The determination of abstract models of complex chemical mechanisms from the analysis of the experimental time series of the concentration of species is a topic of undoubted interest. Doing so from time series in the linear regime offers certain advantages because the equations of evolution can be easily retrieved. This contrasts with the much greater ambiguity associated to the corresponding process in the nonlinear regime. However, until presently, the procedure has not been formalized, and known methods of inference of the mechanism still rely too much on guess. The aim of the present article is to remedy to this problem by offering a systematic procedure for carrying out the deduction of the mechanism within the framework of the law of mass action. The number of independent steps and actual values of both the stoichiometric coefficients and of the rate constants are calculated from the linear equations governing the time response of chemical species to a small pulse perturbation of the steady state. Also, the deduction of these linear equations from that same response is outlined.