“Now,” said the lawyer, “from the appearance of the table in that room was it not evident that Collander was at work on a brief—there was a pad on the table before him, and the papers in the case of the Bridge Company against the Western Railroad? We know that he was at work on this brief because the case was coming on for a hearing, and because his notes on the pad were in ink and the ink was not dry; isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” replied the chief of police, “that’s true.”
“Every paragraph written on the pad,” the attorney continued, “was part of an opinion from a U. S. Report. It was half of a long syllabus of the opinion; he had it about half written out. As I say, the ink was not yet dry on it; it still blurred a little when one rubbed one’s finger on it. Now, we see what the man was doing. He was sitting at the table copying this syllabus when he was interrupted; isn’t that true, Bobby?”
“It must have been that way,” said the chief of police. “Collander must have been sitting there when the thing began.”
The Colonel continued.
“Collander was killed by a bullet that entered the chest and ranged upward. It was found against the shoulder blade, so flattened that no one could say precisely the caliber of the bullet; isn’t that true?”
The prosecuting attorney interrupted.
“There’s nothing in that, Colonel,” he said. “The surgeons say that the bulk of the bullet was about the size of a thirty-two caliber; there was the pistol on the floor from which it had been fired.”
The big attorney made a gesture with his hand. “Let us adhere precisely to the truth,” he said, “and the truth is that the bullet was so battered that no one can say accurately what caliber it was. Doctor Hull says that he thinks it was a thirty-two, but he also says that he does not know.”
The prosecuting attorney persisted.