"You'd swear to that as quick as you would to anything else?"
"Well, I have sworn to it."
And Mason as well as Belknap and Jephson and Clyde himself now felt the strong public contempt and rage that the majority of those present had for him from the start—now surging and shaking all. It filled the room. Yet before him were all the hours Mason needed in which he could pick and choose at random from the mass of testimony as to just what he would quiz and bedevil and torture Clyde with next. And so now, looking over his notes—arranged fan-wise on the table by Earl Newcomb for his convenience—he now began once more with:
"Griffiths, in your testimony here yesterday, through which you were being led by your counsel, Mr. Jephson" (at this Jephson bowed sardonically). "You talked about that change of heart that you experienced after you encountered Roberta Alden once more at Fonda and Utica back there in July—just as you were starting on this death trip."
Clyde's "yes, sir," came before Belknap could object, but the latter managed to have "death trip" changed to "trip."
"Before going up there with her you hadn't been liking her as much as you might have. Wasn't that the way of it?"
"Not as much as I had at one time—no, sir."
"And just how long—from when to when—was the time in which you really did like her, before you began to dislike her, I mean?"
"Well, from the time I first met her until I met Miss X."
"But not afterwards?"