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By Root 20204 0

her to cling to the overturned boat. And Clyde explaining, as before, that he was afraid of being dragged down, but adding now, for the first time, that he had called to her to hang on to the boat, whereas previously he had said that the boat drifted away from them. And Smillie recalled that Mason had told him this. Also, in connection with Clyde’s story of the wind blowing his hat off, Mason had said he could prove by witnesses, as well as the U. S. Government reports, that there was not a breath of air stirring on that most halcyon day. And so, plainly, Clyde was lying. His story was too thin. Yet Smillie, not wishing to embarrass him, kept saying: “Oh, I see,” or, “To be sure,” or “That’s the way it was, was it?”

And then finally asking about the marks on Roberta’s face and head. For Mason had called his attention to them and insisted that no blow from a boat would make both abrasions. But Clyde sure that the boat had only struck her once and that all the bruises had come from that or else he could not guess from what they had come. But then beginning to see how hopeless was all this explanation. For it was so plain from his restless, troubled manner that Smillie did not believe him. Quite obviously he considered his not having aided Roberta as dastardly—a thin excuse for letting her die.

And so, too weary and disheartened to lie more, finally ceasing. And Smillie, too sorry and disturbed to wish to catechize or confuse him further, fidgeting and fumbling and finally declaring: “Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to be going now, Clyde. The roads are pretty bad between here and Sharon. But I’ve been mighty glad to hear your side of it. And I’ll present it to your uncle just as you have told it to me. But in the meantime, if I were you, I wouldn’t do any more talking than I could help—not until you hear further from me. I was instructed to find an attorney up here to handle this case for you, if I could, but since it’s late and Mr. Brookhart, our chief counsel, will be back tomorrow, I think I’ll just wait until I can talk to him. So if you’ll take my advice, you’ll just not say anything until you hear from him or me. Either he’ll come or he’ll send some one—he’ll bring a letter from me, whoever he is, and then he’ll advise you.”

And with this parting admonition, leaving Clyde to his thoughts and himself feeling no least doubt of his guilt and that nothing less than the Griffiths’ millions, if so they chose to spend them, could save him from a fate which was no doubt due him.

Chapter 13

And then on the following morning Samuel Griffiths, with his own son Gilbert standing by, in the large drawing room of their Wykeagy Avenue mansion, listening to Smillie’s report of his conference with Clyde and Mason. And Smillie reporting all he had heard and seen. And with Gilbert Griffiths, unbelievably shaken and infuriated by all this, exclaiming at one point:

“Why, the little devil! The little beast! But what did I tell you, Dad? Didn’t I warn you against bringing him on?”

And Samuel Griffiths after meditating on this reference to his earlier sympathetic folly now giving Gilbert a most suggestive and intensely troubled look, which said: Are we here to discuss the folly of my original, if foolish, good intentions, or the present crisis? And Gilbert thinking: The murderer! And that wretched little show-off, Sondra Finchley, trying to make something of him in order to spite me, Gilbert, principally, and so getting herself smirched. The little fool! But it served her right. She would get her share of this now. Only it would cause him and his father and all of them infinite trouble also. For was this not an ineradicable stain which was likely to defile all—himself, his fiancee, Bella, Myra, his parents—and perhaps cost them their position here in Lycurgus society? The tragedy! Maybe an execution! And in this family!

Yet Samuel Griffiths, on his part, going back in his mind to all that had occurred since Clyde had arrived in Lycurgus.

His being left to work in that basement at first and ignored by the family. Left to his own devices