Li Sheung kept referring to the fact that Brown would not give him the suitcase in Los Angeles. He said he could not understand why the delivery had not been made.
Brown said, “That time you came to my house, I thought there was something hidden in the suitcase but I didn’t know what it was. Now I know, and I want some money for my trouble.”
Li Sheung agreed to go with Brown to the bus station to pick up the heroin and to pay him $100. They left the restaurant and got into a cab.
Customs agents, keeping contact with each other by radio, trailed the cab from the restaurant to the bus station, where other agents waited, lounging about the place as though they were travellers. They were watching as Brown went to a baggage locker, took out the bag, and handed it to Li Sheung. The Chinese then counted out $100 and handed it to the seaman. At this point Samaduroff and the other agents moved in and arrested Li Sheung. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
And Mr. Chu—the amiable, friendly little man in Hong Kong? The British were lenient with him because he was, after all, only the dupe, and he had cooperated in rounding up the smuggling gang. By now, he may have returned to his old job of being helpful to touring Americans.
The Customs files are fat with such cases, in which smuggling rings and individual smugglers have used innocent victims to help them bring jewels, heroin, watch parts, and other small but valuable items into the United States.
One of the innocents in such a plot was dark-eyed, attractive Countess Kyra Kapnist, who arrived in the United States aboard the SS Champlain on September 2, 1937, to join the exclusive fashion house of Marcel Rochas, Inc., of New York City as a model and saleswoman.
Before she left Paris, an official of the firm had informed her that two trunks and a hat box would be added to her baggage when it was delivered to the liner. It was nothing she was to worry about. She would be met on the pier in New York by Mr. Guy Fonte-Joyeuse, vice president of the firm and manager of its New York branch. He would take care of her customs declaration and the baggage inspection. All the countess had to do was to be her charming self and not worry her pretty head about such small details.
And so the countess arrived in New York. On the pier, she was met by Fonte-Joyeuse, a distinguished-looking man accompanied by a fashionably dressed woman. Everything seemed to go as she had been told it would in Paris. Fonte-Joyeuse was extremely solicitous about his new employee. “Give me your customs declaration,” he said, “and I’ll take care of everything.”
He hurried away to find an inspector to examine her baggage. Within a matter of minutes an inspector appeared and peeked into one piece of the countess’ luggage. Then he stamped all the baggage for clearance and the countess was whisked from the pier with her friends. Fonte-Joyeuse seemed unduly elated over her arrival.