CHAPTER XXVI

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_!"