"Then they might have been acquainted, you think?" Broffin said, adding quickly: "Don't let the fact that she afterward tried to set the dogs on him twist your judgment any. She might have known the man, and still be unwilling, afterward, to shield the criminal."
Again Johnson took time to be accurate.
"I'll admit that my impression at the time was that they were acquainted," he averred, at the end of the ends. "Of course you can't bank much on that. He might have said to a perfect stranger, 'After you,' or whatever it was that he did say; and she would acknowledge the courtesy with the nod and the smile—any well-bred woman would. But you can take it for what it is worth; my thought at the moment was that they had met before; casually, perhaps, as people meet on trains or in hotels; that there was at least recognition on both sides."
Broffin was nodding slowly. It was not often that he made a confidant of a witness, even in the smaller details of a case, but he evidently considered the helpful teller an exception.
"I've been working around to that notion myself, by the smalls, as the cat eat the grind-rock," he said. "I said to myself, Would he, with the big pull-off still trembling on the edge—would he have held back for a woman he didn't know? And if he did know her, it would be a good, chunky reason why he shouldn't crowd in and take his turn: he'd have to make good or lose whatever little ante he'd been putting up in the sociable game. Now one other little thing: you counted him out the single thousand in small bills first, you said: then what happened?"
"Then I went to the vault."
"And when you came back, the young woman was gone?"
"Oh, yes; she went while Mr. Galbraith was handing me his check."
"She left before you started for the vault?"
"Yes."