"Sure, it was; and he's feeling it yet. That's why I'm letting him alone when I can. Just go once more carefully over the part of it that you saw, won't you?"
Johnson retold the story of the cashing of the president's check, circumstantially, and with the exactness of a man trained in a school of business accuracy.
"You'd make a good witness, Mr. Johnson," was Broffin's comment. "You can tell the same story twice, hand-running, which is more than most folks can do. Would you know the young woman if you'd see her again?"
"You say she was cashing a draft: how was she identified?"
"She had credentials from her home bank, with her signature attested."
"Of course, she didn't surrender her letter of identification?"
"No; we don't require it when the letter is a general one and not a credit letter."
Broffin pulled thoughtfully at his drooping mustaches. He was rearranging the pieces on the mental chess-board. He had not yet asked either of the questions he had come to ask. Without knowing the science even by name, he was still enough of a psychologist to prepare the way by leading the mind of the witness cleverly over the details of its own memory picture.
"You say the hold-up made way for the lady here at the window: you saw him do it?"
"Did any sign of recognition pass between them--anything to make you think that they might be acquainted with each other?"
This was one of the two critical questions, and the teller took time to consider.
"It's pretty hard to tag that with a definite 'yes' or 'no,'" he said, when the memory-searching moment had passed. "He spoke to her; of that I am quite sure, though I didn't hear what he said. She nodded and smiled. She had a beautiful face, and I remember how it lighted up when he spoke and stepped back."
"Then they might have been acquainted, you think?" Broffin said, adding quickly: "Don't let the fact that she afterward tried to set the dogs on him twist your judgment any. She might have known the man, and still be unwilling, afterward, to shield the criminal."
"I'll admit that my impression at the time was that they were acquainted," he averred, at the end of the ends. "Of course you can't bank much on that. He might have said to a perfect stranger, 'After you,' or whatever it was that he did say; and she would acknowledge the courtesy with the nod and the smile--any well-bred woman would. But you can take it for what it is worth; my thought at the moment was that they had met before; casually, perhaps, as people meet on trains or in hotels; that there was at least recognition on both sides."