An American Tragedy III

“Well, Colonel Heit?”

“Well, Orville, I’m just back from Big Bittern. It looks to me as though I’ve got a case for you now that’s going to take quite a little of your time.”

Heit’s large eyes bulged and conveyed hints of much more than was implied by his non-committal opening remark.

“You mean that drowning up there?” returned the district attorney.

“Yes, sir. Just that,” replied the coroner.

“You’ve some reason for thinking there’s something wrong up there?”

“Well, the truth is, Orville, I think there’s hardly a doubt that this is a case of murder.” Heit’s heavy eyes glowed somberly. “Of course, it’s best to be on the safe side, and I’m only telling you this in confidence, because even yet I’m not absolutely positive that that young man’s body may not be in the lake. But it looks mighty suspicious to me, Orville. There’s been at least fifteen men up there in row-boats all day yesterday and to-day, dragging the south part of that lake. I had a number of the boys take soundings here and there, and the water ain’t more than twenty-five feet deep at any point. But so far they haven’t found any trace of him. They brought her up about one o’clock yesterday, after they’d been only dragging a few hours, and a mighty pretty girl she is too, Orville – quite young – not more than eighteen or twenty, I should say. But there are some very suspicious circumstances about it all that make me think that he ain’t in there. In fact, I never saw a case that I thought looked more like a devilish crime than this.”

As he said this, he began to search in the right-hand pocket of his well-worn and baggy linen suit and finally extracted Roberta’s letter, which he handed his friend, drawing up a chair and seating himself while the district attorney proceeded to read.

“Well, this does look rather suspicious, don’t it?” he announced, as he finished. “You say they haven’t found him yet. Well, have you communicated with this woman to see what she knows about it?”

“No, Orville, I haven’t,” replied Heit, slowly and meditatively. “And I’ll tell you why. The fact is, I decided up there last night that this was something I had better talk over with you before I did anything at all. You know what the political situation here is just now. And how the proper handling of a case like this is likely to affect public opinion this fall. And while I certainly don’t think we ought to mix politics in with crime there certainly is no reason why we shouldn’t handle this in such a way as to make it count in our favor. And so I thought I had better come and see you first. Of course, if you want me to, Orville, I’ll go over there. Only I was thinking that perhaps it would be better for you to go, and find out just who this fellow is and all about him. You know what a case like this might mean from a political point of view, if only we clean it up, and I know you’re the one to do it, Orville.”

“Thanks, Fred, thanks,” replied Mason, solemnly, tapping his desk with the letter and squinting at his friend. “I’m grateful to you for your opinion and you’ve outlined the very best way to go about it, I think. You’re sure no one outside yourself has seen this letter?”

“Only the envelope. And no one but Mr. Hubbard, the proprietor of the inn up there, has seen that, and he told me that he found it in her pocket and took charge of it for fear it might disappear or be opened before I got there. He said he had a feeling there might be something wrong the moment he heard of the drowning. The young man had acted so nervous – strange-like, he said.”

“Very good, Fred. Then don’t say anything more about it to any one for the present, will you? I’ll go right over there, of course. But what else did you find, anything?” Mr. Mason was quite alive now, interrogative, dynamic, and a bit dictatorial in his manner, even to his old friend.

“Plenty, plenty,” replied the coroner, most sagely and solemnly. “There were some suspicious cuts or marks under the girl’s right eye and above the left temple, Orville, and across the lip and nose, as though the poor little thing mighta been hit by something – a stone or a stick or one of those oars that they found floating up there. She’s just a child yet, Orville, in looks and size, anyhow – a very pretty girl – but not as good as she might have been, as I’ll show you presently.” At this point the coroner paused to extract a large handkerchief and blow into it a very loud blast, brushing his beard afterward in a most orderly way. “I didn’t have time to get a doctor up there and besides I’m going to hold the inquest down here, Monday, if I can. I’ve ordered the Lutz boys to go up there to-day and bring her body down. But the most suspicious of all the evidence that has come to light so far, Orville, is the testimony of two men and a boy who live up at Three Mile Bay and who were walking up to Big Bittern on Thursday night to hunt and fish. I had Earl take down their names and subpoena ’em for the inquest next Monday.”

And the coroner proceeded to detail their testimony about their accidental meeting of Clyde.

“Well, well!” interjected the district attorney, thoroughly interested.

“Then, another thing, Orville,” continued the coroner, “I had Earl telephone the Three Mile Bay people, the owner of the hotel there as well as the postmaster and the town marshal, but the only person who appears to have seen the young man is the captain of that little steamboat that runs from Three Mile Bay to Sharon. You know the man, I guess, Captain Mooney. I left word with Earl to subpoena him too. According to him, about eight-thirty, Friday morning, or just before his boat started for Sharon on its first trip, this same young man, or some one very much like the description furnished, carrying a suitcase and wearing a cap – he had on a straw hat when those three men met him – came on board and paid his way to Sharon and got off there. Good-looking young chap, the captain says. Very spry and well-dressed, more like a young society man than anything else, and very stand-offish.”

“Yes, yes,” commented Mason.

“I also had Earl telephone the people at Sharon – whoever he could reach – to see if he had been seen there getting off, but up to the time I left last night no one seemed to remember him. But I left word for Earl to telegraph a description of him to all the resort hotels and stations hereabouts so that if he’s anywhere around, they’ll be on the lookout for him. I thought you’d want me to do that. But I think you’d better give me a writ for that bag at Gun Lodge station. That may contain something we ought to know. I’ll go up and get it myself. Then I want to go to Grass Lake and Three Mile Bay and Sharon yet to-day, if I can, and see what else I can find. But I’m afraid, Orville, it’s a plain case of murder. The way he took that young girl to that hotel up there at Grass Lake and then registered under another name at Big Bittern, and the way he had her leave her bag and took his own with him!” He shook his head most solemnly. “Those are not the actions of an honest young man, Orville, and you know it. What I can’t understand is how her parents could let her go off like that anywhere with a man without knowing about him in the first place.”

“That’s true,” replied Mason, tactfully, but made intensely curious by the fact that it had at least been partially established that the girl in the case was not as good as she should have been. Adultery! And with some youth of means, no doubt, from some one of the big cities to the south. The prominence and publicity with which his own activities in connection with this were very likely to be laden! At once he got up, energetically stirred. If he could only catch such a reptilian criminal, and that in the face of all the sentiment that such a brutal murder was likely to inspire! The August convention and nominations. The fall election.

“Well, I’ll be switched,” he exclaimed, the presence of Heit, a religious and conservative man, suppressing anything more emphatic. “I do believe we’re on the trail of something important, Fred. I really think so. It looks very black to me – a most damnable outrage. I suppose the first thing to do, really, is to telephone over there and see if there is such a family as Alden and exactly where they live. It’s not more than fifty miles direct by car, if that much. Poor roads, though,” he added. Then: “That poor woman. I dread that scene. It will be a painful one, I know.”

Then he called Zillah and asked her to ascertain if there was such a person as Titus Alden living near Biltz. Also, exactly how to get there. Next he added: “The first thing to do will be to get Burton back here” (Burton being Burton Burleigh, his legal assistant, who had gone away for a week-end vacation) “and put him in charge so as to furnish you whatever you need in the way of writs and so on, Fred, while I go right over to see this poor woman. And then, if you’ll have Earl go back up there and get that suitcase, I’ll be most obliged to you. I’ll bring the father back with me, too, to identify the body. But don’t say anything at all about this letter now or my going over there until I see you later, see.” He grasped the hand of his friend. “In the meantime,” he went on, a little grandiosely, now feeling the tang of great affairs upon him, “I want to thank you, Fred. I certainly do, and I won’t forget it, either. You know that, don’t you?” He looked his old friend squarely in the eye. “This may turn out better than we think. It looks to be the biggest and most important case in all my term of office, and if we can only clean it up satisfactorily and quickly, before things break here this fall, it may do us all some good, eh?”

“Quite so, Orville, quite so,” commented Fred Heit. “Not, as I said before, that I think we ought to mix politics in with a thing like this, but since it has come about so – ” he paused, meditatively.

“And in the meantime,” continued the district attorney “if you’ll have Earl have some pictures made of the exact position where the boat, oars, and hat were found, as well as mark the spot where the body was found, and subpoena as many witnesses as you can, I’ll have vouchers for it all put through with the auditor. And to-morrow or Monday I’ll pitch in and help myself.”

And here he gripped Heit’s right hand – then patted him on the shoulder. And Heit, much gratified by his various moves so far – and in consequence hopeful for the future – now took up his weird straw hat and buttoning his thin, loose coat, returned to his office to get his faithful Earl on the long distance telephone to instruct him and to say that he was returning to the scene of the crime himself.

Chapter 4

Orville Mason could readily sympathize with a family which on sight struck him as having, perhaps, like himself endured the whips, the scorns and contumelies of life. As he drove up in his official car from Bridgeburg at about four o’clock that Saturday afternoon, there was the old tatterdemalion farmhouse and Titus Alden himself in his shirt-sleeves and overalls coming up from a pig-pen at the foot of the hill, his face and body suggesting a man who is constantly conscious of the fact that he has made out so poorly. And now Mason regretted that he had not telephoned before leaving Bridgeburg, for he could see that the news of his daughter’s death would shock such a man as this most terribly. At the same time, Titus, noting his approach and assuming that it might be some one who was seeking a direction, civilly approached him.

“Is this Mr. Titus Alden?”

“Yes, sir, that’s my name.”

“Mr. Alden, my name is Mason. I am from Bridgeburg, district attorney of Cataraqui County.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Titus, wondering by what strange chance the district attorney of so distant a county should be approaching and inquiring of him. And Mason now looked at Titus, not knowing just how to begin. The bitterness of the news he had to impart – the crumpling power of it upon such an obviously feeble and inadequate soul. They had paused under one of the large, dark fir trees that stood in front of the house. The wind in its needles was whispering its world-old murmur.

“Mr. Alden,” began Mason, with more solemnity and delicacy than ordinarily characterized him, “you are the father of a girl by the name of Bert, or possibly Alberta, are you not? I’m not sure that I have the name right.”

“Roberta,” corrected Titus Alden, a titillating sense of something untoward affecting his nerves as he said it.

And Mason, before making it impossible, probably, for this man to connectedly inform him concerning all that he wished to know, now proceeded to inquire: “By the way, do you happen to know a young man around here by the name of Clifford Golden?”

“I don’t recall that I ever hard of any such person,” replied Titus, slowly.

“Or Carl Graham?”

“No, sir. No one by that name either that I recall now.”

“I thought so,” exclaimed Mason, more to himself than to Titus. “By the way,” this shrewdly and commandingly, “where is your daughter now?”

“Why, she’s in Lycurgus at present. She works there. But why do you ask? Has she done anything she shouldn’t – been to see you about anything?” He achieved a wry smile while his gray-blue eyes were by now perturbed by puzzled inquiry.

“One moment, Mr. Alden,” proceeded Mason, tenderly and yet most firmly and effectively. “I will explain everything to you in a moment. Just now I want to ask a few necessary questions.” And he gazed at Titus earnestly and sympathetically. “How long has it been since you last saw your daughter?”

“Why, she left here last Tuesday morning to go back to Lycurgus. She works down there for the Griffiths Collar & Shirt Company. But – ?”

“Now, one moment,” insisted the district attorney determinedly, “I’ll explain all in a moment. She was up here over the week-end, possibly. Is that it?”

“She was up here on a vacation for about a month,” explained Titus, slowly and meticulously. “She wasn’t feeling so very good and she came home to rest up a bit. But she was all right when she left. You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Mason, that anything has gone wrong with her, do you?” He lifted one long, brown hand to his chin and cheek in a gesture, of nervous inquiry. “If I thought there was anything like that – ?” He ran his hand through his thinning gray hair.

“Have you had any word from her since she left here?” Mason went on quietly, determined to extract as much practical information as possible before the great blow fell. “Any information that she was going anywhere but back there?”

“No, sir, we haven’t. She’s not hurt in any way, is she? She’s not done anything that’s got her into trouble? But, no, that couldn’t be. But your questions! The way you talk.” He was now trembling slightly, the hand that sought his thin, pale lips, visibly and aimlessly playing about his mouth. But instead of answering, the district attorney drew from his pocket the letter of Roberta to her mother, and displaying only the handwriting on the envelope, asked: “Is that the handwriting of your daughter?”

“Yes, sir, that’s her handwriting,” replied Titus, his voice rising slightly. “But what is this, Mr. District Attorney? How do you come to have that? What’s in there?” He clinched his hands in a nervous way, for in Mason’s eyes he now clearly foresaw tragedy in some form. “What is this – this – what has she written in that letter? You must tell me – if anything has happened to my girl!” He began to look excitedly about as though it were his intention to return to the house for aid – to communicate to his wife the dread that was coming upon him – while Mason, seeing the agony into which he had plunged him, at once seized him firmly and yet kindly by the arms and began:

“Mr. Alden, this is one of those dark times in the lives of some of us when all the courage we have is most needed. I hesitate to tell you because I am a man who has seen something of life and I know how you will suffer.”

“She is hurt. She is dead, maybe,” exclaimed Titus, almost shrilly, the pupils of his eyes dilating.

Orville Mason nodded.

“Roberta! My first born! My God! Our Heavenly Father!” His body crumpled as though from a blow and he leaned to steady himself against an adjacent tree. “But how? Where? In the factory by a machine? Oh, dear God!” He turned as though to go to his wife, while the strong, scar-nosed district attorney sought to detain him.

“One moment, Mr. Alden, one moment. You must not go to your wife yet. I know this is very hard, terrible, but let me explain. Not in Lycurgus. Not by any machine. No! No – drowned! In Big Bittern. She was up there on an outing on Thursday, do you understand? Do you hear? Thursday. She was drowned in Big Bittern on Thursday in a boat. It overturned.”

The excited gestures and words of Titus at this point so disturbed the district attorney that he found himself unable to explain as calmly as he would have liked the process by which even an assumed accidental drowning had come about. From the moment the word death in connection with Roberta had been used by Mason, the mental state of Alden was that of one not a little demented. After his first demands he now began to vent a series of animal-like groans as though the breath had been knocked from his body. At the same time, he bent over, crumpled up as from pain – then struck his hands together and threw them to his temples.

“My Roberta dead! My daughter! Oh, no, no, Roberta! Oh, my God! Not drowned! It can’t be. And her mother speaking of her only an hour ago. This will be the death of her when she hears it. It will kill me, too. Yes, it will. Oh, my poor, dear, dear girl. My darling! I’m not strong enough to stand anything like this, Mr. District Attorney.”

He leaned heavily and wearily upon Mason’s arms while the latter sustained him as best he could. Then, after a moment, he turned questioningly and erratically toward the front door of the house at which he gazed as one might who was wholly demented. “Who’s to tell her?” he demanded. “How is any one to tell her?”

“But, Mr. Alden,” consoled Mason, “for your own sake, for your wife’s sake, I must ask you now to calm yourself and help me consider this matter as seriously as you would if it were not your daughter. There is much more to this than I have been able to tell you. But you must be calm. You must allow me to explain. This is all very terrible and I sympathize with you wholly. I know what it means. But there are some dreadful and painful facts that you will have to know about. Listen. Listen.”

And then, still holding Titus by the arm he proceeded to explain as swiftly and forcefully as possible, the various additional facts and suspicions in connection with the death of Roberta, finally giving him her letter to read, and winding up with: “A crime! A crime, Mr. Alden! That’s what we think over in Bridgeburg, or at least that’s what we’re afraid of – plain murder, Mr. Alden, to use a hard, cold word in connection with it.” He paused while Alden, struck by this – the element of crime – gazed as one not quite able to comprehend. And, as he gazed, Mason went on: “And as much as I respect your feelings, still as the chief representative of the law in my county, I felt it to be my personal duty to come here to-day in order to find out whether there is anything that you or your wife or any of your family know about this Clifford Golden, or Carl Graham, or whoever he is who lured your daughter to that lonely lake up there. And while I know that the blackest of suffering is yours right now, Mr. Alden, I maintain that it should be your wish, as well as your duty, to do whatever you can to help us clear up this matter. This letter here seems to indicate that your wife at least knows something concerning this individual – his name, anyhow.” And he tapped the letter significantly and urgently.

The moment the suggested element of violence and wrong against his daughter had been injected into this bitter loss, there was sufficient animal instinct, as well as curiosity, resentment and love of the chase inherent in Titus to cause him to recover his balance sufficiently to give silent and solemn ear to what the district attorney was saying. His daughter not only drowned, but murdered, and that by some youth who according to this letter she was intending to marry! And he, her father, not even aware of his existence! Strange that his wife should know and he not. And that Roberta should not want him to know.

And at once, born for the most part of religion, convention and a general rural suspicion of all urban life and the mystery and involuteness of its ungodly ways, there sprang into his mind the thought of a city seducer and betrayer – some youth of means, probably, whom Roberta had met since going to Lycurgus and who had been able to seduce her by a promise of marriage which he was not willing to fulfil. And forthwith there flared up in his mind a terrible and quite uncontrollable desire for revenge upon any one who could plot so horrible a crime as this against his daughter. The scoundrel! The raper! The murderer!

Here he and his wife had been thinking that Roberta was quietly and earnestly and happily pursuing her hard, honest way in Lycurgus in order to help them and herself. And from Thursday afternoon until Friday her body had lain beneath the waters of that lake. And they asleep in their comfortable beds, or walking about, totally unaware of her dread state. And now her body in a strange room or morgue somewhere, unseen and unattended by any of all those who loved her so – and tomorrow to be removed by cold, indifferent public officials to Bridgeburg.

“If there is a God,” he exclaimed excitedly, “He will not let such a scoundrel as this go unpunished! Oh, no, He will not! ‘I have yet to see,’” he suddenly quoted, “‘the children of the righteous forsaken or their seed begging for bread.’” At the same time, a quivering compulsion for action dominating him, he added: “I must talk to my wife about this right away. Oh, yes, I must. No, no, you wait here. I must tell her first, and alone. I’ll be back. I’ll be back. You just wait here. I know it will kill her. But she must know about this. Maybe she can tell us who this is and then we can catch him before he manages to get too far away. But, oh, my poor girl! My poor, dear Roberta! My good, kind, faithful daughter!”

And so, talking in a maundering manner, his eyes and face betraying an only half-sane misery, he turned, the shambling, automaton-like motions of his angular figure now directing him to a lean-to, where, as he knew, Mrs. Alden was preparing some extra dishes for the next day, which was Sunday. But once there he paused in the doorway without the courage to approach further, a man expressing in himself all the pathos of helpless humanity in the face of the relentless and inexplicable and indifferent forces of Life!

Mrs. Alden turned, and at the sight of his strained expression, dropped her own hands lifelessly, the message of his eyes as instantly putting to flight the simple, weary and yet peaceful contemplation in her own.

“Titus! For goodness’ sake! Whatever IS the matter?”

Lifted hands, half-open mouth, an eerie, eccentric and uncalculated tensing and then widening of the eyelids, and then the word: “Roberta!”

“What about her? What about her? Titus – what about her?”

Silence. More of those nervous twitchings of the mouth eyes, hands. Then… “Dead! She’s been – been drowned!” followed by his complete collapse on a bench that stood just inside the door. And Mrs. Alden, staring for a moment, at first not quite comprehending, then fully realizing, sinking heavily and without a word to the floor. And Titus, looking at her and nodding his head as if to say: “Quite right. So should it be. Momentary escape for her from the contemplation of this horrible fact.” And then slowly rising, going to her and kneeling beside her, straightening her out. Then as slowly going out to the door and around to the front of the house where Orville Mason was seated on the broken front steps, contemplating speculatively along with the afternoon sun in the west the misery that this lorn and incompetent farmer was conveying to his wife. And wishing for the moment that it might be otherwise – that no such case, however profitable to himself, had arisen.

But now, at sight of Titus Alden, he jumped up and preceded the skeleton-like figure into the lean-to. And finding Mrs. Alden, as small as her daughter nearly, and limp and still, he gathered her into his strong arms and carried her through the dining-room into the living-room, where stood an antiquated lounge, on which he laid her. And there, feeling for her pulse, and then hurrying for some water, while he looked for some one – a son, daughter, neighbor, any one. But not seeing any one, hurrying back with the water to dash a little of it on her face and hands.