"Well, they look like the ones I had there."
"Are these the ones you found in the rack at the Renfrew House and took upstairs to show Miss Alden?"
Not a little terrified by the care with which this matter of folders was now being gone into by Mason, Clyde opened them and turned them over. Even now, because the label of the Lycurgus House ("Compliments of Lycurgus House, Lycurgus, N. Y.") was stamped in red very much like the printed red lettering on the rest of the folder, he failed to notice it at first.
He turned and turned them over, and then having decided that there was no trap here, replied: "Yes, I think these are the ones."
"Well, now," went on Mason, slyly, "in which one of these was it that you found that notice of Grass Lake Inn and the rate they charged up there? Wasn't it in this one?" And here he returned the identical stamped folder, on one page of which—and the same indicated by Mason's left forefinger—was the exact notice to which Clyde had called Roberta's attention. Also in the center was a map showing the Indian Chain together with Twelfth, Big Bittern, and Grass Lakes, as well as many others, and at the bottom of this map a road plainly indicated as leading from Grass Lake and Gun Lodge south past the southern end of Big Bittern to Three Mile Bay. Now seeing this after so long a time again, he suddenly decided that it must be his knowledge of this road that Mason was seeking to establish, and a little quivery and creepy now, he replied: "Yes, it may be the one. It looks like it. I guess it is, maybe."
"Don't you know that it is?" insisted Mason, darkly and dourly. "Can't you tell from reading that item there whether it is or not?"
"Well, it looks like it," replied Clyde, evasively after examining the item which had inclined him toward Grass Lake in the first place. "I suppose maybe it is."
"You suppose! You suppose! Getting a little more cautious now that we're getting down to something practical. Well, just look at that map there again and tell me what you see. Tell me if you don't see a road marked as leading south from Grass Lake."
"Yes," replied Clyde, a little sullenly and bitterly after a time, so flayed and bruised was he by this man who was so determined to harry him to his grave. He fingered the map and pretended to took as directed, but was seeing only all that he had seen long before there in Lycurgus, so shortly before he departed for Fonda to meet Roberta. And now here it was being used against him.
"And where does it run, please? Do you mind telling the jury where it runs—from where to where?"