at once, after meditating sharply on the wisdom of his course, he decided to proceed to Sharon and Pine Point himself. But in the meantime being furnished with an accurate description of Clyde, he now furnished this as well as the fact that he was wanted for murder, not only to the district attorney and the chief of police of Lycurgus, but to Newton Slack, the sheriff at Bridgeburg, as well as to Heit and his own assistant, urging all three to proceed at once to Sharon, where he would meet them.
At the same time, speaking as though for Mrs. Peyton, he now called upon the long distance telephone the Cranston lodge at Pine Point, and getting the butler on the wire, inquired whether Mr. Clyde Griffiths chanced to be there. “Yes sir, he is, sir, but he’s not here now, sir. I think he’s on a camping party farther up the lake, sir. Any message, sir?” And in response to further inquiries, he replied that he could not say exactly – a party had gone, presumably, to Bear Lake some thirty miles farther up, but when it would return he could not say – not likely before a day or two. But distinctly this same Clyde was with that party.
And at once Mason recalled the sheriff at Bridgeburg, instructing him to take four or five deputies with him so that the searching party might divide at Sharon and seize this same Clyde wherever he chanced to be. And throw him in jail at Bridgeburg, where he could explain, with all due process of law, the startling circumstances that thus far seemed to unescapably point to him as the murderer of Roberta Alden.
Chapter 6
In the interim the mental state of Clyde since that hour when, the water closing over Roberta, he had made his way to the shore, and then, after changing his clothes, had subsequently arrived at Sharon and the lakeside lodge of the Cranstons, was almost one of complete mental derangement, mainly caused by fear and confusion in his own mind as to whether he did or did not bring about her untimely end. At the same time at the lakeside the realization that if by any chance he were then and there found, skulking south rather than returning north to the inn at Big Bittern to report this seeming accident, there would be sufficient hardness and cruelty to the look of it all to convince any one that a charge of murder should be made against him, had fiercely tortured him. For, as he now saw it, he really was not guilty – was he, since at the last moment he had experienced that change of heart?
But who was going to believe that now, since he did not go back to explain? And it would never do to go back now! For if Sondra should hear that he had been on this lake with this factory girl – that he had registered with her as husband and wife… God!
And then trying to explain to his uncle afterwards, or his cold, hard cousin – or all those smart, cynical Lycurgus people! No! No! Having gone so far he must go on. Disaster – if not death – lay in the opposite direction. He would have to make the best of this terrible situation – make the best of this plan that had ended so strangely and somewhat exculpatorily for him.
And yet these woods! This approaching night. The eerie loneliness and danger of it all now. How now to do, what to say, if met by any one. He was so confused – mentally and nervously sick. The crackle of a twig and he leaped forward as a hare.
And in this state it was that, after having recovered his bag and changed his clothes, wringing out his wet suit and attempting to dry it, then packing it in his bag under some dry twigs and pine-needles and burying the tripod beneath a rotting log, that he plunged into the woods after night had fallen. Yet meditating more and more on his very strange and perilous position. For supposing, just as he had unintentionally struck at her, and they had fallen into the water and she uttered those piercing and appealing cries, there had been some one on the shore – some one watching – one of those strong, hardy men whom he had seen loitering about during the day and who might even at this moment be sounding a local alarm that would bring a score of such men to the work of hunting for him this very night! A man hunt! And they would take him back and no one would ever believe that he had not intentionally struck her! They might even lynch him before he could so much as secure a fair trial. It was possible. It had been done. A rope around his neck. Or shot down in these woods, maybe. And without an opportunity to explain how it had all come about – how harried and tortured he had been by her for so long. They would never understand that.
And so thinking he hurried faster and faster – as fast as strong and serried and brambly young firs and dead branches that cracked most ominously at times would permit, thinking always as he went that the road to Three Mile Bay must be to his right hand, the moon to his left when it should rise.
But, God, what was that?
Oh, that terrible sound!
Like a whimpering, screeching spirit in this dark!
There!
What was it?
He dropped his bag and in a cold sweat sunk down, crouching behind a tall, thick tree, rigid and motionless with fear.
That sound!
But only a screech-owl! He had heard it several weeks before at the Cranston lodge. But here! In this wood! This dark! He must be getting on and out of here. There was no doubt of that. He must not be thinking such horrible, fearful thoughts, or he would not be able to keep up his strength or courage at all.
But that look in the eyes of Roberta! That last appealing look! God! He could not keep from seeing it! Her mournful, terrible screams! Could he not cease from hearing them – until he got out of here anyhow?
Had she understood, when he struck her, that it was not intentional – a mere gesture of anger and protest? Did she know that NOW, wherever she was – in the bottom of the lake – or here in the dark of these woods beside him, mayhap? Ghosts! Hers. But he must get out of this – out of this! He must – and yet the safety of these woods, too. He must not be too brash in stepping out into any road, either. Pedestrians! People in search of him, maybe! But did people really live after death? Were there ghosts? And did they know the truth? Then she must know – but how he plotted before that, too. And what would she think of that! And was she here now reproachfully and gloomily pursuing him with mistaken accusations, as true as it might be that he had intended to kill her at first? He had! He had! And that was the great sin, of course. Even though he had not killed her, yet something had done it for him! That was true.
But ghosts – God – spirits that might pursue you after they were dead, seeking to expose and punish you – seeking to set people on your track, maybe! Who could tell? His mother had confessed to him and Frank and Esta and Julia that she believed in ghosts.
And then at last the moon, after three such hours of stumbling, listening, waiting, perspiring, trembling. No one in sight now, thank God! And the stars overhead – bright and yet soft, as at Pine Point where Sondra was. If she could see him now, slipping away from Roberta dead in that lake, his own hat upon the waters there! If she could have heard Roberta’s cries! How strange, that never, never, never would he be able to tell her that because of her, her beauty, his passion for her and all that she had come to mean to him, he had been able to… to… to… well, ATTEMPT this terrible thing – kill a girl whom once he had loved. And all his life he would have this with him, now – this thought! He would never be able to shake it off – never, never, never. And he had not thought of that, before. It was a terrible thing in its way, just that, wasn’t it?
But then suddenly there in the dark, at about eleven o’clock, as he afterwards guessed, the water having stopped his watch, and after he had reached the highroad to the west – and walked a mile or two – those three men, quick, like ghosts coming out of the shadow of the woods. He thought at first that having seen him at the moment he had struck Roberta or the moment afterward, they had now come to take him. The sweating horror of that moment! And that boy who had held up the light the better to see his face. And no doubt he had evinced most suspicious fear and perturbation, since at the moment he was most deeply brooding on all
