The Case of the Musical Cow

Chapter 26

A big State Police laboratory truck was parked under the shade of a huge oak on the east side of the river.

Down by the wharf, across the river, a mile away, two uniformed men were moving slowly, studying every inch of the wood.

At length, one of the men said, “Look here, Gerry. See what you make of this.”

He indicated a section of one of the upthrust piles to which mooring lines had been fastened. There was a section of rotted wood above the place where the lines were tied, and a very careful, very close inspection showed that there had been some disturbance in this rotted wood.

Using the tip of his finger, the police officer scraped away this rotted wood until he came to wood of a firmer consistency, then carefully using a knife, he uncovered a round hole.

A field telephone wire ran up to and across the bridge and communicated with the laboratory truck. “Looks like we’ve found a bullet,” Gerry said over the wire. “Better take a look.”

A few moments later, Dr. Dixon, in company with one of the technicians from the laboratory truck, drove across the stage bridge and out to the pier. They examined the hole, then Dr. Dixon nodded.

The men carefully sawed through the pile below the hole. When they removed the section of pile it was split with wedges until a .32 calibre bullet could be seen embedded in a hole which had been neatly split into two parts.

Dr. Dixon handed the bullet to the technician. “Let’s take a look at this,” he said.

They hurried back to the truck. The comparison microscope was mounted so that electric lights furnished an even illumination.

The technician centered a bullet marked “test bullet” on one side of the comparison microscope, and the bullet which had been recovered from the cross-section of pile on the other side. He placed his eyes at the eyepieces of the comparison microscope and began slowly turning a knob which rotated one of the bullets. Abruptly he stopped, turned the knob back a fraction of an inch, then raised his fingers to the screw which adjusted the focus of the microscope.

“Well?” Dr. Dixon asked anxiously.

“They’re the same,” the technician said, “fired from the same gun. Take a look.”

Dr. Dixon settled himself on the stool vacated by the technician, applied his eyes to the microscope, studied the two bullets carefully. “That does it,” he said. “We’ve had to stretch our jurisdiction to get the evidence, but this is it. They were both fired from the same gun.”

“Where does that leave us?” the technician asked.

There was the ghost of a twinkle in Dr. Dixon’s eyes. “That leaves us with three bullets and two empty cartridge cases.”

“Then we’re short one cartridge case.”

“On the contrary,” Dr. Dixon said, “we’re long one bullet.”