american tragedy

Chapter 141 (2)
Chapter 325 (2)
"I've already said what I felt then."

"But you want to get rid of her anyway, don't you? You can find someone else if she dies, don't you deny?"

"I've explained it," Clyde insisted.

"Explained! Explained! Do you expect a fair, decent, sensible person to believe your explanation?" Mason was so angry that he couldn't help it.Clyde didn't dare to protest Mason's words.The judge had expected Jefferson to protest, and after the protest was raised, he shouted: "The protest is valid." But Mason continued. "It can't be you, Griffiths, rowing a little carelessly. Say you overturned the boat yourself?" He went over and cast a glance at him.

"No, sir, I didn't accidentally. I couldn't prevent this accident." Although Clyde was pale and tired, he was quite calm.

"An accident. Like the one in Kansas City, for example. You're familiar with these kinds of accidents, aren't you, Griffiths?" Mason asked slowly, with a sneer.

"I've explained the matter," Clyde replied uneasily.

"You're good at accidents like this that lead girls to their deaths, aren't you? Do you always run away when they die?"

"Protest!" shouted Belknap, jumping to his feet.

"Support the protest," cried Oberworth. "This court must not deal with other incidents. Please, Prosecutor, confine your remarks to those which are relevant to this case."

Similar to the accident in Kansas City, Jefferson had explained it at the beginning, and now Mason countered Jefferson, feeling very proud, and then said: "Griffiths, you capsized the boat so unexpectedly. , after you and Miss Alden both fell into the water, how far apart are you?"

"Well, I didn't pay attention at the time."

"Isn't it close? Not more than a foot or two in your condition on board."

"Well, maybe I haven't noticed, sir."

"Close enough to grab her if you wanted to, hold her tight, ain't it? Isn't that why you jumped up when she was about to fall?"

"Yes, that's what I jumped for," said Clyde slowly, "but not close enough to catch her. I went down and came up again, and she was a little further away."

"Well, how far exactly? From here to the jury end, or the other end, or half way, or what?"

"Well, I said I didn't pay much attention, I guess it's all the way from here to there." He lied.At least say eight feet more.

"No way?" Mason pretended to be inexplicably surprised, "This boat overturned and the two of you fell into the water very close to each other. When you emerged, she was already twenty feet away from you. Don't you feel that you Was your memory a bit too bad back then?"

"Well, I thought so when I came out of the water."

"Well, now that the boat capsizes and you're out of the water, how far were you from the boat? The boat is over here, and where are you over the audience, I mean how far away?"

"Well, as I said, I didn't pay much attention when I first came out of the water," Clyde replied, looking uneasily at the distance in front of him. Obviously, there was a trap waiting for him, " From here to the railing over your table, I think."

"That's about 35 feet," Mason suggested slyly, hopefully.

"Yes, sir, that may be so, I'm not quite sure."

"Where was Miss Alden when you were there and the ship was here?"

Clyde felt that Mason must have geometry or some algorithm in mathematics in his heart, and wanted to use this to prove that he had committed the crime of murder.He was alert at once, looking in Jefferson's direction, but he could not tell her that she was too far away.He said she couldn't swim, and wasn't she closer to the boat than he was? Of course, in his foolish way of thinking, he thought it best to say she was half that far away, probably no further.He just blurted out, and Mason said immediately:

"Well, then, she won't be more than fifteen feet or so from you or from the boat."

"No, sir, I think perhaps not."

"Well, so you're saying you can't swim the distance to lift her up and swim back to the boat fifteen feet away?"

"No, I said it, I was a little dizzy when I came out of the water, and she was struggling and screaming."

"However, as you say the boat is over there, it's only thirty-five feet away, and I think it's fast enough to move that distance in that time, and, didn't you say you could swim five hundred feet to shore , but couldn’t swim to the side of the boat to rescue her in time? Wasn’t she struggling to float up at that time?”

"Yes, sir, but I was terrified at first," explained Clyde sullenly, when he realized that all the eyes of the jury and audience were fixed on his face. "And... and..." (The pressure of everyone's suspicions gathered on him into such a powerful force that he couldn't hold on, and stuttered.) "I think I didn't think of what to do in time, and, I'm afraid that once I swim to her side..."

"I see. A spiritual and moral coward," Mason sneered. "As long as it pays to think slowly, think slowly. If it's good for you to think fast, think fast. Right?"

"No, sir."

"Well, if not, then tell me, Griffiths, why after a while you are calm out of the water, stop and hide your tripod before setting off through the woods, and panic when trying to save her." At a loss, why did you stay calm after landing? How do you explain this?"

"Well... er... I told you, and I realized afterwards that there was no other way."

"Yeah, we all know that, but have you ever thought about panicking in the water and then doing the cautious thing, hiding the tripod takes a lot of cool head? You're so thoughtful about that, what about that boat Can't remember anything?"

"Well... but..."

"Although you have said the so-called change of heart, you don't want her to live! Do you?" Mason roared. "Isn't that the vicious and sad truth? She's sinking, just as you'd like, and you just stand by and watch, don't you?"

As he roared, he almost trembled all over.And Clyde, with the ship in front of him, and Roberta's eyes as she sank, and her cry, these old sad and terrible scenes came back to his mind, and he cowered in his seat in fear, and Mason told the truth. The description was so realistic that it frightened him.For the layer he had stood by after Roberta fell into the water he had never admitted to anyone.He just concealed it, and insisted that he wanted to save her, but he was caught off guard, and her calls and actions frightened him, so that he couldn't do anything, and watched her disaster come.

"I...I wanted to save her," he said vaguely, his face turning gray, "but...but...as I said, I was also in a daze...and...and..."

"Do you know it's a lie!" Mason yelled, pressing him.His strong arms were raised high, and his disfigured face was frowning, with bulging eyes, like a vengeful or wrathful god on the eaves. "You swam five hundred feet to save yourself, so it wasn't hard to save her, but you let the poor tortured girl die, didn't you?" Because, now, he was convinced he already knew How Clyde actually killed Roberta.There was something about Clyde's attitude and expression that gave rise to this conviction.Now he was determined to force that out of him as best he could.Belknap rose at once to protest, saying that his client had been injured, and that he was being unfairly seen in the minds of the jury;This request was later rejected by a judge.However, this bought Clyde time, so he could think about it before replying.But he still said softly: "No! No! I didn't. If I could, I would save her." But all the jurors noticed that his attitude was not telling the truth at all, but was really a matter of heart and soul. What a moral coward looks like, as Belknap insists repeatedly, but worse than that: he did get Roberta killed.Because every juror was listening and thinking, since he could get away calmly afterwards, why didn't he save her? Otherwise, at least he could swim to the side of the boat and help her hold on to the side of the boat?

"She only weighs a hundred pounds, doesn't she?" Mason said excitedly.

"I think so."

"What about you? How much did you weigh?"

"About 140 pounds," Clyde replied.

"A 140-pound man," Mason sneered, turning his back to the jury, "for fear of swimming near a sinking, sick, feeble little girl who weighed only a hundred pounds, and feared she'd grab him and drag him into the water." ! And it's a fine boat, big enough for three or four people, and only fifteen or twenty feet away! What do you say?"

To emphasize the point, he paused, drawing a large white handkerchief from his pocket, and mopping his neck, face, and wrists, which were damp from excitement and exertion, turning his head to Burton Burleigh. He shouted: "You can carry the boat out, Burton, anyway, you don't need it at the moment." The four police officers immediately carried the boat out.

Then he regained his composure and turned back to Clyde again: "Griffiths, you know the color of Roberta Alden's hair and how it feels to the touch, don't you? Are you close enough to her?" "

"I know the color, I think I do," said Clyde, stepping back, giving him a headache at the thought of her hair, a change that could almost be seen.

"You also know the feeling of touching it, right?" Mason continued to ask, "Before a certain lady appeared, you must have touched it frequently during that period of passionate love."

"I don't know, I don't know," Clyde replied, seeing Jefferson wink.

"Well, is it roughly rough, or is it as fine as silk? You must know, you know this?"

"Like silk, yes."

"Well, there's a strand here," he went on now, more to wear out Clyde's nerves than anything else, as he walked toward his desk.There was an envelope on the desk, and he pulled out a lock of long, light brown hair. "Is this like her hair?" Then he tucked it to Clyde.Clyde recoiled in horror and grief, as if it were something unclean or dangerous.However, after a while, I tried my best to calm down.The watchful eyes of the jury saw it all. "Oh, don't be afraid," said Mason, sneering, "it's just your dead lover's hair."

Startled by this, Clyde took the lock of hair into his hands, noticing the jury's staring eyes again. "Does this look and feel like hers?" Mason continued.

"Well, it seems so anyway," Clyde replied tremblingly.

"And," Mason continued, walking briskly toward the table and returning with the camera.Two strands of Roberta's hair were tangled between the camera's shutter and lens.This is what Burley put in it.He handed him the camera. "Here, it's yours, even though you swear it's not yours, and look at the two hairs inside, see?" He thrust the camera toward Clyde, as if to hit him with it. "The two hairs are presumed to have been entangled when you hit her lightly on the face and left these injuries. Can you tell the jury whether these hairs are actually hers?"

"I don't know," Clyde replied feebly.

"What's the matter? Say it out loud, and don't be a moral and spiritual coward. Is that hair hers?"

"I don't know," Clyde continued, but he dared not even look at the two hairs.

"Look clearly, look clearly, compare these two hairs with the other one, we know it's her hair, and you know the hair in this camera is hers, right? Don't pretend to be so disgusting, she was alive you Touching these hairs all the time, she's dead, these hairs won't bite you, these two hairs are as different as this other hair, this other hair, we know it's hers, the same color, feels like it Same, all the same, eh? Look carefully! Answer! Same different?"

Under this kind of pressure, Clyde was forced to take a look and even touch it, but he still replied cautiously: "I can't tell, it looks a bit like it, but I can't tell."

"Ah, you can't tell? And you clearly know that when you beat her with the camera, these two hairs got entangled and got entangled in it all the time, but you still say you can't tell."

"But I didn't beat her," Clyde insisted, looking at Jefferson. "I don't know." threw up.Feeling a little relieved to have achieved this effect psychologically, Mason put the camera and the lock of hair back on the table, saying, "It has been well-tested that when the camera was salvaged from the lake, the two strands of hair Up there, and you swore to yourself that the camera was in your hands before it fell into the water."

He turned to think of other things, thought of some new argument to torment Clyde, and asked again:

"Griffiths, about going south through the woods, when will you be in Three Mile Bay?"

"It was about four o'clock in the morning, and it was almost dawn."

"Before this, before the ship sailed, what were you doing?"

"I just walk around."

"In Three Mile Bay?"

"No, sir, it's near Three Mile Bay."

"I think it's in the woods. People in the street town go to the village after getting up, so they can avoid suspicion!"

(End of this chapter)