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

“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!”