The Great Merlini by Clayton Rawson

Author:Clayton Rawson [Rawson, Clayton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-5682-4
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Merlini and the Vanished Diamonds

THE BLACK POLICE CAR HESITATED BRIEFLY ON 42ND STREET NEAR Times Square. A tall, lean figure stepped in and the car catapulted forward like a scared jackrabbit, its siren rising in a banshee howl.

“Merlini,” Inspector Gavigan said, “the gentleman whose lap you just landed in is George Hurley. He’s chief of the Division of Investigation and Patrol of the Customs Service, and he wants to ask you a question.”

The gnome-like little man who appeared as Merlini moved over had a neat military moustache, a mild pleasant voice, and cold blue eyes. “I want to know,” he said flatly, “how you would go about making nearly half a million dollars disappear?”

It is no easy matter to startle a magician, but that did it. The Great Merlini blinked, hesitated, then said, “That sounds like fun. Where do I get—”

“If s not cash,” Gavigan put in. “It’s ice.”

“Nearly half a million? Did somebody steal the North Pole?”

“No jokes, please. To the crooks George and I associate with, ice means jewels—and you know it.”

“In this case,” Hurley explained, “diamonds. An Amsterdam dealer gave us the tip-off and we’ve had the suspect under observation ever since. A Customs Agent came across on the same boat. Last night he searched the man’s cabin and the stones were there then. The suspect had no visitors after that and didn’t leave his cabin until the boat docked this morning. Three agents went up the gangplank the moment it hit the pier and covered him right from his cabin door to the customs inspection. No diamonds were listed on his declaration form, so we grabbed him. He got the A-One treatment—and there were no stones in his bags or on his person.”

“A search by Customs men who are sure they smell contraband,” Inspector Gavigan added, “is something to see. Hurley’s boys are experts. They also took the cabin apart in case he hid the stuff there, intending to pick it up by coming back as a visitor on the next sailing day.”

“That’s an old one,” Hurley said. “Most of the dodges are. I’ve found contraband in babies’ milk bottles, wooden legs, phony rolls of camera film, fountain pens, chocolate creams, tulip bulbs, beards, a woman’s hair-do, ear trumpets, hearing aids, mounted insect specimens, a shipment of boa constrictors, even on a corpse …”

“A corpse?”

“Yeah. One character kept bringing in relatives who had died abroad, always using a different port of entry. The day we got him, the body of his deceased sister—stolen from some French cemetery—was wrapped in a good many yards of Brussels lace and wearing $140,000 in gems.”

“How big a package,” Merlini asked, “does nearly a half million dollars worth of diamonds make?”

“These are all top quality blue-white stones. They crossed the Atlantic in his suitcase inside a silver cigarette lighter. Dimensions, two inches by three inches by one-quarter inch. When we opened it at inspection we found—just cotton and lighter fuel. What worried us is his profession.”

“He sounds,” Merlini guessed, “like a magician.

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