“You have had a lot of experience, and you have had a lot of work, but you have not got rich at it. You would like to be rich, wouldn’t you?”
The witness laughed. “I suppose everybody would like to be rich, Colonel.”
The attorney smiled, a big, loose, vacuous sort of smile.
“Old Bill,” he said, “here behind me, and Lyin’ Louie would like to be rich, but they are more likely to be hanged.” He laughed again. “You are not afraid of being hanged, Mr. Barkman?”
Everybody laughed. The eccentricities of this attorney were one of the attractions of the court room. They were good-naturedly overlooked by the officers of the court, who had been associated with the man for a lifetime in an old-fashioned civilization, leisurely and considerate.
The attorney made a gesture as of one putting by a pleasantry of the moment.
“This was a very ingeniously constructed crime?”
The witness was now in an excellent humor. “I’d say it was, Colonel,” he replied. “It was slick enough to fool me.”
“Ah!” The attorney continued. “I had forgotten that. It was your theory in the beginning that the president of the Trader’s Bank, Mr. Halloway, had accomplished the robbery himself, and, afterward, dropped dead in his own house. He lay on the floor, when the body was discovered, by the side of the library table. It was thought that in falling his head had struck the heavy carved foot of the table, causing the injury to the skull that resulted in death. The physicians first called in were inclined to agree with that theory. The immense strain of a criminal adventure might have caused the accident after the man had returned to his house. Emotional cataclysms have been known to bring on attacks of acute indigestion or the rupture of a defective heart.”
“Sure, Colonel,” the witness assented, “that’s what the thing looked like; and I was fooled about it; I admit it. There was no evidence of a struggle in the room. It was only after Doctor North said the man had been killed by a blow, probably with the poker, that I got onto the right track.”