He turned about to the jurors.
“Mr. Halloway was a man, as you all know, about as big as I am. Old Bill put on the banker’s hat and his long light overcoat. The runabout stood under the porte-cochère outside. He went out, got in this car and drove it over to the bank. He had the banker’s key to the door and he had the combination to the safe, so he went in, opened the safe, picked out the money and brought it back with him.”
The attorney suddenly interrupted.
“Now, there,” he said, “right there. Why did they take only big bills and not smaller currency? There were twenty thousand dollars taken in big bills—five-hundred and one-thousand-dollar bills. Why did they take that and not the smaller currency?”
“I can explain that,” said the witness. “You see they had to hide this money after they got it—they had to look out for that; they might have to move pretty quickly. They could not trust anybody to keep it for them and they were afraid to conceal it, so they would have to carry it around with them. That’s the reason they took big bills.”
“Ah,” said the attorney, “I understand it now. It puzzled me a lot. I could not see what they meant by taking big bills and leaving the rest of the money; but it’s clear now.”
He swung suddenly around to the prisoners. “Louie,” he said, “you never told me that.”
The creature grinned, his face broken into a queer extended smile.
But the big prisoner to the right showed evidence of no such conciliatory mood.
He got up.