“Stop him!” cried Willie. “The diamonds are in his cane.”
The inspector leaped to the side of Simonski. “Stop!” he said.
“Don’t you touch me,” rejoined Simonski. His eyes glittered like a snake’s.
The inspector grabbed him. Simonski tried to wrench loose. They clutched each other savagely. The little cane was caught between their swaying bodies. Suddenly it broke in half with a snap like a pistol. Then the pieces clattered to the floor. Willie rushed forward and picked them up. The cane was hollow. Something white showed within it. Willie thrust a match down into the hollow and worked the white thing out. It was cotton. Wrapped within it, in a long, thin roll, was diamond after diamond.
CHAPTER XVII
AFTER THE WHISKEY SMUGGLERS
When Willie reported to his Chief, that individual dropped his work and leaned back in his chair. He was smiling with satisfaction.
“Well, Willie,” he said, “they telephoned down that they have at last landed that fellow Simonski, and that you had a great hand in it. Tell me what happened.”
Willie told the story in detail.
“He’s clever all right,” said the Special Agent. “We had almost come to the conclusion that he couldn’t be carrying the gems himself, but must be employing a carrier whom we would not suspect. You see, we have secretly examined his stuff on various occasions. We’ve had secret agents traveling on the boat with him. We’ve tested his cane and his umbrella. We’ve emptied his tube of tooth paste. We’ve even surreptitiously removed the heels of his shoes while he was asleep. We’ve cut open his soap. We’ve looked in every place we could think of. That’s probably why the inspector paid no attention to Simonski’s cane. His canes have been under scrutiny before. But they seemed to be all right.”
“So did this one,” said Willie. “If it had not been broken, we should probably never have found the diamonds. The inspector thinks it was made especially for this trip. It was no patent cane that you could open and put together again. You’d have had to chop this cane to get it apart. It had been bored out for a distance lengthwise, from the bottom up. But the diameter of the hole was small. The diamonds, with the thinnest of cotton wrappers, could just be stuffed into it. The end of the opening flared, like the sides of a long, slender cone. A piece of wood had been fashioned to fit this opening exactly, and the bottom of this plug was the ferule of the cane. The plug was glued in tight. It was as solid as veneering on fine furniture. I believe it could never have been pulled out. There wasn’t the slightest mark or crack to show that the cane was ever plugged. It appeared perfectly solid. And it was so slick and fresh that it must have been newly made.”