Erle Gardner - Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories

“Come through and come clean,” he said.

“What,” asked the man, “is the real charge?”

“Robbery.”

“What?”

“You’ve got close to a million dollars’ worth of stolen gems concealed in that candy.”

There could be no mistaking their genuine astonishment.

“You got those boxes from a chap named Leith,” said Ackley, “and the candy in them is loaded with the rubies and diamonds stolen from Mills.”

The sergeant opened a box, bit into a piece of chocolate, chewed it up, and muttered his surprise as he found nothing except chocolate and cream filling. He bit into another, and the frown left his face. He twisted his tongue around, held his cupped hand before his mouth, and pushed a red object into the palm.

“Here’s one of ’em,” he said.

They crowded around him. Ackley lowered his palm. It contained a red cinnamon drop, stained with melted chocolate.

In the silence which followed, the girl’s titter sounded like an explosion. The man nudged her, Ackley reached for another piece of candy.

Once more the sergeant drew a red cinnamon drop.

“He switched before he gave you the candy!” he said.

The girl was fingering the chocolates. “I don’t think so. This top row seems to have been handled, but the other row doesn’t, and it’s just in this box. Wait a minute. Here’s one—”

Ackley grabbed it, broke it open. He pulled out a small object from the interior, then let out a yell.

“This is one!”

It was a blood-red ruby. Then Ackley curbed again.

“Hell, this is the one I planted there myself!”

And he started breaking open the chocolate creams.

His hands became soggy messes, but he found no more rubies.

“Where’s Leith?” he asked.

He might as well have asked the wind what had become of the breeze. For Lester Leith, taking advantage of the absence of shadows, had disappeared.

His apartment remained untenanted, save for the undercover man. His garage remained empty. Lester Leith was somewhere in the teeming city, lying low, waiting for his appointment with Mr. Carter Mills.

And Sergeant Ackley sat back in his swivel chair, blamed his subordinates, and continued to curse.

The entire staff at headquarters was munching chocolate creams and waiting.

Lester Leith, in the living room of Mills’s suburban house, set up a blowtorch, a crucible, took a package of cornstarch and some powdered alum from his suitcase. Then he took some waterproof cement, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

“Unfortunate robbery you had the other day,” he said as he poured a small quantity of cornstarch into the crucible.

Mills grunted.

Leith took a vial from his pocket and handed it to Mills. His greedy eyes devoured the luster of the pearls in the vial.

“We can make our fortune out of this,” Mills said and glanced back to the crucible.

To his surprise he found himself looking into the business end of an automatic which had appeared in Leith’s hand while Mills’s attention had been on the pearls.

Leith smiled. “Take it easy, Mills. You’re dealing with big stuff now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a gangster. I use gangster’s methods. I’ve got a mob that’ll stop at nothing. Griggy the Gat was one of my men.”

Beads of perspiration stood out on the jeweler’s forehead. He kept his eyes on the gun.

“You see, you made up your mind a long time ago to steal those gems from the rajah,” went on Lester Leith, his voice ominously smooth. “So you deliberately arranged for a lot of newspaper publicity about how you carried a million dollars in gems back and forth from your work.

“Naturally I fell for it. I told Griggy the Gat to get into your place, collar you when you came in, and grab the stones. Griggy muffed the job, but mostly because you had it all figured out. You knew a clever yeggman would probably strike just when you entered your place of business in the morning.

“You’re smart, Mills, and that’s why you always came to work a few minutes before anyone else showed up. You gave a stickup just that opening, hoping he’d fall.

“What happened was just what you hoped for — that the stickup would get killed in a gun battle with the cops.

“Griggy the Gat got the bum breaks, you got the good ones. The bulls looked all over and couldn’t find the stones. That was natural — because they hadn’t been in the brief case in the first place!

“Then you made a fool move. You were afraid the police would reach the right conclusion when they searched every place they could think of and still didn’t find the stones. You wanted to convince them that the gems had been stolen. So you started to put some of them in circulation.

“You were clever enough to know that the average person never remembers more than one distinctive feature, or two at the most. You pulled a cap well down on your head and put a patch over one eye. Those two things were obvious. The people you dealt with saw them, and saw nothing else. But you made a mistake when you had the patch over the left eye on one occasion, and over the right on another. Yet you fooled the police.”

“What do you want?” asked Mills.

“A cut, of course.”

Mills wet his lips. “You can’t prove a thing. I’m not going to be held up.”

Lester Leith glanced at his watch.

“It may interest you to know,” he said, “that the police have at last reached the conclusion they should have reached before. Having decided that the gems were not concealed by Griggy the Gat, and having convinced themselves the gems were not on Griggy at the time of his death, they have concluded you didn’t give them to Griggy. Therefore, they have decided you slipped over a fast one. So they took your picture, made a life-size enlargement, put a cap on it and a patch over one eye, and the witnesses have identified it as the man who gave out four of the rubies.”

Mills swallowed with difficulty.

Lester Leith holstered his gun.

“After all, it’s not my funeral. I’ve decided to have the gang take you for a little vacation. At a signal from me they’ll come in. If you don’t kick through with the gems you’ll go for a ride.”

Mills squirmed.

“You said the police—”

Leith glanced at his watch again.

“Are on their way. Guess I’d better call in the boys.”

Mills choked.

“Last chance,” smiled Leith.

Mills shook his head.

“No. You’re wrong. I haven’t got them. I—”

He broke off. From the east sounded the wail of a siren, a wail that grew in volume.

“Save me, the police!” screamed Mills.

Leith struck him across the face.

“Save you, you cheap crook — save myself! Save my boys. They’re out there covering me. If the police stop here it’ll mean a massacre!”

Mills dived toward a window.

Leith’s fist crashed into his jaw and sent him down to the floor.

“You damn fool. Keep away from that window. The police will walk right into an ambush. My choppers will mow them down. You know what that means. When you kill a cop there’s always hell to pay.”

The siren keened even louder.

“Seems to be right in my garage!” said Mills.

“Then listen for firing,” said Leith.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Poppety-pop-pop-pop Bang!

“Riot guns!” yelled Leith.

For a space of seconds the explosions continued, and then silence descended.

Leith sighed. “Well, you’ve done it. My men have wiped out the cops — it’s a massacre. Naturally the bulls will blame you for the job. It’s the chair for you — unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless I decide to take you into the gang. We can use a good jewel man.”