The Green Hell Treasure

2

Captain José Maria Carvalho Santos Da Silva, liaison officer between Interpol and the Brazilian police, smiled pleasantly at his usual waiter and carefully examined both the label and the cork of the bottle of cognac being held out for his inspection. In this naughty world, as he had had reason to learn in his long experience, labels can be duplicated and corks re-used, horrible though the thought of such malfeasance might be. Satisfied that he had taken as much reasonable precaution as any man could be expected to take, he submitted the offering to the ultimate test: taste. Satisfied, he relieved the waiter of the burden of the bottle, filling both his own glass and that of his companion, and then leaned back to enjoy it. The waiter, having completed his mission, disappeared to other tasks, aware that it would be at least half an hour before he would be required to bring menus to, the two men at the table.

Captain Da Silva — Zé to his friends, and unspeakable things to his enemies — was a tall, athletic-looking man in his late thirties, with a swarthy pockmarked face and a thick mustache that, combined with his curly black hair, gave him more the appearance of a brigand from the interior — or the appearance of one of his tougher customers — than that of a captain of police. His high cheekbones gave him an almost Indian appearance; his smile, when he was pleased about something, could take years from his age, a flash of white even teeth against his almost copper skin, a crinkling of humor lines at the corners of his large black eyes. On the other hand, an angry frown on that rugged pockmarked face was one that was known, respected, and feared not only by the Rio underworld, but also by any subordinate who did not perform to the high standards Captain Da Silva set both for himself and for those who worked for him. It was rare, however, that a person working for the captain did not perform to the standard. Under those circumstances he did not work for the captain very long.

Across the table his companion smiled at the examination of the cognac bottle, accepted his glass, and grinned over the rim as he sipped it and set it down.

“You’ve got a laboratory,” he said. “Why not run it through a complete analysis? Or I could probably get it done for you through the Embassy. One of these days the contrabandistas in Rio are going to come up with the taste of Reserva San Juan as well as the proper color. Then you’re going to be lost.”

“As long as they don’t fool around too much with the proof,” Da Silva said with a grin. “And, of course, the price.” He raised his glass in a gesture of a toast. “Here’s luck.”

“Luck.”

The man across from Da Silva was quite the opposite of the flamboyant captain. Wilson was a man of medium size, with light sandy hair and pale gray eyes, of indeterminate age, nondescript in the extreme. He was the type of person who could be — and usually was — passed daily upon the street and never remembered, a man whose very clothing seemed to be selected to compliment the picture of his subdued personality. Yet this standard uniformity was no accident. It had been carefully cultivated over the years, as Da Silva well knew, and it served Wilson excellently in his job. Ostensibly he held the position of Security Officer at the American Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, a job that not even the State Department could have properly defined, assuming they had ever wished to do so. On the surface he was the whipping boy for American tourists caught in their own thoughtlessness or folly, the locator of lost passports, and quite often the re-uniter of sailor and ship, wife and husband, suitcase and owner.

Wilson’s position at the American Embassy, however, was actually far more important. Like Da Silva, he was a member of Interpol, and also played a vital role in a number of his government’s activities which were less publicized but often more far-reaching. Among Embassy personnel only the Ambassador was fully aware of Wilson’s true responsibilities. Even the Political Officer — representing the CIA — did not know his colleague’s true status — which was precisely how the State Department had conceived and promulgated the job. Among the very few people aware of Wilson’s true position was Captain Da Silva; as a result the two had had more than their share of adventures together, and the swarthy Brazilian would rather have had the colorless, nondescript Wilson at his side in times of trouble than any other man he knew.

As they did quite often when both of them found themselves in Rio and free at the same time, they were having lunch at the upper-level restaurant at the Santos Dumont Airport on the edge of Guanabara Bay, the airport for national traffic, a neat block of land jutting out, manmade, in the shadow of Sugar Loaf, just a short walk from downtown Rio and the American Embassy on the Avenida Presidente Wilson, and even closer to Da Silva’s office just a few blocks away in the Rua Dom Manuel. Still, even walking a few blocks was not Captain Da Silva’s idea of proper locomotion, because otherwise why had pioneer inventors such as Duryea and Ford — or De Soto or La Salle for that matter — been born? His red Jaguar had brought him to the airport terminal and even now was parked illegally before the main entrance, well guarded by a patrolman, not so much to prevent some newly recruited traffic officer from ticketing it or having it towed away, as to prevent the removal of a carburetor, if not the car itself, by someone less official. Daylight has never served as too great a deterrent to knavery in that most beautiful of all cities.

Wilson drank, refilled his glass, and returned his friend’s hospitality by lighting a cigarette and shoving the pack across the table. They were American cigarettes, as they would be.

“The advantages of PX privileges,” he said lightly, “although I get the feeling sometimes that some of our more famous brand names are being rolled by hand somewhere up in São Paulo. On a farm.”

He smiled and leaned back comfortably. Da Silva was in his shirtsleeves as was his custom, his jacket hanging on his chair behind him; Wilson, more the conformist, retained both jacket and tie. The two relaxed, listening to the muffled sounds from the ground floor beneath the open balcony of the restaurant, from the impatient lines before the ticket windows, hearing the clatter of dishes and the chatter of animated conversation from all sides, and also the occasional deafening roar of an airplane engine warming up for takeoff just beyond the wide windows open for the breeze from the bay.

Da Silva winced unconsciously at the sound of the airplanes; Wilson drew on his cigarette and frowned, studying his friend’s face with curiosity.

“Was that a cringe I saw? From you? I thought your main argument for eating here every day was that nothing pleased you as much as seeing planes taking off every two minutes without your being aboard. Have you changed?”

Da Silva took a sip of the Reserva San Juan, so rarely available in Rio, rolled it around in his mouth a moment to savor the full bouquet, swallowed with appreciation, and looked up.

“Unfortunately, no,” he said with a faintly rueful smile. “If you were half the detective you’re supposed to be, you would have analyzed the situation instantly. Quite obviously the cringe was because very soon I shall be watching a plane take off, and — poor me — I’ll be watching it from the inside.”

Wilson’s curiosity deepened.

“Where are you off to? And when? And why?”

“Barbados. It’s an island in the Caribbean.”

“And has been for a long time,” Wilson agreed. “Now for question number two: when?”

Da Silva puffed on his cigarette and then crushed it out in the ashtray. His gesture was somewhat like that of a man who has just refused a bandage for his eyes, preferring to face the firing squad fearlessly. He shrugged.

“When? Too soon. Tonight, to be exact.”

“And the big one: why? Vacation?”

“You know better than that,” Da Silva said with pretended sternness. “Did you ever see a bright, healthy man like me take an airplane to go anywhere for pleasure?” He shook his head suspiciously. “You’re merely trying to worm information out of a police officer in the pursuit of his duty.”

“Now you’re getting the idea,” Wilson said approvingly. “And having an awful time doing it, too.”

“I wouldn’t want to bore you.”

“I don’t bore easily. Anyway, I never knew that to stop you in the past,” Wilson said, and grinned. His grin faded. “Unless, of course, the matter is classified.”

“It isn’t classified.”

Da Silva paused, suddenly serious. He stared across the runways to the dark waters of the bay, with the tiny white blocks of apartments in Niterói on the far side standing out starkly against the mountains topped by threatening black storm clouds. Always when I have to fly! he thought morosely and sighed, bringing his attention back to the restaurant and his companion.

“Well,” he said slowly, “it all started a long time ago — fifteen years ago, to be exact. I was all of twenty-four years old, two years out of the University with a degree in criminology — whatever that was worth — a shock to my family, I might mention. The rest of the clan always went in for either law or medicine, the lawyers in order to enter politics, and the doctors in order to raise cattle or grow coffee. Don’t ask me the connection — I’ve never known it. Maybe to sit up with a sick calf...”

He lit another cigarette from Wilson’s pack and tossed the match aside.

“At any rate,” he went on, “there I was, as proud as a grandee to be a great big real live first-grade detective, collaring kids for stealing hubcaps, and occasionally making a big splash by dragging in some character, who — by fabulous deduction — we calculated to be a brute because we caught him beating up his girlfriend—”

Wilson nodded sagely. “I know what you mean.”

“Good. Anyway this case came along and they instantly chose me for the assignment because I was bright, intelligent, hard-working, handsome, clever, analytical, logical, and — did I forget anything? Oh, yes, of course: modest.” He stared calmly across the table, challenging Wilson to find fault with any of his qualifications.

“And you were also the only one in the entire detective bureau at the time with a complete command of the English language,” Wilson suggested shrewdly.

“Well, yes — there was that minor factor,” Da Silva admitted, “but let’s not dwell on unimportant matters. The salient point is that they wisely picked me out and sent me on my way. I might mention that in those days the biggest plane they had flying was a DC-6, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And that only got you as far as Port-of-Spain in Trinidad, by way of every potholed, bumpy runway between here and there. Something like six or seven stops, as I recall, but it could have been sixteen or seventeen just as well. And then from Port-of-Spain you made it to Bridgetown in Barbados in a tico-tico — a single-engine affair with floats, that came down for gas roughly every five minutes. I’m convinced it was that trip that put me off flying and airplanes for life. I personally can’t even see what birds see in it. If I was a bird, I’d walk. Or crawl. It seems a shame the Wright brothers couldn’t have stuck with bicycles—”

“I hate to interrupt, but you were saying?”

“I was saying that when I finally got to Bridgetown, I climbed down from that monster, stinking of castor oil — which doesn’t help the appetite — and I kissed the very ground—”

“You climbed down from a seaplane and kissed the ground?” Wilson stared at him. “How far down did you have to swim to do it?”

“You know what I mean.” Da Silva pointed to the bottle. “Have a drink. Apparently it’s the only way to occupy your mouth other than talking. And then push it over.”

“Sorry.”

“Apologies, apologies! Where was I? Yes — Bridgetown, Barbados. Well, it seems that a ship — a Brazilian cruise ship named the SS Porto Alegre — was in Bridgetown at the time of Carnival, anchored out in the roadstead. In those days they hadn’t built the deepwater harbor they have there now, nor the docks that run into shore; ships had to anchor out, and lighters ferried passengers and even cargo back and forth. At any rate, this particular night nearly all the passengers and crew were ashore raising general hell, and along came a rowboat with four men in it, and held up the ship.”

Wilson stared at him, his amazement this time genuine. “Held up a ship? A big oceanliner? Four men?”

“You’ve been paying attention,” Da Silva said approvingly, and put out his cigarette, immediately reaching over to borrow another.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. Boy Scout honor. Four men in a rowboat held up the ship and took roughly half a million dollars in gems in the haul. It’s the truth. Most of the passengers hadn’t wanted to wear their jewels ashore, and they didn’t want to leave them lying around their cabins — for which I certainly don’t blame them — so they left them in the ship’s safe. A logical move, on the surface, but in this particular case a rather bad mistake as it turned out.”

“But, how—”

“You will keep interrupting, won’t you? As I said, it was Carnival, and everybody and his grandmother — possibly that’s the wrong word, say companion, instead — was ashore. And these four came up in a rowboat with steel drums and managed to talk the deck officer into letting them come aboard to entertain the few people who were still on the ship. To pick up some loose change in tips, he thought; at the inquiry he was a bit vague about how they managed to convince him, because it was a breach of the rules, of course. But they did and he let them come aboard, and they played their way all over the place — playing very well, everyone said — but they ended up in the purser’s square. Three of them kept up the music, but the fourth — who was the boss, it seems — put a gun on the assistant purser who was on duty. The purser was a youngster, and he tried to tell this fellow the safe was in the captain’s quarters, but he didn’t get very far with that bit of nonsense. The boss man worked him over with a rough gunsight until he opened the safe. The boss man then cleaned out the safe, knocked our boy out, but only after he’s worked him over a bit more — maybe for luck—”

“A nice lad.”

“One of nature’s finest. Anyway, the four of them played their drums back to the promenade deck, said good night to the deck officer and an engineer who was there with him, all as polite as you could wish, climbed into their chariot — pardon me, rowboat — and” — he made a horizontal cutting motion with one hand — “zoop! Off into the wild blue yonder.”

“Any description?”

“None.”

“You mean nobody could give a decent description? It doesn’t make sense.” Wilson frowned and then nodded as one possible solution came to him. “You said it was Carnival. Were they wearing masks?”

“They were indeed. I hate to say this,” Da Silva said slowly, seriously, “especially about Brazilians — because both the deck officer and the youngster from the purser’s staff who got worked over were Brazilians — but according to the testimony we got at the inquiry from those two, not to mention at least twelve passengers, six Americans, three Brazilians, and an assorted bag for the other three, plus this engineer who was with the deck officer, those four were wearing the most impenetrable masks in the world. Impossible for a blind man to see through. They were wearing their own faces.” He raised a hand almost wearily, as if to ward off words. “Oh, everyone put it in different language at the inquiry, but what it amounted to when you sorted it out was that all ‘natives’ look alike, whatever they meant by ‘native.’”

He shrugged, poured himself another drink, but didn’t drink it at once. His eyes stared out of the window at the deepening blackness building up over the mountains to the east while his fingers unconsciously moved the glass in little circles on the white tablecloth. A sudden puff of wind brought a light sprinkle of rain through the open windows; waiters hurried to close them, muffling the sound of the aircraft on the runways. Da Silva suddenly upended his glass, crushed out his cigarette, and put out his hand.

“Let me have another.”

Wilson dutifully pushed the package across the table, waiting silently for Da Silva’s mood to pass. The swarthy man lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and tossed the spent match toward the ashtray.

“Well,” he said in reminiscence, “it was quite an inquiry. I was in charge. It took some of the passengers and even a few of the crew a while to realize that a Brazilian ship is Brazilian national territory wherever it is — I’m speaking of the non-Brazilians, of course — but eventually we got that cleared away and got down to business. I learned a lot of useless things; at the time I thought it was unusual in an investigation, but I’ve learned better since. We learned, for example, that the ages of those four drum players was somewhere between twenty and fifty — depending to a large extent on the age of the person being interviewed. We also learned that they could play their instruments with remarkable skill, which, in the islands, I was informed, is like describing someone in Brazil as playing good football—”

“Soccer,” Wilson interrupted.

“Soccer in your country. Football in every civilized nation on earth. However, I’m not in the mood to argue. Let’s say it’s like looking for a teen-ager in the States who plays guitar. Satisfied? All right. Oh, yes — there was one other bit of evidence of major importance that came to light at the inquiry. The deck officer was enough of a seaman to notice that when they tied their rowboat to the gangplank, they used a running hitch of some sort, because when the big man who ran the gang gave it a tug in the opposite direction, the knot ran free. Apparently, according to Webster, that’s the definition of a hitch. I didn’t know it before, and even after all these years I’m still not sure I believe it now.” He sighed heavily. “Anyway, that apparently made them sailors, since who but a sailor would know anything about hitches? Except, possibly, Boy Scouts, and I sincerely doubted we were dealing with Boy Scouts.”

“A reasonable conclusion.”

“Thank you.”

“However — you were about to say — good sailors in the islands being about as rare as chess players in Russia, that information also proved to be of momentous help to you.”

“Correct.” Da Silva nodded. “So there we were. We took down over a hundred thousand words in shorthand at the inquiry — more than enough for a bad novel — every word anyone remembered anyone else saying, including themselves. Quite a performance...”

“No fingerprints on or about the safe?”

“All neatly wiped off. As a matter of fact, the youngster watched him do it. The advantages, you see, of our improved means of communication; anyone with a TV set or the price of a movie now automatically wipes all knobs after using.”

Wilson stared at him and then shook his head almost in admiration.

“Not a bad evening’s work. Half a million dollars...”

Da Silva smiled at him sardonically. He crushed out his cigarette and reached for the brandy, filling his glass. He raised it, looking at Wilson over the rim.

“Really not all that much when you think about it in this day and age,” he said. “Just about enough to keep your Department of Defense going for — what? Thirty seconds? A minute?”

“About a minute and a half, if you want to be accurate,” Wilson said, and smiled. “Of course that’s on the basis of an eight-hour day, which few in Defense work — except, of course, the soldiers in the field. But in getting other people’s money, the Pentagon, you want to remember, are professionals. This half a million isn’t a bad amount for a few rank amateurs to put into their pockets and get clean away.”

Da Silva paused in his act of drinking and then finished his glass. He set his glass down and stared at his friend in surprise.

“Get away? Who said they got away?” He shook his head in amazement at Wilson’s lack of faith. “What a thought! I told you I was in charge of the case, didn’t I?”

“What did they do? Talk in their sleep? Walk into a police station and confess?”

“They did neither. They disappeared after leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the deck officer and a chopped-up face and a sore skull — plus a certain loss of faith in the kindness of his fellow humans — for the purser. The Scottish engineer was more philosophical, at least. To him the loss was only money — and not his, at that.”

“Then, how—”

“What they did leave,” Da Silva said, his tone conversational, “was a lesson to all people who talk too much. You might try to learn from them. The big boss man not only knew where the safe was, he even knew where the toilet was, and the purser’s cabin and his office and everything. That’s quite a bit of knowledge regarding a ship that hadn’t even been in Bridgetown before. That was his big mistake. With that gun and that edged front sight he could have gotten the boy to admit that the safe was in the purser’s office, and gotten him to open it, too. But he had to prove he already had the information.” Da Silva shook his head. “He talked too much, and he said things you just don’t pick up in idle conversation in a waterfront bar, certainly not within twenty-four hours of a ship’s arrival in port.”

Wilson nodded agreement.

“So you figured he hadn’t gotten it from a Ouija board, but that someone in the classroom had been helping him with his homework, and that was cheating. Which you frown on.”

“With reason,” Da Silva said virtuously. “Cheaters never prosper.”

“A Barbadian in the crew.”

“I think I’ll recommend to your Ambassador a well-deserved pay-raise for you,” Da Silva said, and nodded his head. “A rare occasion, but you are right. Except, of course, that the people there prefer to be called Bajans instead of Barbadians.”

“A steward.”

Da Silva frowned at the tablecloth and then looked up.

“I don’t know if that would qualify as a correct answer or not. He was the ship’s librarian, a clever lad, but he doubled as a bar steward every now and then, so I’ll let it go. There were three Bajans in the crew: one in the kitchen, one in the deck crew, and this ship’s librarian. There was — and still is, as a matter of fact — a sergeant of police in Bridgetown named Storrs, except he’s the Chief Inspector there now; he handled the questioning of these people, and he did a beautiful job.”

“A confession?”

“No, the man never confessed, but he was one of the two who had been ashore the previous night when the ship came in. He also came from a small town in St. Joseph parish called Brighton, near Bathsheba. The other one who had been ashore came from Holetown. Storrs did a check of the two towns and found that in Brighton our four pals were not only well known for their steel-drum playing, but also for a few of their nastier habits. They were picked up with no great effort, and a week later they were extradited to Brazil.”

“Just the four? What happened to the librarian?”

Da Silva sighed. “God knows. He managed to get out of the local jail in Bridgetown where he was being held; Storrs took better precautions with the others.”

“And they ended up where?”

“Recife. It was the port of call of the ship they were returned in — they deserved being flown back, but it wasn’t so common in those days,” he added almost sadly.

“And you mention this matter today because it is exactly fifteen years since it happened, so this judge gave them fifteen years in the penetentiary.”

“You are so right.” Da Silva smiled at him. “And that, my friend — in case you ever decide to put aside your meager efforts at detection and turn to writing my biography — was the beginning of my meteoric rise to fame and fortune.”

Wilson nodded, his mind on his own thoughts rather than on his friend’s banter. He looked up.

“And — since parole from a Brazilian penetentiary is an almost unknown thing for real bad boys — real bad boys that do not come from well-known families — they served every day of the sentence.”

“Not quite.” Da Silva’s light tone disappeared. He shook his head slowly. “Only one of them is going to be released. The big man; the boss of the gang. His name is William Trelawney McNeil, a common enough name in Barbados. Or Trinidad, or Montsarrat, or the other formerly British islands. Most of the names there are either English or Scottish. Taken from the slave owner originally, of course.”

“And the other three?”

Da Silva turned his head, staring once again at the black clouds sweeping in from the east to cover the bay. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, touched in a way with sadness, as if he were relating a personal failure of some kind.

“They didn’t make it.” He sighed. “Prison reform is something that Brazil isn’t alone in needing, but I must admit this isn’t the best place to be jailed. Actually, I suppose McNeil deserves an award of some sort; fifteen years in one of our penetentiaries must be damned near the record. The first of the others to go died of dysentery about ten years ago. Then another one talked back to a guard. The guard claimed he had a homemade knife. Maybe he did. Anyway, it never was found. Well, he left the prison hospital with a sheet over his face. That was eight years ago. The third one went to solitary confinement — four, five years ago. He was lucky enough to be able to pry a leg loose from his cot.” His eyes came back to Wilson’s face, unemotional now, almost Indian in their stoism. “He used it to stab himself to death. No easy task, I might mention.”

“But McNeil, apparently, kept his nose clean.”

“As a whistle. Seldom an argument with anyone, guard or prisoner. No trouble at all, except once when he slugged a prison doctor and wound up in solitary for a few weeks. But that was his only infraction, which is something in fifteen years. He kept pretty much to himself, even after he picked up Portuguese, which was fairly soon, since of course it was the only language spoken. He didn’t even pay too much attention to his old gang. No special friends; in fact, no friends at all. Spoke when spoken to, and politely, too. Did his work, ate his slop, and never squawked about it. No cup-rattling on the bars such as American movies love to depict. A model prisoner.” He sighed. “I guess he wanted to live and he did. And in two weeks he walks out of the pen at Bordeirinho. It’s about ten miles or so out of Recife on the road to Jabatão.”

Wilson studied the face of his friend a moment with curiosity.

“And you’re going to Barbados to be on hand to meet him when he gets there, because you can’t wait for your next airplane ride.”

“If you’re guessing,” Da Silva said disdainfully, “you’re cold.”

“Then you’re going there to meet him just to buy him a drink for old time’s sake.”

“If anything, you’re getting colder.” Da Silva shook his head. “He doesn’t know me. I never saw the man in person in my life. I turned over all the evidence I had, together with the confessions Storrs finally got from the four of them, to the Public Prosecutor at Recife. I wasn’t even at the trial; something else more important was on the fire at the time. However, the purser’s assistant and the deck officer were there, and they recognized them in the line-up at the Recife police headquarters, native or no native.”

He raised his hand to attract the attention of their waiter.

“We’d better have lunch. I hate to break the Brazilian tradition of taking three hours for a meal — not to mention the American Embassy custom — but I’ve got a deskful of work to clear up before tonight, and I want to be sure to leave myself ample time to get properly stoned before I get aboard the plane. Otherwise they’ll have to drag me on, fighting and screaming, and that’s bad for the public image of a brave, fearless police officer.”

Their waiter appeared almost instantly. Despite his other clients he had been keeping an eye on their table at all times, for Captain Da Silva and his American friend were two of his favorite customers. They drank the best cognac — when available — and tipped well. He placed a menu before each man and immediately stepped back out of earshot. He had no intention of even looking as if he might be eavesdropping on a captain of police.

“Then you’re going to Barbados to make sure McNeil really gets off the plane and doesn’t stay on it and return to Brazil where he might end up in Rio de Janeiro and add to the steel-drum population here. Which, while not extensive, is large enough; especially those who go around holding up cruise ships.”

Da Silva grinned. “You’ll never qualify for that raise that way.”

Wilson stared at him. “Now, don’t tell me you’re going there in hopes of McNeil managing to contact that librarian who escaped? So you can finally bring an oldtime fugitive to justice?”

“I’m afraid the chances are that that old-time fugitive ended up with his throat cut a long time ago,” Da Silva said thoughtfully. “It’s a guess, but I have a feeling he didn’t last too long after he broke out. He didn’t confess, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean those four who got sent up ever believed that.”

“And how did they get their hands on him when they were behind bars?” Wilson asked sarcastically. “Voodoo?”

“Relatives, I imagine. Much more effective.”

Wilson relapsed into silence. Da Silva’s black eyes began to twinkle as he watched Wilson tackle the problem seriously. He could picture the wheels turning in the other’s very adequate brain; he was well aware of the American’s ability. Then the nondescript man suddenly sat erect, his eyes widening as the gears finally meshed. He opened his mouth in surprise, held it open a moment in silent wonder, and then burst into loud laughter. There was a momentary break in the clatter about them as people stared; he dropped his laugh to a chuckle but failed to subdue it completely.

“There’s only one other reason for your going to Barbados, then,” he said, “only one possible reason, and as an old friend I hate to mention it—”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You’re not going there to meet him at all. On the contrary — since he doesn’t know you. You’re going there to follow him.” His eyes crinkled; the chuckle returned. “Through your brilliance — or your luck plus the brilliance of this Inspector Storrs — you managed to round up your four crooks. But you never did find the jewels!”

“Amazing,” Da Silva murmured, as if honestly surprised at this remarkable coincidence. “Those were almost exactly the words my superior officer used when I got back from my tour de force. As a matter of fact, he used it as a shabby excuse not to immediately promote me to head up the department, too.”

“You never found the jewels!”

Da Silva looked across the table with feigned hurt.

“I don’t think it’s very polite to rub it in,” he said stiffly, and hid his smile by turning to wave the waiter to their table...