"Call the next witness, please," and a moment later the Lizard emerged
from the witness-room.

"I wish you would tell the jury," said the counsel for defense after the
witness had been sworn, "just what you told me in my office yesterday
afternoon."

"Yes, sir," said the Lizard. "You see, it was like this: Murray there
sent for me and tells me that he's got a job for me. He wants me to go
and crack a safe at the International Machine Company's plant. He said
there was a fellow on the inside helping him, that there wouldn't be any
watchman there that night and that in the safe I was to crack was some
books and papers that was to be destroyed, and on top of it was three or
four thousand dollars in pay-roll money that I was to have as my pay for
the job. Murray told me that the guy on the inside who wanted the job
done had been working some kind of a pay-roll graft and he wanted the
records destroyed, and he also wanted to get rid of the guy that was hep
to what he had been doin'. All that I had to do with it was go and crack
the safe and get the records, which I was to throw in the river, and
keep the money for myself, but the frame-up on the other guy was to send
him a phony message that would get him at the plant after I got through,
and then notify the police so they could catch him there in the room
with the cracked safe.

"I didn't know who they were framin' this job on. If I had I wouldn't
have had nothin' to do with it.

"Well, I goes to the plant and finds a window in the basement open just
as they tells me it will be, but when I gets on the first floor just
before I go up-stairs to the office, which is on the second floor, I