Sidney Simms hesitated for a mere fraction of a second. Then, as Paul Pry’s back was turned, he lifted the top of the desk, disclosing the secret drawer, now crammed full of rolled currency, and dropped in a diamond necklace that glittered with sparkling brilliancy as it dropped into the secret drawer. He put back the desk top and was standing well away from the desk when the officers entered.
“What in hell’s the meaning of this outrage?” demanded Paul Pry.
“You know, George Crosby,” boomed one of the officers. “You have in your possession a large quantity of illegal liquor.”
“Oh,” said Paul Pry, and seemed relieved.
And Sidney Simms, standing with folded arms, the tips of his fingers touching the butts of twin automatics, heaved a sigh and grinned.
“What’s in those boxes?” asked the officer.
Paul Pry shrugged his shoulders.
“I haven’t opened them.”
“Well, I will,” snorted the officer in charge.
They opened the boxes in a most thorough manner. The boxes were filled with bottles. The bottles bore whiskey labels and were filled with an amber liquid.
“Guess we’ve got you dead to rights,” said the officer. “Who are you?” he demanded, turning to Sidney Simms.
“Why this guy met me on the street and got to talking about some fine liquor he had. I don’t even know his name. He said for me to come on up and he’d give me a sample. Here, officer, here’s my card. Maybe you’d better know who I am.”
The officer moved toward Simms belligerently.
“You bet I’d better know who you are!”
Simms led the way to a corner and whispered. The officer grunted his surprise, and inspected certain documents which Sidney Simms took from an inner pocket. Those documents were clearly convincing. He nodded his head.
“O.K., men,” he said.
One of the raiders had opened one of the bottles.
“Hell,” he said. “This here is nothing but coloured water!”
The chief crossed the room with quick strides.
“What!”
“It’s a fact!”
And during that interval of excitement, Paul Pry managed to unobtrusively work the slide which switched the location of the secret drawers in the desk.
There was the sound of wood sliding over wood, a click as something dropped into place. But those sounds were swallowed in the exclamations of the raiding officers.
“It’s no crime to have coloured water in your possession, is it, officer?” asked Paul Pry, and winked at Simms.
The officer emitted a roar.
“No. But it’s a crime to try and sell it, and that’s what you were doing!”
“In that event,” suggested Paul Pry, “you should have waited in the hall until I had sold the water and taken money for it. Your raid was predicated on the theory of possession, I believe.”
The officer in charge straightened, clenched his fists, surveyed Paul Pry with a face that was mottled in anger.
“It’s a damned lucky break for you,” he said. “You bought this stuff thinking it was good whiskey. You got gypped on the whiskey, but you got saved a stiff fine and a jail sentence on the strength of it.”
Paul Pry shrugged his shoulders.
“Says you,” he retorted impudently.
“Says me,” bellowed the officer, “and you’re going down to the station with us and do some explaining. That wisecrack of yours is going to cost you a ride in a police wagon, and a charge of vagrancy and a chance to make bail!”
He moved toward Paul Pry with slow, purposeful steps.
“And I hope you resist an officer,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
But Paul Pry held out docile wrists.
“I’m sorry, officer,” he said.
“You will be,” snapped the head of the raiding party.
“Want this evidence, chief?”
“Yes. Bring along a couple of bottles from each case. Turn out the lights and let’s go.”
And in the confusion incident to departure, Sidney Simms managed to leave his hat. It was not until the door was locked that he remembered it.
“I left my hat,” he whispered to the raiding officer.
That individual passed over the key.
“All right, make it snappy.”
Sidney Simms made it snappy.
He glided to the door, unlocked it, wriggled into the room, scooped up his hat with one gesture, and flipped up the section of desk top with another.
He fished out a string of glittering objects, dropped them into his pocket. Then he scooped out the rolls of currency, chuckling the while.
“Just too bad,” he muttered. “Crosby gets skinned all around.”
He dropped the section back over the drawer, walked to the door, wriggled through it and turned the key. He met the raiders at the elevator. He left them at the lobby.
At the entrance to the hotel, a police car was parked. About it a curious crowd was gathered.
“Officer,” begged Paul Pry, “will you let me explain this matter? You’re letting a criminal get away—”
“Shut up!” snapped the officer.
Paul Pry meekly subsided. He was hustled through the swinging doors, out to the sidewalk. The door of the police car opened to receive him, and then a gruff voice from the sidewalk halted all proceedings.
“Here, what’s this?”
The raiders turned to confront Inspector Quigley.
“Booze raid,” said the officer in charge, saluting.
“Why, look here, this man is Paul Pry. He had an appointment with me to recover the Goldcrest necklace. There’s some mistake—”
Paul Pry’s voice cut through the sudden silence.
“Not at all, inspector. I tried to explain to this man, but he wouldn’t listen. I told him he was letting a criminal escape, but—”
The raider ran a nervous finger about the neckband of his collar.
“Come inside!” roared Inspector Quigley.
Back in Paul’s room, Paul seemed apologetic.
“Of course I couldn’t say anything in front of the criminal or he’d have started to shoot his way out, and I wasn’t absolutely certain he had the necklace. But perhaps, inspector, if you’ll get these bungling officers out of here we might recover the necklace, even if we have lost the real criminal.”
Quigley frowned at the open-mouthed men.
“Get out,” he said. They got out. Paul Pry approached the desk, flipped up the section of the top. A drawer was disclosed, a drawer that was empty, stripped of its contents as clean as a whistle.
“Humph!” said Inspector Quigley.
Paul Pry reached under the top of the desk and pulled a lever. The empty drawer slid smoothly along greased skids with just a faint sound of wood rubbing against wood. Another drawer clicked into place. That drawer was filled with money and, on top of the rolled currency, was a string of glittering objects that caught the light of the room and sent forth scintillations of brilliant fire.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Inspector Quigley, picking up the diamonds. “I’ll be damned.”
He looked at them carefully.
“It’s the string all right. Pry, there’s something funny about this.”
“Is there?”
“You know damned well there is. This necklace would have brought them about twenty thousand if they peddled it to a fence. It cost eighty thousand at retail. And I find it here where you apparently talked some criminal into leaving it.”
“Tricked some criminal into leaving it, inspector.”
“Well?”
“Well, inspector, there’s a reward of ten thousand dollars for the recovery of that necklace. I’m not a hog. You take the necklace and the credit. You take half the reward. I take the other half.”
Inspector Quigley sat down on the edge of the desk.
“You know, Pry, there’s just a chance you were mixed in this thing. This is the third or fourth big reward you’ve recovered. Better come clean.”