Sol seemed a wonderfully acute man for the recollection of details, but there was one thing that had escaped his memory. He said he did not remember whether, when he knocked on the kitchen door, anybody told him to come in or not. He was of the opinion, to the best of his knowledge and belief--the words being supplied by the prosecutor--that he just knocked, and stood there blowing a second or two, like a horse that had been put to a hard run, and then went in without being bidden. Sol believed that was the way of it; he had no recollection of anybody telling him to come in.
When it came Hammer's turn to question the witness, he rose with an air of patronizing assurance. He called Sol by his first name, in easy familiarity, although he never had spoken to him before that day. He proceeded as if he intended to establish himself in the man's confidence by gentle handling, and in that manner cause him to confound, refute and entangle himself by admissions made in gratitude.
But Sol was a suspicious customer. He hesitated and he hummed, backed and sidled, and didn't know anything more than he had related. The bag of money which had been found with Isom's body had been introduced by the state for identification by Sol. Hammer took up the matter with a sudden turn toward sharpness and belligerency.
"You say that this is the same sack of money that was there on the floor with Isom Chase's body when you entered the room?" he asked.
"Tell this jury how you know it's the same one!" ordered Hammer, in stern voice.
"Oh, yes, you saw it. Well, did you go over to it and make a mark on it so you'd know it again?"
"Don't you know the banks are full of little sacks of money like that?" Hammer wanted to know.
"And this one might be any one of a thousand like it, mightn't it, Sol?"
"Well, I don't reckon it could. That's the one Isom had."
"Did you step over where the dead body was at and heft it?"
"Did you open it and count the money in it, or tie a string or something onto it so you'd know it when you saw it again?"
"Oh, you seen it!" repeated Hammer, sweeping the jury a cunning look as if to apprise them that he had found out just what he wanted to know, and that upon that simple admission he was about to turn the villainy of Sol Greening inside out for them to see with their own intelligent eyes.