“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.” The attorney made a drawling assent. “Yes,” he said, “that was a bad find.” His voice went again into a strange laugh. “It was mighty near a hangin’ find for Old Bill and Lyin’ Louie! You got on better then, Mr. Barkman. You found two polka-dot handkerchiefs that had been stuffed down into a vase in the library, and then you found Old Bill and Lyin’ Louie. Now you are goin’ to hang ’em, I reckon.” There was a suppressed giggle in the court room. It was not shared by the prisoners. The big, old man of the close-cropped skull plucked the attorney by the sleeve and spoke in an audible whisper. “Looka here, Colonel,” he said, “I thought you was defendin’ us.” The attorney replied, a higher note in his deep drawl. “Yes,” he said, “that’s what I am doing. But you’ve got no sense, Bill! You never had any sense. If you had had any sense you would not have been in the pen-i-ten-tia-ry house. There was no reason for you going to the pen-i-ten-tia-ry. Old Lansky tried to make a bank-cracker out of you—I was in the cell with him on the night he was hanged—he said you had no sense. He said you would never make anything but a fence, and a damned poor fence ... that’s what he said, Bill.” He interrupted the long narrative by getting ponderously on his feet. He reached out and took the two handkerchiefs from the table of the prosecuting attorney and laid them down on his own. Then he addressed the witness. “Now, Mr. Barkman,” he said, “I’d like you to tell us precisely what you think happened on the night of the twenty-seventh. I want you to reconstruct this crime for us. I want you to show us just how Old Bill and Lyin’ Louie went about this thing.” The witness moved as though rearranging himself in his chair. He shifted his shoulder a little to one side and he looked around toward the jury. “Well, Colonel,” he said, “I think I can tell you just exactly what happened.” He was not expecting to be interrupted. But he was interrupted by a sort of explosive assent. The big attorney was looking at him, resting his huge body on both hands, on the table. The witness was for a moment disconcerted, then he went on: “It was like this,” he said, “as I figure it out. Everybody knows that Old Bill was a bank-cracker.” Again there was a sort of booming interruption. “He was never a good bank-cracker,” the lawyer exploded; “he was a poor bank-cracker. He was such a damn poor bank-cracker that he got into the pen-i-ten-tia-ry house!” The witness laughed. “Anyway, Colonel,” he said, “when Louie drifted in here, the two of them fixed up this game and they carried it out slick.” Again the lawyer introduced an interruption.