"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.
"The cartridge in either a gun or revolver is struck at a point
which is never in the exact centre or edge, as the case may be,
but is always the same for the same weapon. Now the end of the
hammer when examined with the microscope bears certain
irregularities of marking different from those of every other gun
and the shell fired in it is impressed with the particular
markings of that hammer, just as paper is by type.
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