Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

A Melee of Diamonds by Edward D. Hoch

When things start making sense, it may be time to retrace one’s steps.

The man with the silver-headed cane turned into Union Street just after nine o’clock, walking briskly through the scattering of evening shoppers and salesclerks hurrying home after a long day. It was a clear April evening, cool enough for the topcoat the man wore, but still a relief at the end of a long winter. He glanced into occasional shop windows as he walked, but did not pause until he’d reached the corner of Union and Madison. There, he seemed to hesitate for a moment at the windows of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. He glanced quickly to each side, as if making certain there was no one near, and then smashed the nearest window with his silver-headed cane.

The high-pitched ringing of the alarm mingled with the sound of breaking glass, as the man reached quickly into the window. A few pedestrians froze in their places, but as the man turned to make his escape a uniformed policeman suddenly appeared around the corner. “Hold it right there!” he barked, reaching for his holstered revolver.

The man turned, startled at the voice so close, and swung his cane at the officer. Then, as the policeman moved in, he swung again, catching the side of the head just beneath the cap. The officer staggered and went down, and the man with the cane rounded the corner running.

“Stop him!” a shirt-sleeved man shouted from the doorway of the Diamond Exchange. “We’ve been robbed!”

The police officer, dazed and bleeding, tried to get to his knees and then fell back to the sidewalk, but a young man in paint-stained slacks and a zippered jacket detached himself from the frozen onlookers and started after the fleeing robber. He was a fast runner, and he overtook the man with the cane halfway down the block. They tumbled together into a pile of discarded boxes, rolling on the pavement, as the man tried to bring his cane up for another blow.

He shook free somehow, losing the cane but regaining his feet, and headed for an alleyway. A police car, attracted by the alarm, screeched to a halt in the street, and two officers jumped out with drawn guns. “Stop or we’ll shoot!” the nearest officer commanded, and fired his pistol into the air in warning.

The sound of the shot echoed along the street, and the running man skidded to a halt at the entrance to the alleyway. He turned and raised his hands above his head. “All right,” he said. “I’m not armed. Don’t shoot.”

The officer kept his pistol out until the second cop had snapped on the handcuffs.

“Damn it!” Captain Leopold exploded, staring at the paper cup full of light brown coffee that Lieutenant Fletcher had just set before him. “Is that the best you can get out of the machine?”

“Something’s wrong with it, Captain. We’ve sent for a serviceman.”

Leopold grumbled and tried to drink the stuff. One swallow was all he could stomach. The men in the department had given him a coffee percolator of his very own when he’d assumed command of the combined Homicide and Violent Crimes squad, but on this particular morning, with his coffee can empty, he’d been forced to return to the temperamental vending machine in the hall.

“Get me a cola instead, will you, Fletcher?” he said at last, pouring the coffee down the sink in one corner of his office. When the lieutenant came back, he asked, “What’s this about Phil Begler being in the hospital?”

Fletcher nodded in confirmation. “There’s a report on your desk. Phil came upon a guy stealing a handful of diamonds from the window of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. The guy whacked him on the head with a cane and started running. They caught him, but Phil’s in the hospital with a concussion.”

“I should go see him,” Leopold decided. “Phil’s a good guy.”

“They identified the fellow that stole the diamonds and hit him as Rudy Hoffman, from New York. He’s got a long record of smash-and-grab jobs.”

Leopold nodded. “Maybe Phil Begler’s concussion will be enough to put him away for good.”

Fletcher nodded. “Hope so, Captain, but there is one little problem with the case.”

“What’s that?” Leopold asked.

“Well, they caught Hoffman only a half-block from the scene, after a young fellow chased and tackled him, and fought with him till a patrol car arrived. Hoffman got $58,000 worth of diamonds out of that window, and he was in sight of at least one person every instant until they arrested him.”

“So?”

“The diamonds weren’t on him, Captain. No trace of them.”

“He dropped them in the street.”

“They searched. They searched the street, they searched him, they even searched the patrol car he was in after his arrest. No diamonds.”

Leopold was vaguely irritated that such a simple matter should disrupt the morning’s routine. “Haven’t they questioned him about it?”

“He’s not talking, Captain.”

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Bring him down. I’ll have to show you guys how it’s done.”

Rudy Hoffman was a gray-haired man in his early forties. The years in prison, Leopold noted, had left him with pale complexion and shifty, uncertain eyes. He licked his lips often as he spoke, nervously glancing from Leopold to Fletcher and then back again.

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I’m not talking without a lawyer. You can’t even question me without a lawyer. I know my rights!”

Leopold sat down opposite him. “It’s not just a little smash-and-grab this time, Rudy. That cop you hit might die. You could go up for the rest of your life.”

“He’s just got a concussion. I heard the guards talkin’.”

“Still, we’ve got you on assault with a deadly weapon. With your record, that’s enough. We don’t even need the felony charge. So you see, you’re not really protecting yourself by clamming up about the diamonds. Even if we don’t find them, we’ve still got you nailed.”

Rudy Hoffman merely smiled and looked sleepy. “Those diamonds are where you’ll never find them, cop. That much I promise you.”

Leopold glared at him for a moment, thinking of Phil Begler in a hospital bed. “We’ll see about that,” he said, and stood up. “Come on, Fletcher, we’re keeping him from his beauty sleep.”

Back in Leopold’s office, Fletcher said, “See what I mean, Captain? He’s a hard one.”

Leopold was grim. “I’ll find those damned diamonds and stuff them down his throat. Tell me everything that happened from the instant he broke the window.”

“I can do better than that, Captain. The kid who chased him is outside now, waiting to make a statement. Want to see him now?”

Neil Quart was not exactly a kid, though he was still on the light side of twenty-five. Leopold had seen the type many times before, on the streets usually, with shaggy hair and dirty clothes, taunting the rest of this world.

“You’re quite a hero,” Leopold told him. “Suppose you tell us how it happened.”

Quart rubbed at his nose, trying to look cool. “I work over at Bambaum’s nights, in the shipping department. I’d just finished there at nine o’clock and was heading home. Down by the Diamond Exchange I saw this guy with the cane smash a window. I wasn’t close enough to grab him, but as he started to run away this cop rounds the corner. The guy hit him with the cane, hard, and knocked him down. Now, I don’t have any love for cops, but I decided to take out after this guy. I ran him down halfway up the block, and we tussled a little. He tried to conk me with the cane too, but I got it away from him. Then he was up and running, but the other cops got there. One cop fired a shot in the air and it was all over.”

Leopold nodded. “How long was the robber — Rudy Hoffman — out of your sight?”

“He wasn’t out of my sight. Not for a second! I went right after him when he knocked the cop down. Hell, I thought he might have killed him.”

“You didn’t see him throw anything away, into the street?”

“Not a thing.”

“Could he have thrown anything away as he raised his hands?”

“I don’t think so.”

Fletcher interrupted at this point. “They caught him at the entrance to an alleyway, Captain. Every inch of it was searched.”

Leopold turned back to Neil Quart. “As you’ve probably guessed, we’re looking for the diamonds he stole. Any idea what he might have done with them?”

The young man shrugged. “Not a glimmer. Unless... We were wrestling around some boxes.”

“They were all checked,” Fletcher said. “Everything was checked. The police were there all night, looking.”

“You still did a good job,” Leopold told the young man. “You weren’t afraid to get involved, and that’s what counts.”

“Thanks. I just didn’t like to see him hit that cop.”

Outside, Fletcher asked, “Satisfied, Captain?”

“Not by a long shot. What about Hoffman’s clothes?”

“We went over every stitch, including his topcoat. Nothing there.”

“All right,” Leopold decided, grim-faced. “Let’s go see where it happened.”

The Midtown Diamond Exchange still showed the scars of the previous night’s robbery, with a boarded-up window and a little pile of broken glass. The assistant manager, who’d been on duty the previous evening, was a sandy-haired man named Peter Arnold who looked pained by the whole affair.

“Just tell us how it was,” Leopold told him. “Everything you can remember.”

“It was just closing time, a few minutes after nine. The other clerk had gone home, and I’d locked the front door. That was when I heard the window smash and saw him scooping up the diamonds.”

“Let’s go back a bit, Mr. Arnold. How many diamonds were in the window?”

“Dozens! We had a few large rings mounted on cards giving the prices, and then we had perhaps twenty-five or thirty smaller stones, unmounted. A melee of diamonds, to use the trade term — although that usually refers to stones of less than a quarter carat. Most of these were larger.”

“They were valued at $58,000?”

Peter Arnold nodded sadly. “I’ve already heard from our New York office about it.”

“Do you always leave that many diamonds in your store window?”

“Not at all. They’re in the window only while the store is open. My first duty after locking the door would have been to remove them from that and the other display windows and lock them in the vault for the night. I had just locked the door and was starting for the window on the other side when I heard the smashing of glass. I looked over and saw this man scooping the diamonds out of their trays. The window alarm was ringing, of course, and as he started away Officer Begler appeared around the corner.”

“You know Phil Begler?”

The jeweler nodded. “He’s been on this beat maybe four or five years. Usually he’s right around this corner, but at nine he goes up to direct traffic out of the parking ramp in the next block. It was only a fluke he happened to get back just when that man broke the window.”

“Any idea what he did with the diamonds during his escape?”

“I’m baffled. If he’d dropped them, I should think at least a few would have been found.”

Leopold walked to the boarded-up window, and pulled aside the black velvet drape so he could peer into it. The diamond trays were still there, speckled with broken glass, but there were no gems. “He got everything?”

“No, there were four rings on cards and six unmounted stones that he missed, but he made a good haul. We estimate $58,000, or even a bit more.”

Leopold let the drape drop back into place. He took out a picture of Rudy Hoffman. “Ever see him in the store before the robbery, casing the place?”

“I don’t remember him, but of course someone else may have been on duty.”

“I’ll leave this picture with you. Show it to your manager and the clerks. See if anyone remembers him.”

“You think it was well-planned?”

“He got rid of the diamonds somewhere, and that took planning.”

On the way out, Leopold paused at the little pile of broken glass and bent to examine it.

“Find something, Captain?” Fletcher asked.

“Ever think about how much broken glass and diamonds look alike, Fletcher?”

“Are there any diamonds in that pile?”

“No, just broken glass.”

On the way back downtown, Fletcher said, “They did an X-ray on Hoffman too, in case you’re thinking he might have swallowed them.”

“Never considered it for a moment.” He stared through the car’s dirty windshield at the passing scene. Police headquarters was separated from the main Union Street shopping area by some ten blocks of abandoned, run-down buildings — many of them doomed by a much-postponed urban renewal project. Those that still had tenants housed record shops and adult bookstores on their lower levels, renting the rooms above to bearded young people and transient types. It was a shabby section of the inner city, but the crime rate was not as high as might be expected.

“They should tear it all down,” Fletcher commented.

“I suppose they will, one of these days.” Leopold had another thought. “What about the men who searched the street? Could one of them have pocketed the diamonds?”

Fletcher thought about it. “We’ve got some bad eggs in the department, Captain — like any other city — but I’d trust any of the men who were out there last night. I know them all, from Begler on down. They’re honest cops.”

Leopold said no more until they reached his office. Then he asked Fletcher to bring him Rudy Hoffman’s clothing. They went over each piece together, though the clothes had been searched earlier, and they found nothing.

Leopold frowned and went to stare out the window at the crowded parking lot that was his only view. “How about a wig, false teeth, something like that?”

Fletcher shook his head. “Nothing, Captain.”

Leopold turned suddenly. “Damn it, Fletcher, why didn’t I think of it before? There’s one thing we’ve completely overlooked, one thing that’s missing from Hoffman’s possessions!”

Fletcher looked blank. “What’s that, Captain?”

“The cane, of course! The silver-headed cane he used to break the window and crack Phil Begler’s skull! Where is it?”

“I suppose they’ve got it tagged as the weapon. It would be in the evidence drawer, or else already at the D.A.’s office, for presentation before the grand jury.”

“Find it, Fletcher, and let’s take a look at it.”

Lieutenant Fletcher was back in five minutes, carrying a long black walking stick with a silver head in the shape of a ball held by a bird’s claw. Leopold snorted and turned it over in his hands.

“Doesn’t really go with Hoffman somehow,” Fletcher commented. “Not his style.”

“No.” Leopold turned it over in his hands, and tried to twist off the top. It seemed solid, as was the shaft of the cane. “He probably stole it from somewhere. There’s certainly nothing hidden in it.”

“Let’s think about it,” Fletcher suggested, “Maybe something will come to us by morning.”

Leopold glanced at his watch and nodded. It was after three, and he wanted to stop by the hospital and see Officer Begler on his way home. “Good idea,” he agreed. “See you in the morning.”

“Say, how about coming over for dinner tonight, Captain? Carol was just mentioning the other day that she hasn’t seen you since the Christmas party.”

“Thanks, Fletcher. I could use some of your wife’s cooking, but let’s make it another time. Give her my best, though.”

He drove over to Memorial Hospital and spent a half hour with Begler, who grinned from beneath his bandages and seemed in good enough spirits. Leopold paused in the lobby to chat with a couple of nurses, and then headed home to his apartment, encountering the rush-hour traffic he usually tried to avoid. Driving along Union Street, he remembered the empty coffee can in his office and pulled over at a neighborhood grocery.

The place was cluttered and crowded. He picked up a can of coffee and found a clerk to take his money. “Anything else, sir?”

Leopold shook his head. “That’s it.” Then he noticed the dark-haired girl who’d entered behind him. She pretended to be choosing a loaf of bread, but she was really watching him. No one takes that long to choose bread, he knew, and when she finally moved up to the clerk with her selection her eyes were still on Leopold.

The clerk slipped the coffee can into a paper bag, and Leopold left the store. Before he could cross the sidewalk to his car he heard the girl’s voice behind him. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

He turned to her with a smile he hoped was friendly. She was a good-looking girl, in her early twenties, but her face seemed drawn and tired at the moment. “You might say that.”

“Do you want the loot from the Midtown Diamond robbery?”

In all his years of police work, nothing like it had ever happened to him before. He’d spent a full day trying to locate the diamonds that had disappeared by some sort of magic, and now this girl walked up to him outside a grocery store and offered them, just like that.

“Do you know where it is?”

She nodded. “I can take you there, if you’ll promise not to arrest me or my boyfriend.”

“Who is your boyfriend?”

“Names aren’t important. He didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. Have I your promise?”

“Then how’d he get the diamonds?”

“He’s supposed to take them to New York and sell them — you know, like a fence. I don’t want any part of it. I want you to take them.”

“How’d you know I was a detective?”

“I followed you from the hospital. You were visiting that policeman who was injured. I went there to find out how he was, and a nurse pointed you out as a detective.”

“You’re concerned about Officer Begler?”

“Certainly. I never knew it would be anything like this when Freddy agreed to handle the stuff. I want out of it, before we all end up behind bars.”

“Can you take me to the diamonds?”

She glanced quickly down the street and nodded. “Leave your car here. We’ll go in mine.”

He followed her to the corner and slid into the front seat of a little foreign sedan, still clutching his pound of coffee. She drove like a demon, weaving in and out of the rush-hour lines of traffic. In five minutes they’d reached the rundown section of Union, where the buildings waited for demolition, and he knew this was her destination. She parked the car and led him up a narrow flight of dimly lit stairs to an apartment above a vacant barber shop. In view of the long-haired residents, Leopold could easily understand why it had been forced to close.

“Is Freddy here?” he asked the girl, shifting the coffee to his left hand so his right would be near his gun.

“Who told you his name?” she asked, startled.

“You did.”

“All right. No, he’s not here. If he knew what I was doing, he’d probably kill me!” she prophesied.

She unlocked the door and led Leopold into a drab, dim livingroom. A large white cat came running to meet her, and she knelt to stroke its fur. “Where are the diamonds?” he asked her.

“This way. In the kitchen.”

He followed her out, expecting a trap, expecting a seduction, expecting almost anything but the little leather pouch she took from the breadbox and opened before his eyes. She poured them out on the counter — big diamonds, little diamonds, some in rings but most unset. Leopold simply stared, almost at a loss for words. “These are all of them?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“How did Hoffman get them to you? He’s in jail.”

“He has an accomplice who brought them to Freddy. Now take them and go, before he comes back!”

But as Leopold’s hand closed over the little pouch of diamonds, they heard a sound at the apartment door. It was a key in a lock, and a moment later they heard the door open. “Is that him?” Leopold whispered.

“Yes, yes! He’ll kill us both!”

“Go out and try to stall him.”

She hurried through the swinging kitchen door, her face white, and Leopold looked around for a way out. There was only a door to a dead-end pantry, and a window that looked out onto a back alley. He tried the window and found it painted shut, unbudging. He turned back toward the door to the livingroom, listening to the muffled voices on the other side, and slipped the revolver from his holster. He stared down at the jewels for a moment and an idea came to him.

Two minutes later, he stepped through the swinging door with his gun drawn. “Hold it right there, Freddy.”

There was a gasp from the girl and Freddy turned, startled at the voice, but it took him only an instant to realize what was happening. “You damned little double-crossing tramp!” he shouted at the girl. “Glenda, I’ll kill you for this!” He started for her, but Leopold waved him back with the gun.

“You’ll kill no one. I’m Captain Leopold of Violent Crimes, and if anything happens to her I’ll have you behind bars.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She brought me here to give me the diamonds, to try and save your skin, but somebody beat us to them. They’re gone.”

Freddy was on his feet. He was a little man with mouselike features, and he moved now like a rodent who discovered the trap does not even contain a piece of cheese. “What do you mean, they’re gone? They can’t be gone!”

Glenda’s eyes had widened in wonder, as she tried to decide what Leopold was up to. “Look for yourself,” he told Freddy, and lowered his gun.

The little man lost no time in getting to the kitchen. He tore through the breadbox, the wastebasket, the cupboards, while Leopold stood in the doorway. Finally, after ten minutes of searching, he asked, “Where are they, Glenda? Get them now!”

“It’s like he said, Freddy! Honest!”

“You hid them somewhere,” he accused.

“No! Honest!”

“Would she have brought me here if she’d hidden the diamonds somewhere else?” Leopold argued.

Freddy eyed him with open distrust. “How do I know they’re not in your pocket?”

Leopold put away his gun and raised his arms. “You can search me if you want.” Now that he’d seen Freddy in action, he knew he didn’t need the gun to take him, if it came to that.

The little man stepped close, eyeing Leopold, and ran his hands carefully over his body, checking his topcoat arid pants cuffs and sleeves. It was a good search, but he found nothing. Leopold removed his gun to show the inside of the holster, then opened the revolver itself to show that the chambers held nothing but bullets.

“What’s in the bag?” Freddy asked.

Leopold smiled. “A pound of coffee. I was on my way home when Glenda contacted me.”

Freddy took out the coffee can and looked into the bag. Then he replaced it in, disgust. “All right, I believe you — but if the diamonds aren’t here, where are they?”

“I’m as anxious to get them as you are,” Leopold assured him. “It seems to me there’s only one other person who could have them.”

“Who’s that?”

“The guy who brought them to you in the first place — Rudy Hoffman’s accomplice.”

Freddy thought about that. “Why would he take them?”

Leopold shrugged. “With Hoffman in jail, maybe he figured he could keep the loot for himself. By delivering the diamonds to you, and then stealing them back, he’d be in the clear.”

“Yeah,” Freddy said, beginning to go along with it. “That damned double-crosser would pull something like this!”

“Want to tell me who he is?”

Freddy’s eyes narrowed in distrust. “I’ll handle it, cop.”

“Look, you’re on very thin ice. If I catch you with those diamonds, I could arrest you for receiving stolen property.”

Freddy thought about it. “No,” he decided, “I’m not telling you. Maybe the guy didn’t take them.”

Leopold sighed and turned to the girl. “Glenda, who is Hoffman’s accomplice?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

“She’s telling the truth, cop. I’m the only one who knows, besides Hoffman — and he’s not about to talk. Even if he gets sent up, it wouldn’t be for too long, and when he gets out he can still work his sweet little scheme in other cities.”

“Are you part of his scheme?”

“I was going to fence the gems, that’s all. Don’t bother taking notes, though, because I’ll deny everything.”

“If you won’t tell me who the accomplice is, call him up. Tell him you know he took the stuff and get him over here.”

That idea seemed to appeal to the little man. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Maybe I could do that.”

“If I get the diamonds and the accomplice, Freddy, you’re off the hook.”

“All right, I’ll call him.”

He walked to the phone and Leopold shot Glenda a look that told her to play along with him. Given a bit of luck, he’d have the accomplice and get her off the hook with Freddy.

“Hello? This is Freddy Doyle. Yeah, yeah... Well, something’s gone wrong. The diamonds are missing... You heard me, missing!... Well, you damned well better get over here to the apartment... Yeah, right now! And if you’ve got those stones, you better have ’em with you!”

He hung up and Leopold said, “That was good. Did he admit taking them?”

“Hell, no! He thinks I’m pulling a double cross, or that’s what he said anyway. He’ll be here.”

They sat down to wait, and Leopold watched the darkness settle over the city. He felt good, knowing the next hour’s work would probably wrap up the case. “Get me a drink,” Freddy ordered the girl at one point, and she hurried out to the kitchen.

It was just after seven o’clock when the buzzer sounded and they heard someone starting up the stairs. “Expecting anyone else?” Leopold asked.

“No, that’ll be him. Better be careful — he might have a gun.”

“Let him in. I’ll be right behind you at the door.”

While Glenda stood terrified in the kitchen doorway, Freddy Doyle opened the apartment door. He peered into the now-darkened hall and asked, “Is that you...?”

Leopold cursed silently. He tried to step back quickly and pull Freddy with him, but it was too late. Three quick shots came with deafening suddenness from the darkness, and Freddy toppled backward into his arms.

“Stop!” Leopold shouted. “Police!”

He heard the running footsteps on the stairway, and allowed Freddy’s limp body to sag to the floor. Behind him, Glenda was screaming. Leopold made it to the banister and fired a shot down the stairway, but he had no target. The street door was yanked open, and Freddy’s assailant was gone. By the time Leopold reached the street there was no sign of him.

He climbed the stairs and went back into the apartment. Glenda was on the floor, kneeling in a widening pool of blood. “He’s dead!” she shouted, close to hysterics.

“I know,” Leopold said, feeling suddenly old. He walked to the telephone and dialed headquarters.

Fletcher found him in his office, staring glumly at the wall. “I came as soon as I could, Captain. What happened?”

“I bungled, that’s what happened, Fletcher. I was trying to pull off a neat trick, and I got a guy killed.”

Fletcher sat down in his usual chair, opposite the desk. “Tell me about it.”

Leopold ran quickly over the events of the evening, from his visit to the hospital, through the shooting of Freddy Doyle. “I didn’t think our man was desperate enough to commit murder,” he admitted.

“Why would he kill Doyle?”

“Because he saw it was a trap. Maybe the bullets were aimed at me, too, but Doyle was in the way. I suppose he suspected something when Freddy called to say the diamonds were missing, because he knew he hadn’t taken them.”

“But where were they?” Fletcher asked. “You said you saw them.”

Leopold nodded. “They’re right here — my one accomplishment for the night.” He took the can of coffee from its paper bag. “I had only a couple of minutes alone in that kitchen, but I got the idea that Freddy could lead me to Hoffman’s accomplice if he thought the accomplice had returned and stolen the diamonds back again. So I used a can opener to open the bottom of this coffee can part way. I emptied just enough coffee into the sink so there’d be room in the can for this pouch of diamonds. Then I bent the bottom shut the best I could, and capped it with this plastic lid they give you, just so no coffee would run out. When Freddy was searching for the diamonds, he actually lifted the can out of its bag, but the top was still sealed and he never thought to examine the bottom.”

Fletcher opened the pouch and spilled a few of the gems onto the desk top. “A clever trick, Captain.”

“Clever — except that now Freddy is dead and we’ve got a murder on our hands. Our man isn’t one to stand still for games.”

The lieutenant was frowning down at the gems. “If Hoffman used an accomplice, it had to be somebody who came in contact with him during those few minutes after the robbery. He couldn’t have hidden the diamonds anywhere, because the street was searched, and there’s only one person he had physical contact with — only one person he could have slipped the jewels to.”

Leopold nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing, Fletcher. Put out a pickup order on Neil Quart.”

The young man sat uncomfortably in the interrogation room chair, looking from one to the other of them. “What is this, anyway? You drag me down here at midnight like a common criminal? Just this morning I was a hero!”

“That was this morning,” Fletcher said.

Leopold sat on the edge of the desk, close to the man in the chair. “Look, Neil, I think it’s time you told us the whole story. It’s not just robbery now — it’s murder.”

“Murder! I don’t...” He started to rise and Fletcher pushed him back in the chair.

“Hoffman passed those diamonds to someone, who delivered them to a fence and later killed the fence. You’re the only one who had physical contact with Hoffman after the robbery.”

“But I ran after him! I wrestled with him! I held him till the police got there! You know I did!”

“And while you were conveniently holding him, he slipped you the diamonds.”

“No! You’re crazy! I didn’t...”

Leopold began pacing the room. “There’s no other way it could have been. You have to be the accomplice, Quart.”

“Look, it doesn’t make sense! He was getting away! Why should there be this elaborate scheme to pass me the diamonds when he was getting away with them? If I hadn’t grabbed him, he’d have made good his escape.”

Leopold thought about that, trying to sort out the facts in his mind. What Neil Quart said made sense, too much sense. “Where were you tonight around seven o’clock?”

“Working in Bambaum’s shipping department, like every night. You can ask them.”

“All right,” Leopold said with a sigh. “Get out of here. Go on home. We’ll check it in the morning.”

Fletcher looked surprised. “But Captain...”

“It’s all right, Fletcher. I was wrong — again. This is my night for being wrong.”

Fletcher followed him back into his office. “Let me fix you some coffee, Captain.”

Leopold handed over the can. “I’ve lost it, Fletcher. I can’t even think straight anymore. I jump on some poor kid and try to make a murderer out of him. I get some guy killed for nothing.”

“You recovered the diamonds, Captain.”

“Yeah.”

Fletcher was filling the coffee pot. “Well, Hoffman sure did something with those diamonds. He had them when he hit Officer Begler, and he didn’t have them when they grabbed him a few minutes later.”

Leopold sat up straight. “How do we know that, Fletcher?”

“What? Well, hell, he sure didn’t crack Begler’s skull because he wasn’t carrying the diamonds.”

“Fletcher,” Leopold said very slowly, “I think that’s exactly what he did.”

They were waiting for Peter Arnold in the morning, when he unlocked the door of the Midtown Diamond Exchange. He glanced up, surprised, and said, “Captain Leopold! You look as if you’ve been up all night.”

“I have,” Leopold said, following him inside the store. Fletcher came too, but stayed by the door. “I’ve been getting people out of bed, checking on your finances, Arnold. I didn’t want to make another mistake.”

“What?”

“It was a damned clever plan, I have to say that. I suppose Rudy Hoffman thought it up, and then got friendly with some jewelers around town till he found one who needed the money.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do, Arnold. You closed the shop at nine o’clock the other night, and quickly removed the diamonds from that window. Rudy Hoffman came by as scheduled, broke the window and ran. You pocketed the diamonds and called the police. Then you took the diamonds to Freddy Doyle, who was supposed to sell them. The plan had a great advantage — Hoffman didn’t have to spend precious seconds scooping up the loot in the window, and if he were arrested a block or two away, he’d be clean. No diamonds, no evidence. He probably planned to dump the cane and topcoat and keep on going. Only Officer Begler wasn’t where he was supposed to be, directing traffic. Hoffman knew it was too soon to be arrested — right by the window. He didn’t have the diamonds and the whole plot would be obvious, so he hit Begler with the cane and ran. That’s when he had more bad luck — a young fellow named Neil Quart chased after him. You had the diamonds all the time, but unfortunately Hoffman didn’t even have a chance to pretend he’d dumped them. We had an impossible crime on our hands, even though you didn’t plan it that way.”

Peter Arnold continued staring at them. He ran a damp tongue over his lips and said, “I assume you have some proof for all this?”

“Plenty of proof. You’re in bad financial trouble, and aiding in the theft of your company’s diamonds was an easy way out for you. We’ve got the gems back, and with you in jail I’m sure Hoffman can be persuaded to tell it like it was.”

“There were witnesses who saw Hoffman at the window, though.”

“Yes, but they only saw him reach inside. He would hardly have had time to scoop up all those loose diamonds, and only you, Arnold, actually said you saw him do that. You said you saw it while you were locking the door, even though there’s a velvet drape at the rear of the window that keeps you from seeing anything from inside the store. You didn’t see him take the diamonds because he never took them. They were already in your pocket when he broke the window and started running.”

“I don’t—”

“You panicked when Freddy called you, and especially when you saw me in the doorway with him. You recognized me, of course, and started shooting. That alone told me the killer was someone I’d questioned in connection with the case.”

Peter Arnold moved then, as Leopold knew he would. It was only a matter of guessing whether the murder gun was in his coat pocket or behind the counter. His hand went for his pocket, and Fletcher shot him from the doorway. It was a neat shot, in the shoulder — the sort Fletcher was good at.

Arnold toppled against a showcase, crying and clutching his shoulder, as Leopold slipped the gun from his pocket. “You should have dumped this in the river,” he said. “We could never have made the murder charge stick without it.”

Fletcher locked the front door and called for an ambulance. They had to get Arnold patched up, and booked for murder and robbery, and then they could both go home to bed.