“Don’t get up,” said the lawyer. “You can answer where you are. Now, Bobby,” he said, “we heard two shots close together. They were very close together, were they not?”
“Yes, Colonel,” replied the chief of police, “the two shots were fired in rapid succession.”
“But there was interval enough,” said the lawyer, “for us to be certain that there were two shots.”
“That’s right, Colonel,” replied the chief, “they were close together, but there were two shots; and that was confirmed by the fact that the pistol on the floor had been twice discharged; there were two empty cartridges in it when we picked it up. It had been fired twice.”
“Just a moment, Bobby,” the lawyer interrupted. “I want to be absolutely certain about this; there could be no mistake about the fact that you heard two shots; isn’t that true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said the chief, “we heard two shots, there couldn’t be any mistake about it.”
“Sometimes,” said the colonel, “it happens that shots are fired so close together that they make one report. I mean several shots may be fired so rapidly that at a little distance one hears but one report, or so confuses all of the reports that they appear to make but one; isn’t that true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” replied the chief of police. “It happened when Jones was killed over at the power plant, and it happened in our fight with the Lett burglars; I could not say how many times the man had shot at me. I thought he shot at me three times, but he must have shot at me five or six times, for every chamber in his pistol was empty.”
“Ah!” said the colonel. “Now, Bobby, that’s just exactly what I wanted to find out. Sometimes shots are fired so close together that the most experienced person—a competent person like yourself—could not say whether there was one report or several reports.”
The chief of police took hold of the lapels of his coat in either hand and looked at the attorney.