THESE ARE THE GUNS
Johnny was awakened early next morning by the sound of muffled shots.
Drew too was awake. He was sitting up in bed, listening. The Old Timer's
cot was empty.
"Wha--what is it?" Johnny asked.
"Shots," Drew replied.
"Where?"
"In the basement of the Ramacciotti cottage, I would say."
This guess was correct. Having awakened before dawn, Newton Mills had
removed the two guns from the bottom of his chest, had searched in a box
for cartridges, then had crept quietly out of the room.
He had meant to go down to the beach and fire shots into the sand.
However, having found Mrs. Ramacciotti in her kitchen, he had stuffed a
keg with rags and had retired to her basement. There he fired three shots
from the young gangster's gun and three from the one that had so long
been hanging on the wall of the shack.
He left the cellar, as soon as he had retrieved and labelled the bullets,
and returned to the shack.
"Out gunning rather early," Drew commented.
"Hey? Yes. Important, I'd say." Newton Mills seated himself at his bench,
switched on a light, and at once lost himself in a study of the freshly
fired bullets.
At a certain time, had one chanced to observe him closely, he would have
noted that intense excitement gripped him. His fingers trembled. Three
times he dropped the same bullet. His lips trembled as if with palsy.
A few moments later he became a creature of marble calmness. Turning
about in his chair he stood up, stretched his arms, straightened his tie,
then announced quietly:
"These are the guns."
"What guns?" Drew looked up.
"This," he said, patting Jimmie McGowan's gun, the one Drew had taken the
night before, "this thin automatic is the gun that fired the shot that
has perhaps taken the life of Rosy Ramacciotti."
Had he exploded a bomb in the center of the room, he could not have
caused greater excitement. Drew leaped to his feet, overturning his chair
with a crash. Johnny allowed a glass of water to slip from his hand.
"That gun!" Drew exclaimed as soon as he had regained possession of his
senses. "Why! I had that man in my hands, unarmed, defenseless, last
night!"
"Can't help that," Newton Mills smiled a dry smile. "Bullets don't lie,
not to me.
"What is more--" He laid a hand on the other gun, the one that had been
taken from a murderous hand on the deserted slip on the night Johnny shot
an arrow, "this is the gun that killed Rosy's father. It is also the gun
that fired the shot in the studio on the night that Johnny was beaten
up."
The two boys stood there for some time, silent, dumfounded by such
startling revelations.
"Since you know this much," the Old Timer went on at last, "you may as
well know the rest. Let me explain to you how it is that I can know these
things with such certainty. I will explain it to you just as I would to a
jury. May take a little time, but in view of the large place this new
science of forensic ballistics is sure to play in future detection of
crime, I am certain it will be time well spent."
There was a tap at the door. Mrs. Ramacciotti appeared with the morning
coffee.
"Good!" exclaimed the Old Timer. "Coffee and bullets. What could be
sweeter!
"Forensic ballistics," he said musingly as he sipped hot coffee, "sounds
rather impossible, doesn't it? It means only this. Forensic, having to do
with the law; ballistics, the science of projectiles. Forensic does not
interest us. Ballistics, for us, means the science of bullets.
"Now," he said, reaching for Jimmie's automatic and glancing down its
barrel, "you know that the barrels of revolvers are rifled; that is,
there is a series of spiral grooves running through each barrel. That is
done to make the bullet go straight. A smooth surface causes the bullet
to tumble end over end the instant it leaves the gun."
Taking three small white sacks from his bench, he emptied their contents
on the table before him: three bullets.
Displaying two of these on the palm of his hand, he asked:
"Are they alike?"
"Yes," replied Drew after a moment's scrutiny.
"No," said Johnny.
"In what way do they differ?" The detective's eyes lighted.
"I don't know. Let me have them." Johnny studied them closely.
"The grooves in one are wider than in the other," he said at last.
"Correct. In other words, there is one more spiral groove in the barrel
of one gun than the other. So we know at once that if a bullet killed a
man it could have been fired from only one of these guns.
"In fact the guns are of different makes. No two manufacturers rifle
their barrels in the same manner. Some cut more grooves. Some cut deeper
grooves, and so on.
"We have got this far," said the veteran detective, taking a long drink
of coffee, "but that isn't very far. There are thousands upon thousands
of automatics in this country, manufactured by the same company. They are
of the same rifling, same caliber and all. Suppose a bullet has been
fired from a revolver. It has killed a man. You think you have the gun.
You wish to say to judge and jury, 'I have the gun that killed the man.
This is the gun. I will prove it to you by a study of bullets fired from
it.' In view of the fact that there are thousands of such guns in
existence, of the same caliber and manufactured by the identical
machinery, are you able to prove that one particular gun fired the fatal
shot?"
"Don't seem possible," said Johnny.
"It is possible, nevertheless." Newton Mills' eyes shone. "With the aid
of a comparison microscope and micro-photography, it can be done.
"In the first place, the spiral grooves in a gun are made by passing a
narrow cutting die many times through the barrel. No metal has ever been
found that will not wear. The cutting die wears. Its edge becomes rough.
You cannot see the roughness with the naked eye. A microscope reveals it.
This rough cutting edge imparts just such a roughness to the spiral
groove.
"Since the cutting die is constantly wearing, the roughness of the spiral
groove of one gun, when studied under the glass, will not be exactly the
same as that of any other barrel, though cut by the same machine on the
same day.
"Now, when a soft bullet is shot from a gun, the rough edge of the groove
leaves scratches upon its surface. You cannot see these scratches with
your naked eye. The microscope again reveals them.
"When you put two bullets fired from two guns of the same identical type
under a comparison microscope, you can see them both at once and can
place their scratches side by side and end to end, and you know at once
that they were not fired from the same gun.
"But if the scratches match perfectly, then you know that the two bullets
were fired from the same gun, and no other."
By this time both Johnny and Drew were listening with all their ears.
"This study," said Mills, "is sure to be of great service to the forces
that make for justice. Every crook has his weakness. A weakness common to
many is love for a particular gun. A man has carried a gun and used it
many times. It has saved his life by taking the life of another. The gun
becomes his pal, his defender. He does not willingly part with it. And in
this he reveals a great weakness. That gun has left its trademark, its
bullets, behind. By these, man and gun may be traced. If the gun falls
into the hands of the law, woe to the crook!
"As you know," he turned to Johnny, "we secured the bullet that wounded
Rosy; also the one that was fired that other time in the studio; and the
one imbedded in the wall at Ramacciotti's old place.
"After examining these, we fired test bullets from all guns taken by the
police from suspects during the past six months.
"An exhaustive study of these showed that the guns from which our three
bullets were fired had not been taken by the police. That was a
discouraging discovery.
"But now, as so often happens, just as we seemed at a standstill, Drew
takes a gun from a suspect; he hauls another down from the wall, and
behold: here we have the very guns we seek!
"The test bullets fired from the gun of Drew's suspect are exactly the
same as the one fired into Rosy's body. The ones fired from the gun you
took in such a strange manner beside that deserted slip are exactly the
same as those fired by the man with the hole in his hand. I will be able
to prove this to any jury by the use of enlarged photographs of the
bullets. I now have evidence that will convict these two men. Bring me
the men!"
"Ah yes!" Drew sighed. "That's it! Catch the men!"
"But we will do it!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet. "Such men are a
menace to any community. No decent, law abiding citizen is safe as long
as they are at large. We will get them. We will! We _must_!"