Hardy Boys Mysteries - 019 The Disappearing Floor by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon [Dixon, Franklin W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER XII

The “Seacat” Clue

THE watchman stared at the diamond merchant. Both their faces were turning an angry crimson.

“Mr. Tiffman, I don’t know what kind of a joke you’re playin’,” the watchman said, “but I saw that messenger with my own eyes!”

“And I don’t know, Mike, what kind of a joke you’re playing!” Tiffman roared back. “I tell you no messenger came to my office!”

“Can’t help that! He came here and left!”

“I think you’d better call the police at once,” Frank put in quietly.

“Who are you?” Tiffman snapped.

“We’re sons of Fenton Hardy, the private detective.” Frank explained about the anonymous phone tip. Tiffman’s attitude promptly changed.

The watchman called the police. A prowl car Was at the building within moments, and Chief Collig arrived a few minutes later, accompanied by a plain-clothes detective.

“You boys watch the door,” Collig told the two prowl car officers. “The rest of you come upstairs to Mr. Tiffman’s office.”

The five crowded into the elevator and rode up. Tiffman’s office door was flush-paneled with a pane in one corner. It was marked “507” in modernistic metal numbers, and the name plate below said: PAUL TIFFMAN, Gemologist.

After the Hardys had told Collig about the anonymous tip-off and the two men had told their stories, the police chief commented, “Sounds to me as if that messenger pulled a fast one.”

“You mean he simply walked off without delivering the gems?” When Collig nodded, Tiffman frowned and shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. If he were planning to flee with the diamonds, why bother coming to Bayport at all?”

“Is there any chance he could have been waylaid between the elevator and this office?” Joe put in. “If so, the thug might have dragged his body somewhere out of sight, and then gone down in the elevator posing as the messenger.”

Collig turned to Mike. “How about it? You sure the man you took down was the same man you brought up here?”

“Sure was,” the watchman said tartly, “unless he was awful good at disguises. That messenger had red hair, freckles, and a wart on his cheek. So did the man who rode down.”

“Have you ever seen this messenger?” Collig asked Tiffman.

“Wouldn’t know him from Adam.”

“Who sent him?”

Tiffman named a firm of diamond importers in New York City.

“Ever had deliveries from them before?”

Once again Tiffman shook his head. “Normally I make buying trips to New York once a month and select my gems right there,” he explained. “But it happens I want to show a special selection to a wealthy client out in Dorset Hills tomorrow.

The New York firm was expecting a new shipment from South Africa today, so they promised to make up a parcel and rush it down here tonight.”

“How was the messenger traveling?” Collig inquired.

“By train-at least they told me he’d get in on the eight-fifteen.”

Collig picked up the phone and called New York City Police Headquarters and asked them to watch the incoming trains.

He also called Bayport Headquarters and told his desk sergeant to put out a statewide alarm for the messenger.

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