"Well now, don't you recall that you never asked the boatman at all? It was not thirty-five cents an hour, but fifty cents. But of course you do not know that because you were in such a hurry to get out on the water and you did not expect to have to come back and pay for it anyway. So you never even asked, you see. Do you see? Do you recall that now?" And here Mason produced a bill that he had gotten from the boatman and waved it in front of Clyde. "It was fifty cents an hour," he repeated. "They charge more than at Grass Lake. But what I want to know is, if you are so familiar with these other figures, as you have just shown that you are, how comes it that you are not familiar with this figure? Didn't you think of the expense of taking her out in a boat and keeping the boat from noon until night?" The attack came so swiftly and bitterly that at once Clyde was confused. He twisted and turned, swallowed and looked nervously at the floor, ashamed to look at Jephson who had somehow failed to coach him as to this.
"Well," bawled Mason, "any explanation to make as to that? Doesn't it strike even you as strange that you can remember every other item of all your expenditures—but not that item?" And now each juror was once more tense and leaning forward. And Clyde noting their interest and curiosity, and most likely suspicion, now returned:
"Well, I don't know just how I came to forget that."
"Oh, no, of course you don't" snorted Mason. "A man who is planning to kill a girl on a lone lake has a lot of things to think of, and it isn't any wonder if you forget a few of them. But you didn't forget to ask the purser the fare to Sharon, once you got to Three Mile Bay, did you?"
"I don't remember if I did or not."
"Well, he remembers. He testified to it here. You bothered to ask the price of the room at Grass Lake. You asked the price of the boat there. You even asked the price of the bus fare to Big Bittern. What a pity you couldn't think to ask the price of the boat at Big Bittern? You wouldn't be so nervous about it now, would you?" and here Mason looked at the jurors as much as to say: You see!
"I just didn't think of it, I guess," repeated Clyde.
"A very satisfactory explanation, I'm sure," went on Mason, sarcastically. And then as swiftly as possible: "I don't suppose you happen to recall an item of thirteen dollars and twenty cents paid for a lunch at the Casino on July ninth—the day after Roberta Alden's death—-do you or do you not?" Mason was dramatic, persistent, swift—scarcely giving him time to think or breathe, as he saw it.
At this Clyde almost jumped, so startled was he by this question and charge, for he did not know that they had found out about the lunch. "And do you remember, too," went on Mason, "that over eighty dollars was found on you when you were arrested?"
"Yes, I remember it now," he replied.