“That bullet fits that gun.”
“Which bullet fits what gun? Sit down and tell me about it.” He pushed him into a chair.
After a breathing spell Johnny was able to tell a connected story. He and Tom Howe had gone to the basement and had fired three bullets from the gun Drew had picked up on the floor of the place where, for a very good reason, he had eaten no supper. Having fired the bullets into sawdust, they had picked them out and had examined them under the microscope.
“You know how it is,” he went on. “Every gun barrel has microscopic defects on the inside. These leave their marks on the bullet. The bullet left by the Galloping Ghost apparently struck the steel car a glancing blow and then entered a block of wood. One side was flat, but the other showed its marking clearly. And the scratches on that bullet, four of them, clearly marked, exactly matched the ones fired from the gun you took from that little fellow with a branded forehead and fiery eye.”
“They did!” Drew dropped in a heap on a chair. “So that was the man! And I had him, had him in my hands! And I let him go! What a break!”
Johnny, as he recalled the circumstances, was not sure whether Drew had had the little man or the little man and his gang had had Drew; but he said nothing.
“We’ll get ’em. We’ll get ’em yet!” Drew came to his feet with a bound. “Get the Chief on the wire. He’ll send out a drag-net. A mob like that can’t cruise about this city without being caught. They’re marked men, every one of them!”
Was he right? Only time would tell.
CHAPTER XVII
JOHNNY’S JIMMY
In the meantime Red Rodgers, the object of all this activity in a great city, sat at a small table in a cozy cabin on Isle Royale, hundreds of miles away, calmly sipping the broth from a delicious Mulligan stew (which, by the way, is made by cooking up everything you have in the way of meat and vegetables, then adding much sliced bacon and many onions).