Was this man’s sinecure gratitude in the banker, or a sort of blackmail? Here was material with which a reflection on the witness could have been assembled. But the attorney chose rather to admit the man’s superior mental acumen in criminal affairs. The witness moved in his chair. “Well, Colonel,” he said, “I try to be right.” “And you have nearly always been right,” continued the attorney. “In the Deal case you maintained that the decedent had not been killed by a bullet fired from a cellar grating at a hundred yards along the street east of the man’s window, and it was afterward shown that the trajectory of a bullet fired from that point would have crashed into an electric light midway of the distance. And in the Littlewood case, you said the evidences of a struggle were manufactured, because the slant of wood fibers in the broken window sash showed that the pressure had been exerted from within the room and not from without.” The voice ascended into a lighter drawl with a facetious note in it. “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.”