“Judge,” he said, “we’re bein’ double crossed. I paid the Colonel, here, a hundred dollars in honest money to defend us, and just look what he’s doin’ to us.”
Everybody laughed.
The lawyer turned about and spoke to the man as he might have spoken to an impertinent child.
“Sit down, Bill,” he said. “Louie knows that I am making a proper defense, don’t you, Louie?”
The little fox-faced man continued to grin. But he said nothing.
“Now, Bill,” the lawyer went on gently as to a child, “Louie’s got some sense; not much. He learned how to open registered envelopes, when he started in to be a mail clerk, by watching the post-office inspectors rolling a pen handle under the flap; and he learned to feel for money in the envelope before he opened it. The post-office inspectors taught him that. Louie had sense enough to learn it. He learned it well. He can tell the feel of a bill through the thickest envelope that was ever mailed. But you are a fool, Bill; Lansky told me that. Nobody but a fool, after he robbed the Norristown bank, would have hidden the money in the loft of an abandoned schoolhouse, with a trail of cinders leading from the window up to the trap in the ceiling. Anybody but a fool would have wiped his feet off before he climbed in the window.”
The whole court room was convulsed with laughter; even the judge smiled.
Nothing could have been more of the essence of comedy than these passages between the attorney and his client.
The big lawyer turned again to the witness. “Now, Mr. Barkman,” he said, “what did they do when Bill got back with the money?”
“They finished the job,” replied the witness.