By eight o'clock the next morning the great city papers were on the
stands with the sprawling headlines, which informed every one in no
uncertain terms:
"PROSECUTION IN GRIFFITHS' CASE CLOSES WITH
IMPRESSIVE DELUGE OF TESTIMONY."
"MOTIVE AS WELL AS METHOD HAMMERED HOME."
"DESTRUCTIVE MARKS ON FACE AND HEAD SHOWN TO
CORRESPOND WITH ONE SIDE OF CAMERA."
"MOTHER OF DEAD GIRL FAINTS AT CLOSE OF
DRAMATIC READING OF HER LETTERS."
And the architectonic way in which Mason had built his case, together
with his striking and dramatic presentation of it, was sufficient to
stir in Belknap and Jephson, as well as Clyde, the momentary conviction
that they had been completely routed--that by no conceivable device
could they possibly convince this jury now that Clyde was not a
quadruple-dyed villain.
And all congratulating Mason on the masterly way he had presented his
case. And Clyde, greatly reduced and saddened by the realization that
his mother would be reading all that had transpired the day before. He
must ask Jephson to please wire her so that she would not believe it.
And Frank and Julia and Esta. And no doubt Sondra reading all this,
too, to-day, yet through all these days, all these black nights, not
one word! A reference now and then in the papers to a Miss X but at no
time a single correct picture of her. That was what a family with money
could do for you. And on this very day his defense would begin and he
would have to go forward as the only witness of any import. Yet asking
himself, _how could he?_ The crowd. Its temper. The nervous strain of
its unbelief and hatred by now. And after Belknap was through with him,
then Mason. It was all right for Belknap and Jephson. They were in no
danger of being tortured, as he was certain of being tortured.
Yet in the face of all this, and after an hour spent with Jephson and
Belknap in his cell, finding himself back in the courtroom, under the
persistent gaze of this nondescript jury and the tensely interested
audience. And now Belknap rising before the jury and after solemnly
contemplating each one of them, beginning:
"Gentlemen--somewhat over three weeks ago you were told by the district
attorney that because of the evidence he was about to present he would
insist that you jurors must find the prisoner at the bar guilty of
the crime of which he stands indicted. It has been a long and tedious
procedure since then. The foolish and inexperienced, yet in every case
innocent and unintentional, acts of a boy of fifteen or sixteen have
been gone into before you gentlemen as though they were the deeds of a
hardened criminal, and plainly with the intention of prejudicing you
against this defendant, who, with the exception of one misinterpreted
accident in Kansas City--the most brutally and savagely misinterpreted
accident it has ever been my professional misfortune to encounter--can
be said to have lived as clean and energetic and blameless and innocent
a life as any boy of his years anywhere. You have heard him called
a man--a bearded man--a criminal and a crime-soaked product of the
darkest vomiting of Hell. And yet he is but twenty-one. And there he
sits. And I venture to say that if by some magic of the spoken word I
could at this moment strip from your eye the substance of all the cruel
thoughts and emotions which have been attributed to him by a clamorous
and mistaken and I might say (if I had not been warned not to do so),
politically biased prosecution, you could no more see him in the light
that you do than you could rise out of that box and fly through those
windows.
"Gentlemen of the jury, I have no doubt that you, as well as the
district attorney and even the audience, have wondered how under the
downpour of such linked and at times almost venomous testimony, I or my
colleague or this defendant could have remained as calm and collected
as we have." (And here he waved with grave ceremoniousness in the
direction of his partner, who was still awaiting his own hour.) "Yet,
as you have seen, we have not only maintained but enjoyed the serenity
of those who not only feel but _know_ that they have the right and just
end of any legal contest. You recall, of course, the words of the Avon
bard--'Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just.'
"In fact, we know, as the prosecution in this case unfortunately does
not, the peculiarly strange and unexpected circumstances by which this
dramatic and most unfortunate death came about. And before we are
through you shall see for yourselves. In the meantime, let me tell you,
gentlemen, that since this case opened I have believed that even apart
from the light we propose to throw on this disheartening tragedy, you
gentlemen are not at all sure that a brutal or bestial crime can be
laid upon the shoulders of this defendant. You cannot be! For after
all, love is love, and the ways of passion and the destroying emotion
of love in either sex are not those of the ordinary criminal. Only
remember, we were once all boys. And those of you who are grown women
were girls, and know well--oh, how very well--the fevers and aches
of youth that have nothing to do with a later practical life. 'Judge
not, lest ye be judged and with whatsoever measure ye mete, it will be
measured unto ye again.'
"We admit the existence and charm and potent love spell of the
mysterious Miss X and her letters, which we have not been able to
introduce here, and their effect on this defendant. We admit his love
for this Miss X, and we propose to show by witnesses of our own, as
well as by analyzing some of the testimony that has been offered here,
that perhaps the sly and lecherous overtures with which this defendant
is supposed to have lured the lovely soul now so sadly and yet so
purely accidentally blotted out, as we shall show, from the straight
and narrow path of morality, were perhaps no more sly nor lecherous
than the proceedings of any youth who finds the girl of his choice
surrounded by those who see life only in the terms of the strictest and
narrowest moral régime. And, gentlemen, as your own county district
attorney has told you, Roberta Alden loved Clyde Griffiths. At the very
opening of this relationship which has since proved to be a tragedy,
this dead girl was deeply and irrevocably in love with him, just as at
the time he imagined that he was in love with her. And people who are
deeply and earnestly in love with each other are not much concerned
with the opinions of others in regard to themselves. They are in
love--and that is sufficient!
"But, gentlemen, I am not going to dwell on that phase of the question
so much as on this explanation which we are about to offer. Why did
Clyde Griffiths go to Fonda, or to Utica, or to Grass Lake, or to Big
Bittern, at all? Do you think we have any reason for or any desire
to deny or discolor in any way the fact of his having done so, or
with Roberta Alden either? Or why, after the suddenness and seeming
strangeness and mystery of her death, he should have chosen to walk
away as he did? If you seriously think so for one fraction of a moment,
you are the most hopelessly deluded and mistaken dozen jurymen it
has been our privilege to argue before in all our twenty-seven years'
contact with juries.
"Gentlemen, I have said to you that Clyde Griffiths is not guilty, and
he is not. You may think, perhaps, that we ourselves must be believing
in his guilt. But you are wrong. The peculiarity, the strangeness
of life, is such that oftentimes a man may be accused of something
that he did not do and yet every circumstance surrounding him at the
time seem to indicate that he did do it. There have been many very
pathetic and very terrible instances of miscarriages of justice through
circumstantial evidence alone. Be sure! Oh, be very sure that no such
mistaken judgment based on any local or religious or moral theory of
conduct or bias, because of presumed irrefutable evidence, is permitted
to prejudice you, so that without meaning to, and with the best and
highest-minded intentions, you yourselves see a crime, or the intention
to commit a crime, when no such crime or any such intention ever truly
or legally existed or lodged in the mind or acts of this defendant. Oh,
be sure! Be very, very sure!"
And here he paused to rest and seemed to give himself over to deep and
even melancholy thought, while Clyde, heartened by this shrewd and
defiant beginning was inclined to take more courage. But now Belknap
was talking again, and he must listen--not lose a word of all this that
was so heartening.
"When Roberta Alden's body was taken out of the water at Big Bittern,
gentlemen, it was examined by a physician. He declared at the time
that the girl had been drowned. He will be here and testify and the
defendant shall have the benefit of that testimony, and you must render
it to him.
"You were told by the district attorney that Roberta Alden and Clyde
Griffiths were engaged to be married and that she left her home at
Biltz and went forth with him on July sixth last on her wedding
journey. Now, gentlemen, it is so easy to slightly distort a certain
set of circumstances. 'Were engaged to be married' was how the district
attorney emphasized the incidents leading up to the departure on
July sixth. As a matter of fact, not one iota of any direct evidence
exists which shows that Clyde Griffiths was ever formally engaged to
Roberta Alden, or that, except for some passages in her letters, he
agreed to marry her. And those passages, gentlemen, plainly indicate
that it was only under the stress of moral and material worry, due to
her condition--for which he was responsible, of course, but which,
nevertheless, was with the consent of both--a boy of twenty-one and a
girl of twenty-three--that he agreed to marry her. Is that, I ask you,
an open and proper engagement--the kind of an engagement you think of
when you think of one at all? Mind you, I am not seeking to flout or
belittle or reflect in any way on this poor, dead girl. I am simply
stating, as a matter of fact and of law, that this boy was not formally
engaged to this dead girl. He had not given her his word beforehand
that he would marry her.... Never! There is no proof. You must give
him the benefit of that. And only because of her condition, for which
we admit he was responsible, he came forward with an agreement to
marry her, in case ... in case" (and here he paused and rested on
the phrase), "she was not willing to release him. And since she was
not willing to release him, as her various letters read here show,
that agreement, on pain of a public exposure in Lycurgus, becomes,
in the eyes and words of the district attorney, an engagement, and
not only that but a sacred engagement which no one but a scoundrel
and a thief and a murderer would attempt to sever! But, gentlemen,
many engagements, more open and sacred in the eyes of the law and of
religion, have been broken. Thousands of men and thousands of women
have seen their hearts change, their vows and faith and trust flouted,
and have even carried their wounds into the secret places of their
souls, or gone forth, and gladly, to death at their own hands because
of them. As the district attorney said in his address, it is not new
and it will never be old. Never!
"But it is such a case as this last, I warn you, that you are now
contemplating and are about to pass upon--a girl who is the victim
of such a change of mood. But that is not a legal, however great a
moral or social crime it may be. And it is only a curious and almost
unbelievably tight and yet utterly misleading set of circumstances
in connection with the death of this girl that chances to bring this
defendant before you at this time. I swear it. I truly know it to be
so. And it can and will be fully explained to your entire satisfaction
before this case is closed.
"However, in connection with this last statement, there is another
which must be made as a preface to all that is to follow.
"Gentlemen of the jury, the individual who is on trial here for his
life is a mental as well as a moral coward--no more and no less--not a
downright, hardhearted criminal by any means. Not unlike many men in
critical situations, he is a victim of a mental and moral fear complex.
Why, no one as yet has been quite able to explain. We all have one
secret bugbear or fear. And it is these two qualities, and no others,
that have placed him in the dangerous position in which he now finds
himself. It was cowardice, gentlemen--fear of a rule of the factory of
which his uncle is the owner, as well as fear of his own word given to
the officials above him, that caused him first to conceal the fact that
he was interested in the pretty country girl who had come to work for
him. And later, to conceal the fact that he was going with her.
"Yet no statutory crime of any kind there. You could not possibly
try a man for that, whatever privately you might think. And it was
cowardice, mental and moral, gentlemen, which prevented him, after he
became convinced that he could no longer endure a relationship which
had once seemed so beautiful, from saying outright that he could not
and would not continue with her, let alone marry her. Yet, will you
slay a man because he is the victim of fear? And again, after all, if
a man has once and truly decided that he cannot and will not endure a
given woman, or a woman a man--that to live with her could only prove
torturesome--what would you have that person do? Marry her? To what
end? That they may hate and despise and torture each other forever
after? Can you truly say that you agree with that as a rule, or a
method, or a law? Yet, as the defense sees it, a truly intelligent and
fair enough thing, under the circumstances, was done in this instance.
An offer, but without marriage--and alas, without avail--was made. A
suggestion for a separate life, with him working to support her while
she dwelt elsewhere. Her own letters, read only yesterday in this
court, indicate something of the kind. But the oh, so often tragic
insistence upon what in so many cases were best left undone! And then
that last, long, argumentative trip to Utica, Grass Lake, and Big
Bittern. And all to no purpose. Yet with no intention to kill or betray
unto death. Not the slightest. And we will show you why.
"Gentlemen, once more I insist that it was cowardice, mental and
moral, and not any plot or plan for any crime of any kind, that made
Clyde Griffiths travel with Roberta Alden under various aliases to all
the places I have just mentioned--that made him write 'Mr. and Mrs.
Carl Graham,' 'Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Golden'--mental and moral fear
of the great social mistake as well as sin that he had committed in
pursuing and eventually allowing himself to fall into this unhallowed
relationship with her--mental and moral fear or cowardice of what was
to follow.
"And again, it was mental and moral cowardice that prevented him
there at Big Bittern, once the waters of the lake had so accidentally
closed over her, from returning to Big Bittern Inn and making public
her death. Mental and Moral Cowardice--and nothing more and nothing
less. He was thinking of his wealthy relatives in Lycurgus, their
rule which his presence here on the lake with this girl would show to
have been broken--of the suffering and shame and rage of her parents.
And besides, there was Miss X--the brightest star in the brightest
constellation of all his dreams.
"We admit all that, and we are completely willing to concede that he
was, or must have been, thinking of all these things. The prosecution
charges, and we admit that such is the fact, that he had been so
completely ensnared by this Miss X, and she by him, that he was willing
and eager to forsake this first love who had given herself to him,
for one who, because of her beauty and her wealth, seemed so much
more desirable--even as to Roberta Alden he seemed more desirable
than others. And if she erred as to him--as plainly she did--might
not--might not he have erred eventually in his infatuated following of
one who in the ultimate--who can say?--might not have cared so much
for him. At any rate, one of his strongest fear thoughts at this time,
as he himself has confessed to us, his counsel, was that if this Miss
X learned that he had been up there with this other girl of whom she
had not even so much as heard, well then, it would mean the end of her
regard for him.
"I know that as you gentlemen view such things, such conduct has no
excuse for being. One may be the victim of an internal conflict between
two illicit moods, yet nevertheless, as the law and the church see it,
guilty of sin and crime. But the truth, none-the-less, is that they do
exist in the human heart, law or no law, religion or no religion, and
in scores of cases they motivate the actions of the victims. And we
admit that they motivated the actions of Clyde Griffiths.
"But did he kill Roberta Alden?
"No!
"And again, no!
"Or did he plot in any way, half-heartedly or otherwise, to drag her up
there under the guise of various aliases and then, because she would
not set him free, drown her? Ridiculous! Impossible! Insane! His plan
was completely and entirely different.
"But, gentlemen," and here he suddenly paused as though a new or
overlooked thought had just come to him, "perhaps you would be better
satisfied with my argument and the final judgment you are to render if
you were to have the testimony of one eye-witness at least of Roberta
Alden's death--one who, instead of just hearing a voice, was actually
present, and who saw and hence knows how she met her death."
He now looked at Jephson as much as to say: Now, Reuben, at last, here
we are! And Reuben, turning to Clyde, easily and yet with iron in his
every motion, whispered: "Well, here we are, Clyde, it's up to you now.
Only I'm going along with you, see? I've decided to examine you myself.
I've drilled and drilled you, and I guess you won't have any trouble in
telling me, will you?" He beamed on Clyde genially and encouragingly,
and Clyde, because of Belknap's strong plea as well as this newest and
best development in connection with Jephson, now stood up and with
almost a jaunty air, and one out of all proportion to his mood of but
four hours before, now whispered: "Gee! I'm glad you're going to do it.
I'll be all right now, I think."
But in the meantime the audience, hearing that an actual eyewitness
was to be produced, and not by the prosecution but the defense, was
at once upon its feet, craning and stirring. And Justice Oberwaltzer,
irritated to an exceptional degree by the informality characteristic
of this trial, was now rapping with his gavel while his clerk cried
loudly: "Order! Order! Unless everybody is seated, all spectators will
be dismissed! The deputies will please see that all are seated." And
then a hushed and strained silence falling as Belknap called: "Clyde
Griffiths, take the witness chair." And the audience--seeing to its
astonishment, Clyde, accompanied by Reuben Jephson, making his way
forward--straining and whispering in spite of all the gruff commands
of the judge and the bailiffs. And even Belknap, as he saw Jephson
approaching, being a little astonished, since it was he who according
to the original plan was to have led Clyde through his testimony. But
now Jephson drawing near to him as Clyde was being seated and sworn,
merely whispered: "Leave him to me, Alvin, I think it's best. He looks
a little too strained and shaky to suit me, but I feel sure I can pull
him through."
And then the audience noting the change and whispering in regard to it.
And Clyde, his large nervous eyes turning here and there, thinking:
Well, I'm on the witness stand at last. And now everybody's watching
me, of course. I must look very calm, like I didn't care so very much,
because I didn't really kill her. That's right, I didn't. Yet his skin
blue and the lids of his eyes red and puffy and his hands trembling
slightly in spite of himself. And Jephson, his long, tensile and
dynamic body like that of a swaying birch, turning toward him and
looking fixedly into Clyde's brown eyes with his blue ones, beginning:
"Now, Clyde, the first thing we want to do is make sure that the jury
and every one else hears our questions and answers. And next, when
you're all set, you're going to begin with your life as you remember
it--where you were born, where you came from, what your father did and
your mother, too, and finally, what you did and why, from the time you
went to work until now. I may interrupt you with a few questions now
and then, but in the main I'm going to let you tell it, because I know
you can tell it better than any one." Yet in order to reassure Clyde
and to make him know each moment that he was there--a wall, a bulwark,
between him and the eager, straining, unbelieving and hating crowd--he
now drew nearer, at times so close as to put one foot on the witness
stand, or if not that to lean forward and lay a hand on the arm of the
chair in which Clyde sat. And all the while saying, "Yay-uss--Yay-uss."
"And then what?" "And then?" And invariably at the strong and tonic or
protective sound of his voice Clyde stirring as with a bolstering force
and finding himself able, and without shaking or quavering, to tell the
short but straitened story of his youth.
"I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My parents were conducting a
mission there at that time and used to hold open air meetings...."