"Then when you lie, and swear to it, you are just the same as any other person who is not a mental and moral coward, and deserving of all the contempt and punishment due a person who is a perjurer and a false witness. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir. I suppose so."
"Well, if you are not a mental and moral coward, how can you justify your leaving that girl in that lake—after as you say you accidentally struck her and when you knew how her parents would soon be suffering because of her loss—and not say one word to anybody—just walk off—and hide the tripod and your suit and sneak away like an ordinary murderer? Wouldn't you think that that was the conduct of a man who had plotted and executed murder and was trying to get away with it—if you had heard of it about some one else? Or would you think it was just the sly, crooked trick of a man who was only a mental and moral coward and who was trying to get away from the blame for the accidental death of a girl whom he had seduced and news of which might interfere with his prosperity? Which?"
"Well, I didn't kill her, just the same," insisted Clyde.
"Answer the question!" thundered Mason.
"I ask the court to instruct the witness that he need not answer such a question," put in Jephson, rising and fixing first Clyde and then Oberwaltzer with his eye. "It is purely an argumentative one and has no real bearing on the facts in this case."
"I so instruct," replied Oberwaltzer. "The witness need not answer." Whereupon Clyde merely stared, greatly heartened by this unexpected aid.
"Well, to go on," proceeded Mason, now more nettled and annoyed than ever by this watchful effort on the part of Belknap and Jephson to break the force and significance of his each and every attack, and all the more determined not to be outdone—"you say you didn't intend to marry her if you could help it, before you went up there?"
"Yes, sir."
"That she wanted you to but you hadn't made up your mind?"