“I’m not certain that I do.”
“The district attorney will simply say, ‘Mr. Lam, I show you a gun which has scratched on it the initials D.L. I’ll ask you who scratched those initials on there, if you know.’ Then you’ll say, ‘I did.’ Then the district attorney will say, ‘Why?’ and you’ll say, ‘So I could identify it.’ Then the district attorney will ask you, ‘Is this the revolver which you first saw in a desk in an apartment in New Orleans?’ and so on, and so on.”
I said “I see.”
“That’s splendid,” Hale said. “We’ll both scratch our initials on there.”
Pellingham took us over to a comer of the waiting-room. “We’ll do it right here,” he said, “because I’m going to rush right up to police headquarters, fire some test bullets, and compare them with the fatal bullet which killed young Craig.”
We watched him while he placed a light Gladstone bag on his lap, opened it, took out a small wooden box. He slid the cover back on this wooden box. Tied to the bottom by strings which went through holes bored in the wood was the .38 caliber revolver the agency had furnished me months earlier.
Hale pounced on it. “That’s the one,” he said emphatically. “That’s the one that was in there. And I’m betting ten to one it was the gun that killed this man Craig.”
“Scratch your initials on it,” Pellingham said and handed him a knife.
Hale scratched his initials on the rubber butt plate of the revolver.
Pellingham handed the gun to me.