“You mean you can’t wait on them as rapidly when there’s a crowd?”
“No,” the witness said, “that’s when we do wait on them. When there’s a crowd, it means the restaurant is losing money every time anyone finds the joint filled and goes away. So we always try to shovel the grub into the customers so we can clear out the tables. When business is slack, restaurants figure it’s a poor ad to look barren and deserted with just one or two people eating. So then we stall the customers along, and hold them just as long as we dare. That way people coming along the streets look in through the windows, and see a pretty fair crowd, and figure it’s a good place to eat.”
“In other words,” Mason said with a grin, “regardless of our own convenience, we customers are held as living advertisements when we enter a restaurant during the slack time.”
“Well, customers make swell window dressing if that’s what you mean,” Baker said.
“That’s what I mean,” Mason told him affably. “Thank you.”
“The next witness,” Kittering announced, “will be William Bitner.”
Bitner proved to be a handwriting and fingerprint expert who qualified himself as an expert in his profession, and started the long routine of introducing exhibits, photographs of latent fingerprints found upon doorknobs, bureau drawers, table tops, glassware.
Time droned on endlessly while the tedious process of identifying each photograph went on. Then when the photograph had been introduced, handed to counsel for inspection, and received as an exhibit, it was necessary to wait while the court made the necessary identification; and then the process went on again. Kittering, with a mind which reveled in detail, paused to make sure that the exhibits were properly numbered in numerical order.
When he had finished with some forty-two exhibits, he started exploding his bombshell, a bombshell which was legally powerful, yet which lacked dramatic force because of the long, drawn-out manner in which the details had been dragged through the record. “I show you a card containing ten fingerprints, and ask you who took the imprint of those fingerprints,” Kittering said.
“I did,” the witness answered.