Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/187

 that of a Judge of one of our courts who knows the Chinaman like a book we have had a conference this afternoon between the two tongs and the truce is restored again for two weeks."

"Very good," answered Kennedy, "but it doesn't catch the murderer of Bertha Curtis and the Jap. Where is Clendenin, do you suppose?"

"I don't know, but it at least leaves me free to carry on that case. What are all these pictures?"

"Well," began Kennedy, taking his glass from his eye and wiping it carefully, "a Paris crime specialist has formulated a system for identifying revolver bullets which is very like that of Dr. Bertillon for identifying human beings."

He picked up a handful of the greatly enlarged photographs. "These are photographs of bullets which he has sent me. The barrel of every gun leaves marks on the bullet that are always the same for the same barrel but never identical for two different barrels. In these big negatives every detail appears very distinctly and it can be decided with absolute certainty whether a given bullet was fired from a given revolver. Now, using this same method, I have made similar greatly enlarged photographs of the two bullets that have figured so far in this case. The bullet that killed Miss Curtis shows the same marks as that which killed Nichi."

He picked up another bunch of prints. "Now," he continued, "taking up the firing pin of a rifle or the hammer of a revolver, you may not know it but they are different in every case. Even among the same makes they are different, and can be detected.