went out in that boat for the last time — before you finally told her whatever it was you wanted to tell her — before she was murdered out there — at a time when, as you have testified, she was very sad.”
“No, that was the day before,” defied Clyde.
“Oh, I see.
Well, anyhow, these pictures look a little cheerful for one who was as depressed as you say she was.”
“Well — but — she wasn’t nearly as depressed then as she was the day before,” flashed Clyde, for this was the truth and he remembered it.
“I see.
But just the same, look at these other pictures.
These three here, for instance.
Where were they made?”
“At the Cranston Lodge on Twelfth Lake, I think.”
“Right.
And that was June eighteenth or nineteenth, wasn’t it?”
“On the nineteenth, I think.”
“Well, now, do you recall a letter Roberta wrote you on the nineteenth?”
“No, sir.”
“You don’t recall any particular one?”
“No, sir.”
“But they were all very sad, you have said.”
“Yes, sir — they were.”
“Well, this is that letter written at the time these pictures were made.”
He turned to the jury. “I would like the jury to look at these pictures and then listen to just one passage from this letter written by Miss Alden to this defendant on the same day.
He has admitted that he was refusing to write or telephone her, although he was sorry for her,” he said, turning to the jury.
And here he opened a letter and read a long sad plea from Roberta.
“And now here are four more pictures, Griffiths.” And he handed Clyde the four made at Bear Lake.
“Very cheerful, don’t you think?
Not much like pictures of a man who has just experienced a great change of heart after a most terrific period of doubt and worry and evil conduct — and has just seen the woman whom he had most cruelly wronged, but whom he now proposed to do right by, suddenly drowned.
They look as though you hadn’t a care in the world, don’t they?”
“Well, they were just group pictures.
I couldn’t very well keep out of them.”
“But this one in the water here.
Didn’t it trouble you the least bit to go in the water the second or third day after Roberta Alden had sunk to the bottom of Big Bittern, and especially when you had experienced such an inspiring change of heart in regard to her?”
“I didn’t want any one to know I had been up there with her.”
“We know all about that.
But how about this banjo picture here.