“We have no diamonds,” Falkenstein said. “Go ahead and search us.”
“That’s what we intend to do, Mr. Falkenstein,” Duncan said.
A search of their persons revealed nothing. Duncan ordered their automobile and luggage searched. Nothing was found.
Duncan felt certain that Falkenstein had gone to Montreal to pick up the diamonds. There must have been a hitch which prevented delivery. He questioned the couple at length. And then reluctantly, late in the afternoon, he told them they could go.
It was during this questioning that Captain Deppe was sitting in his room at the Henry Hudson Hotel listening to the telephone ring in the apartment of the Falkensteins.
* * * * *
When Duncan returned to his office the next morning, he found a cable from Beers congratulating him on the “seizure” of the diamonds. A telephone call to Antwerp cleared up the mystery of the cable: rumors were afloat in the diamond market underworld that a shipment of diamonds to the United States had not been acknowledged—and the diamonds were presumed to have been seized by Customs agents. There were reports, too, that Falkenstein was “in trouble.”
The following day, Beers advised New York that Falkenstein was supposed to have received one shipment of diamonds in Montreal on July 11 and another shipment in New York on July 12. The shipment to Montreal had been delayed—but the shipment had arrived in New York and presumably was “safe.”
Duncan could not know that the New York shipment at that moment was lying in a shoe box on a shelf at the Sabena Airlines baggage room. On the day of Captain Deppe’s arrival, the room had been turned upside down in a search for contraband, with no one noticing the box. Duncan later said ruefully, “The box was in plain view, just sitting there. I suppose that’s why it was never opened. It was too obvious.”
A few days later another Sabena pilot would casually enter the baggage room, pick up the box, and deliver it to Mr. X—completing the job which Deppe had started.